Mouled in Kairouan

The city it belongs to

If Mouled has a capital it is Kairouan. The city was founded in the seventh century and its Great Mosque, begun by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi in 50 AH — 670 or 671 CE — became the model for every later mosque in the Maghreb. Its minaret, largely of the early ninth century and about 836, is the oldest minaret standing anywhere in the Muslim world: 31.5 metres on a square base of 10.7. The courtyard runs roughly 67 by 52 metres and the prayer hall 70.6 by 37.5. The town has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1988.

The spiritual centre of Mouled in the city is not the Great Mosque but the Zaouia of Sidi Sahib, recognisable by its seven white cupolas and its seventeenth-century tilework. Many of the processions end at the Great Mosque. In recent years close to a million people have come to the city over the festival.

Banners and madih

What you hear is the Sufi side of it. Brotherhoods and folk troupes move through the streets carrying embroidered banners and singing madih, devotional hymns in praise of the Prophet. Stambeli — the Black Tunisian ritual tradition, with roots that run across the Sahara — is part of the sound too.

Away from Kairouan, Mouled turns inward. It is a household day: neighbours exchange bowls, children get new clothes, and the season is a traditional one for weddings.

A famine that became a dessert

Assidat zgougou is what Mouled tastes like. It is made from the seeds of the Aleppo pine, ground to a flour, cooked into a dark pudding and covered with a pale custard and a scatter of nuts.

It was not invented for a feast. It came out of the famine of 1864 to 1867, when families in the north-west found that the pine seeds nobody had bothered with could be turned into flour that would keep a household alive. What was eaten because there was nothing else is now the most anticipated sweet in the Tunisian year — made in quantity, carried between houses, and impossible to find at any other season.

The same night, a different practice

Tivaouane in Senegal keeps the identical date with ten nights of the Burda and a single great vigil. Kairouan keeps it with processions, zaouias and pudding. The calendar is the same arithmetic; what is done with the night is not.