Dervishes on Pilgrimage in Damascus (Photo by Emily O'Dell)
Whoever the plague touches, let it strike me instead and spare everyone in Damascus.— Sheikh Khalid al Baghdadi
For the past ten years, I’ve been wandering from Afghanistan to Mali–and many places in between–to visit as many living and dead Sufi masters–and students–as I possibly can. In my piece “Sharing the Sufis of Syria”, I mention only a fraction of the shrines I visited while I was wandering around Syria…
One of the first shrines that I visited in Damascus was the tomb of an Iraqi Kurdish Sufi teacher named Sheikh Khalid al Baghdadi (d. 1827). Sheikh al Baghdadi was called “He of the Two Wings” for his mastery of both exoteric and esoteric knowledge. Before he died, he reportedly said: “I will take all the plague from the people of Damascus, and I alone will die on Friday.” He instructed his dervishes not to write anything on his grave except: “This is the grave of the stranger Khalid.” Today, dervishes in Damascus still believe that the day after Sheikh al-Baghdadi died–the plague that was decimating Damascus died too, being buried with him in his sacred shrine below…
Photo by Emily O'Dell
