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Dancing Across Time and Space: Mysticism, the City, and the Body in Tunisia

Souad Matoussi in conversation with Julius Dihstelhoff

Mystical dances in Tunisia are not relics of a distant past. They are living practices that continue to shape urban life today. Moving from sacred zawiyas to private homes and public stages, they connect bodies, memories, and the city across time. This interview with Souad Matoussi shows how these practices function as cultural resources, sites of negotiation, and forms of collective imagination. Mysticism is not outside modern urban life. It is one of the ways cities are continuously produced and reimagined.

Julius Dihstelhoff (JD): Dear Souad, your work situates mystical dance at the intersection of ritual practice, embodiment, and urban life. From a historical perspective, how can we understand the role of these dances within the social and spatial organization of Tunisian cities?

Souad Matoussi (SM): If we take a longer historical view, mystical dances in Tunisia appear deeply embedded in the ritual life of Sufi confraternities—religious brotherhoods organized around shared spiritual lineages—particularly in spaces such as zawiyas (zāwiya / زاوية), which are lodges often dedicated to saints. These were not only places of worship, but also social hubs structuring everyday urban rhythms. Weekly gatherings (mi‘ad / ميعاد), seasonal celebrations, and pilgrimages created a temporal framework through which individuals related to both the sacred and the city.

Within these settings, practices such as dhikr (dhikr / ذكر)—the rhythmic recitation of divine names—and hadhra (ḥaḍra / حضرة)—a collective ritual performance combining music, movement, and trance—were central. They combined recitation, music, and coordinated bodily movement to guide participants toward states of ecstasy (wajd / وجد). Crucially, the body was not secondary—it was the medium through which spiritual experience became possible. This aligns with anthropological insights: Sophie Ferchiou shows how rhythm and breath produce a lived, embodied religiosity, while Émile Dermenghem highlights how saintly cults and confraternal institutions structured Maghrebi urban life. Mystical dances were thus constitutive of the city: they organized time, anchored sacred geographies, and fostered collective identities.

A group of people in front of a bridge built out of stone.
Group photo taken during the MECAM Traveling Academy in an oasis in Gabès. Photo by Anis Ajala.

JD: Much scholarship on mystical dance focuses on traditions such as the whirling dervishes, often overlooking North African contexts. How would you situate Tunisian and Maghrebi practices within this field? What makes them distinct?

SM: This is indeed a key issue. Dominant representations of mystical dance are shaped by highly visible traditions such as the Mevlevi whirling dervishes, which have become emblematic in global imaginaries of Sufism. In contrast, Maghrebi and Tunisian practices are less codified and standardized, which partly explains their marginalization in scholarship.

What distinguishes Tunisian mystical dance is its embeddedness in everyday social life and its diversity. Rather than a single formalized ritual, we encounter multiple practices that vary across regions, confraternities, and contexts. These dances are closely tied to local histories, saintly lineages, and vernacular religiosity. They are less oriented toward spectacle than toward participation, healing, and social cohesion. Expanding the scholarly lens thus also requires rethinking what counts as “mystical dance.”

JD: Recent scholarship has conceptualized Sufism as an “ambient” presence within everyday life. To what extent are these practices constitutive of urban experience rather than peripheral to it?

SM: The notion of “ambient Sufism,” developed by Richard C. Jankowsky, is helpful because it shifts attention from institutional religion to lived experience. It highlights how sound, rhythm, and movement circulate through urban environments in ways that are not always formally visible.

Mystical dances contribute to this ambient dimension by producing affective atmospheres. Even outside ritual contexts, elements such as rhythms, gestures, or musical repertoires remain recognizable and meaningful. They persist in collective memory and can be reactivated in different situations.

Mystical practices are thus woven into everyday urban life. They shape how space is experienced—not only cognitively, but sensorially and emotionally—challenging any strict distinction between the sacred and the secular in the city.

JD: Your research traces a shift from sacred to private, public, and performative spaces. How can we analytically grasp this transformation?

SM: What we observe is a process of displacement combined with adaptation. Following independence, and especially under policies that marginalized confraternal institutions, many zawiyas lost their central role. The practices, however, did not disappear—they migrated. Today, mystical dances occur in private homes, therapeutic settings, and public performances. This entails a reconfiguration of both space and function.

Victor Turner’s concept of communitas is useful here: a form of intense collective experience that temporarily suspends social hierarchies. In Tunisian mystical dance, such communitas emerges through shared rhythm, bodily synchronization, and affective intensity. At the same time, heritage-making processes and cultural policies have gained importance. Mystical dances are increasingly framed as intangible cultural heritage, opening them to preservation, reinterpretation, and commodification. They now operate across ritual, aesthetic, therapeutic, social, and economic registers—embedded in festival circuits, heritage frameworks, and tourism economies.

Two tambourines on top of a carpet.
During the hadra ritual, devotees accompany their chants with the tambourine (al-duff), a drum-like instrument used since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Considered a sacred instrument, tambourines are traditionally kept in the zawiya. Photo by Anis Ajala.

JD: How do these practices shape—and perhaps produce—urban space today?

SM: They produce urban space very concretely through embodied practice. When a hadhra (ḥaḍra / حضرة) takes place, it transforms its surroundings: a home becomes a ritual site, a public square a space of shared affect, a stage a site of aesthetic ascension.

