Wearing Tradition: The Khirqa and Sufi Memory in Nacer Khemir’s Bab’Aziz

Abstract

Nacer Khemir’s Bab’Aziz (2005) treats the dervish cloak (khirqa) as more than costume: a site where ascetic practice contests fashion’s novelty-driven logic. Focusing on the narrative shift from the Prince’s conspicuous consumption of silk to the dervish’s adoption of rough wool, this article argues that the film visualizes an “anti-fashion” stance rooted in Sufi discourses. In this cinematic setting, the khirqa functions as a kind of haptic archive—a tactile record of transmission and wear—through which spiritual lineage, authority, and continuity become legible. Bringing Ibn ʿArabī into dialogue with film theory’s concept of haptic visuality, the study shows how the cloak operates as a primary cinematic signifier of sartorial regulation, where disciplined appearance is figured as ethical formation rather than fashion trend. Bridging history, sociology, and material culture studies, the article suggests that the khirqa endures as a transhistorical emblem mediating spiritual identity across changing spatiotemporal contexts.

1. Introduction

Nacer Khemir’s Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul (2005), the final installment of his “Desert Trilogy,” builds its narrative universe on a foundational Sufi principle: “The ways to God are as many as the breaths of created beings.” (Schimmel 1975, p. 286). This motto is more than an epigraph; it forms the structural logic of the film. The work avoids a singular protagonist’s journey toward a fixed goal. Instead, it traces the paths of various seekers—a blind dervish, a prince contemplating his soul, a young man (Zaid) searching for his beloved, and a brother (Hassan) seeking revenge. Their stories converge and diverge within the boundlessness of the desert. This cinematic narrative, centered on the figure of the dervish, offers a rich case study for examining the intersection of religious attire, “anti-fashion,” and the material culture of spiritual identity.

To weave this multi-layered narrative, the film consciously departs from linear time and causality. The characters’ paths are linked not by a mechanical plot but through “encounters” (mulāqāt) on the road, each sparking new narrative threads. Positioning himself as a traditional hakawati (storyteller), the director adopts the frame-narrative technique of The One Thousand and One Nights, creating a cyclical flow that draws the viewer from one story into another (Armes 2010, p. 69). This structure mirrors the visual leitmotif of the whirling dervish, evoking endless cycles of unpredictability (Khan 2024, p. 503). Within this rotation, beginning and end, dream and reality, and past and present appear to dissolve into one another.

The desert, the setting for these physical and spiritual journeys, is likewise rendered not as a geographical location but as an ontological ground. Khemir’s cinematic spaces have been described as sites where “history and imagination meet,” realms abandoned by modernity but still inhabited by spiritual memory (Sander 2020, p. 8). In this emptiness, the journey becomes a cinematic expression of sayr al-sulūk (spiritual wayfaring), where the objective is not simply to arrive at a physical destination but to engage in the act of “contemplating one’s own soul” (Öztürk 2019, p. 57).

The universe Khemir constructs operates according to a code system rooted entirely in Sufi teachings. Khemir himself states that the film’s structure “borrows the structure of the ‘visions’ usually narrated by dervishes and the structure of their spiraling and whirling dances,” aiming to invite the spectator “to forget about his ego and to put it aside to open up to the reality of the world” (Khemir 2005a). This framing finds explicit support in the closing credits. “Poems and some phrases in dialogues are inspired by RUMI, ATTAR, IBN ARABI, and IBN FARID.” This acknowledgment serves as a hermeneutic key. It confirms that the film is not merely “inspired by” Sufism but consciously sources its narrative and aesthetic from the tradition’s foundational texts. Consequently, the material culture within the film—especially its costumes—cannot be read as mere decoration. Rather, the costume operates as a “visual metaphor” capable of independent signification. Following Stella Bruzzi’s argument that costume acts as a “spectacular intervention” rather than a mere support for the plot, the dervish’s cloak here functions as a narrative agent in the sense that its presence and transfer help structure key moments of the film’s narrative, rather than merely decorating them, independent of dialogue (Bruzzi 1997, p. xv).

This approach aligns with the material turn in religious studies, which treats material culture not as a backdrop but as constitutive of religious experience. As David Morgan argues, religion is not merely a web of abstract meanings but is ‘embodied, emplaced, and enacted’ through material relations (Morgan 2016, p. 273). In Bab’Aziz, the cloak functions precisely as this medium of embodiment. In this specific context, the cinematic medium serves as a critical laboratory for examining the divergence between religious material culture and the secular logic of fashion. By visualizing the khirqa within the stark aesthetics of the desert, the film stages a confrontation between the ephemeral cycles of trend and the enduring stability of sacred dress. Through this lens, cinema allows us to test how religious symbols resist the modern commodification of identity, functioning not merely as costumes for a role but as ontological anchors that defy the fluidity of secular self-fashioning. Elaborate costumes often serve as ‘some of the primary expressions of a religious tradition.’ For outside observers, they act as the ‘most obvious, immediate, enchanting… features’ that provide points of access into an unfamiliar world (Droogan 2013, p. 1). The khirqa in Bab’Aziz, therefore, exemplifies a distinct economy of appearance tied to restraint and ethical formation rather than novelty. In this article, ‘regulation’ does not refer primarily to legal restriction; it names the codified and disciplined ways a religious garment becomes publicly readable as a sign of lineage and practice. The dervish’s cloak in Bab’Aziz, therefore, must be approached not as an incidental detail but as a central medium through which the film’s religious meanings are materially articulated.

