Resource Type: moving image - UCLA Library Digital Collections Search Results

Description:: The Sheikha begins to call on God, again falling into a loose call and response pattern. Even though there is a clear call (Allah!) and a clear response (Hey!), many women call on God with the Sheikha, using her same hand motions. This ritual is not common among all Muslims and may have developed over time as particular either to Qadiri Sufis or to the Talabani Tekiye.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: The Sheikha moves from calling on God to the sung prayers. The daff and tapl begin to sound. The song here differs from that in the male worship: it is communally sung, not individually. All women sing; they share the song.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: Here, the worship again shifts. The daff and tapl continue, the communal sung prayer continues, but the women join hands and begin to step rhythmically around the room, bending and swaying as they go. They praise the Prophet and beg his grace.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: As the rhythmic movement continues, the transcendence or ecstasy begins to descend on individual women. One woman, recognizing another’s ecstasy, pulls her from outside the circle into it, allowing her the space to move differently than the women around her. The women continue to praise the Prophet, but call, too, on additional holy individuals, such as Sheikh Ahmed Bustani, for grace.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: The women continue to worship, the mullahs and the Sheikha remain in the middle, leading the prayer with strong voice and strong motion.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: A woman sits in the corner, draped in green cloth printed with gold mosques. Green, a holy color to Islam, is generally used in cemeteries or at shrines. Her hair is wrapped in a white cloth and her motion is restrained, but her eyes are closed and she has separated herself from the circling women. The prayer continues to consist mostly of praise for the beloved sheikhs of the order.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: From outside the circle, we see the women as they move and continue to pray.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: The air conditioning ruffles the edges of her scarf as Sheikha Sunbul Umjunayd leads and participates in the prayer. This viewpoint is from inside the circle of worshipping women who spin around the Sheikha and other worshippers who are in an ecstatic mode. The prayer acknowledges the call from Baghdad, where Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gaylani founded the Qadiri Order, and where the mosque he founded remains in operation today. As well, as the women reach a subconscious or transcendent state, they often forsake the common prayer for exclamations, often, “Allah! Allah!”
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: Though she repeats in the same time the motions of the women around her, one woman has broken out of the circle in a transcendent moment of worship.
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

Description:: The women move in a circle around the prayer leaders and those who have gone ecstatic in their movements. The woman draped in green continues her motions from the plastic lawn chair in the corner. Women on couches and the floor, lining the wall of the room, echo the motions and prayers of the women in the center of the room. Here, the women repeat, “There is no god but God.”
Date:: 30-Sep-16
Resource Type:: moving image
Collection:: Middle East & North Africa Collections
Kirkuk’s Great Sufi Mosque

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