In 1942 or '43, Constance Stuart Larrabee photographed a Muslim man with a sword. No, this has nothing to do with tired old cliches about militant Islam. Instead, the man was preparing to participate in what Muslims in Cape Town, South Africa, called the ratiep. Also known as the khalifah or the ratib, it's an expression of Sufi mysticism. As members of the group or jummah recite prayers and sing religious songs to the accompaniment of drums, others enter a mystical state that allows them strike themselves with swords and daggers without causing harm, thereby demonstrating the power of faith.
Constance Stuart Larrabee: Muslim Man, Bo Kaap, Cape Town, South Africa, 1942-43. (Courtesy of the Eliot Eliosofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Click directly on either of the photos to see larger versions.)
I stumbled across this photo, yesterday, in the Constance Stuart Larrabee collection, at the National Museum of African Art. (I was there to do some research on a series of photos that she made as part of a project on poor whites in South Africa. I'll be writing about it soon.) It's one of several dozen photos that she made during a day or two of wandering around the Bo-Kaap, a Cape Town neighborhood that used to be known, misleadingly, as the "Malay Quarter." And it's remarkably similar to a photo I made less than two months ago, nearly 70 years after Larrabee made hers.
John Edwin Mason: Ratiep ceremony, Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa, 2010.
I was at the ceremony because I've been fascinated by the ratiep for a very long time. A few years ago, I published an article about its history in the South African Historical Journal. In it, I showed how the ratiep has been an important part of Islam in Cape Town for over 300 years and was (and is) instrumental in attracting converts to the faith, especially during the days of slavery. (Here's an early version of the article -- "Some Religion He Must Have": Slaves, Sufism, and Conversion to Islam at the Cape".)
Despite my interest, I'd never actually seen the ceremony performed until this past June. Then members of three different Cape Town jummahs invited me to attend ceremonies and to photograph them. (I became friends with many members of the Cape Town Muslim community in the course of working on my book, One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival.) I'm grateful for those opportunities. If I were to write about the ratiep, today, it would be with a much deeper appreciation for its meaning and beauty.
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