This resonates with Henri Lefebvre’s idea that space is socially produced. Through rhythm, repetition, and participation, mystical dances create temporary but powerful spatial configurations.

At the same time, they do not simply connect temporalities—they actively produce temporal experience. Through repetition and embodied memory, they link past traditions with present enactments while opening future imaginaries. This temporal dimension carries social and political implications, shaping how communities relate to heritage, identity, and change. Mystical dance thus becomes a medium through which time itself is negotiated within urban space.

JD: How do you assess the relationship between preservation and artistic reinterpretation?

SM: Rather than a tension, I see a dynamic field of negotiation. Some actors emphasize continuity, preserving repertoires and ritual frameworks, while others reinterpret these practices in aesthetic and performative ways.

The staged Hadhra productions initiated by Fadhel Jaziri in the early 1990s (notably 1993) are a prominent example. They make these traditions visible to wider audiences while transforming their meaning. This reflects broader debates on ritual and spectacle and can be understood as a process of translation across contexts and audiences.

These developments must also be situated politically. Under the Ben Ali regime, such performances were supported and promoted internationally as part of cultural diplomacy, shaping a particular image of Tunisian identity, especially within diaspora contexts. Despite these transformations, the practices remain highly relevant. They respond to contemporary needs for belonging, emotional expression, and healing, reconnecting individual experience with collective frameworks.

JD: What does your research ultimately tell us about the relationship between mysticism and the city?

SM: It shows that mysticism is not external to urban modernity, nor merely a residue of tradition. It is an active and evolving dimension of urban life. Through dance, mysticism becomes tangible: it is enacted through bodies, shaped by spaces, and shared within communities. These practices reveal how people relate to the city not only through institutions, but through sensory, affective, and symbolic experiences. Mystical dances thus offer a lens to understand the city as lived and embodied—continuously produced through practice, memory, and imagination.

JD: What emerges from your reflections is a compelling insight: mystical practices do not simply persist—they circulate, adapt, and actively shape the social, spatial, and temporal fabric of contemporary cities. They connect and rework temporal layers, transform spaces, and create meaningful forms of collective experience. In this sense, your work speaks directly to the core concern of MECAM’s Traveling Academy in Gabès (Tunisia): understanding mysticism not as something outside the modern city, but as one of the ways urban life is continuously made and reimagined.


This interview was conducted in the framework of MECAM’s Traveling Academy “Mysticism and the City: Temporality, Spatiality, Culture, and Society” (31 March–2 April 2026), convened by MECAM’s long-term Fellow, Dr. Cyrine Kortas, and organized by MECAM Scientific Communication Coordinator, Dr. Diana Abbani. The Academy brought together analytical, collaborative, artistic, and experiential modes of knowledge production and explored how mystical traditions—particularly but not limited to Sufism—shape urban life, from ritual practices and heritage politics to artistic production and social belonging.


References

Dermenghem, Émile. Le culte des saints dans l’islam maghrébin. Paris: Gallimard, 1954.

Ferchiou, Sophie. “Survivances mystiques et culte de possession dans le maraboutisme tunisien.” L’Homme. Revue française d’anthropologie 12, no. 1 (1972): 47–69.

Jankowsky, Richard C. Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Lefebvre, Henri. La production de l’espace. Paris: Anthropos, 1974.

Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982.

Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.

Aïssa, Lotfi. Le soufisme et la gestion de la vie spirituelle en Tunisie. Tunis: [publisher unspecified], 2023.

Jaziri, Fadhel, Samir Agrebi, and Sihem Belkhodja. El Hadhra (performance project and recordings). Tunis, 1990s.

Rezgui, Sadok. La musique tunisienne. Tunis: Société Tunisienne de Diffusion, 1969.

Mhalla, Moncef. “Le confrérisme, religion diffuse: les zaouïas en Tunisie au 19ème siècle.” In Cahiers des Arts et Traditions Populaires, vol. II, pp. 119–150.


About the Authors

Souad Matoussi is an anthropologist and Associate Professor at the University of Sousse (Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Department of Anthropology). Her research focuses on traditional and popular dances in Tunisia, with particular attention to their social, cultural, and ritual dimensions. Since the 1990s, she has explored the intersections of performance, heritage, and politics, including the aestheticization of Tunisian musical and choreographic traditions. Her doctoral work represents one of the first comprehensive anthropological studies of Tunisian dance practices, both sacred and profane, examining their role in shaping collective subjectivities and cultural memory.

Julius Dihstelhoff has been serving as the Director ‘Germany’ of the international collaborative project Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) since April 2025. Prior to this, from May 2020 to March 2025, he worked as the Academic Coordinator (Postdoc) for the center. As a political scientist, his research focuses on German foreign policy in the MENA region, political transformation processes in Tunisia, as well as questions of regional (re)ordering and political Islam.


Citation: Souad Matoussi / Julius Dihstelhoff, Dancing Across Time and Space: Mysticism, the City, and the Body in Tunisia, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 19.05.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/65612

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OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (May 19, 2026). Dancing Across Time and Space: Mysticism, the City, and the Body in Tunisia. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved June 15, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/168ma


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