While existing scholarship has insightfully explored the film’s aesthetics and philosophical sources (Armes 2010; Öztürk 2019; de Souza and Alves 2023), the function of the khirqa as a “narrative agent” remains a critical lacuna. This study addresses the gap by arguing that the khirqa is more than a historical costume; it is an active cinematic code that signifies the wearer’s initiation, spiritual authority, and state of faqr (poverty). Operating on the theoretical principle that clothing constitutes an independent discourse rather than a mere reflection of character (Bruzzi 1997, p. xvi), this article treats the dervish’s attire as a central component of a “higher and special spirituality” integral to the tradition (Ambrosio 2012). The methodological approach combines close formal analysis of the film’s visual language with a contextual reading of the khirqa’s role in Sufi tradition to demonstrate how cinema translates religious dress into a legible language of spiritual experience.

2. The Evolution of the Khirqa in Sufi Tradition from Ascetic Symbol to Initiatic Mantle

2.1. Ascetic Origins and Semiotic Depth

In Bab’Aziz, the dervish’s cloak carries a weight that is easy to miss if we approach it merely as costume. A useful entry point is the term taṣawwuf itself. In his Risāla, al-Qushayrī (d. 1072) explores the word’s etymology, noting that one of the most widely cited derivations links it to ṣūf—wool. From this perspective, the verb taṣawwafa can be understood as “to put on a woolen garment,” suggesting that early Sufi identity was inherently tied to a recognizable mode of dress (Al-Qushayrī 2007, p. 288).

Within the milieu of early Islamic asceticism, where fine textiles served as indices of status and comfort, wearing rough wool was more than just covering the body. It worked as a sign, a conscious choice. It was an “anti-fashion” choice that made ascetic discipline (zuhd) visible and enacted a turning away from worldly attachments. By prioritizing the abrasive feel of rough wool, the garment anchors the wearer’s attention in the body. This aligns with Lynne Hume’s argument that religious dress serves as a “sensory testimony,” transforming abstract belief into palpable experience (Hume 2013, p. 9). For the dervish, this tactile mechanism foregrounds renunciation (zuhd) not merely as a visual symbol but as a felt reality.

This sensibility becomes especially legible in the patched frock, the muraqqaʿa. Sewn from disparate scraps, it condensed a moral-aesthetic vocabulary onto a single surface. Al-Hujwīrī articulates this vocabulary most explicitly, transmuting the garment’s morphology into a prescribed relationship to the body. In his allegorical reading, the collar (qabba) signifies patience, the sleeves represent the dual discipline of fear and hope, and the belt denotes self-abnegation. The khirqa thus transcends its function as a textile covering. It becomes, in this reading, a garment whose prescribed form indexes the wearer’s spiritual standing (Al-Hujwīrī 1911, p. 56). At the same time, the garment signals faqr (spiritual poverty) at a glance. It figures the wearer’s refusal of “wholeness” as the world defines it, inviting an inward reading where patchiness represents the effort to gather scattered inner states (aḥwāl)—to “patch together” what is dispersed—into a more integrated orientation.

2.2. The Regulated Cloak and the Gaze of the Other

Despite the clarity of its symbolism, the semiotic status of the patched frock remained historically fluid. Writing around the same period, al-Hujwīrī (d. c. 1072) effectively shifts the focus from the garment to the wearer in Kashf al-Maḥjūb. For him, what matters is not simply the cloak, but the wearer’s ḥāl (inner state). He distinguishes two groups among those who don the muraqqaʿa: the Mustaqīm al-ḥāl (those whose state is upright) and the Mutashabbihīn (the emulators). For masters of the path, the garment is essentially expressive, mirroring an already established reality. For disciples still in formation, the cloak is pedagogical. It disciplines the novice by marking entry into a path of imitation, as suggested by the familiar maxim, “Whoever imitates a people is one of them” (Al-Hujwīrī 1911, pp. 45–46).

As Sufism evolved from an ascetic disposition into organized paths (ṭarīqa), the cloak also acquired a more formal institutional role, functioning as a codified sign through which lineage and authority became publicly legible. Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (d. 1234) articulates this shift clearly in the ʿAwārif al-Maʿārif. Here, “donning the cloak” (libs al-khirqa) from the hand of a master (shaykh) is framed as a formal act of allegiance (bayʿa). It signifies the disciple’s surrender of personal will to the guide’s spiritual authority. The khirqa thereby becomes a tangible marker of transmission (silsila), linking the disciple—through the master—back to the Prophet (Al-Suhrawardī 2006, p. 108). Suhrawardī also sharpens the institutional picture by distinguishing two basic forms of the cloak: Khirqa al-irāda (a mantle of discipleship), given to the fully committed disciple, and Khirqa al-tabarruk (a mantle of blessing), bestowed on those who seek connection to the Sufi milieu without assuming the full burdens of the path (Al-Suhrawardī 2006, p. 112). As modern scholarship notes, this distinction underscores that the sartorial formation of the Sufi body followed a graded hierarchy, with the garment functioning as a precise indicator of one’s station on the Path (Schimmel 1975, p. 102).

Once the cloak became a primary sign of affiliation, later authors produced works devoted specifically to tracing its spiritual genealogies. A particularly revealing example is Taqī al-Dīn al-Wāsiṭī’s (d. 1343) Tiryāq al-Muḥibbīn fī Ṭabaqāt Khirqat al-Mashāyikh al-ʿĀrifīn (The Lovers’ Antidote Concerning the Generations of the Cloak of the Gnostic Masters). The title signals an interpretive horizon: the khirqa is cast not simply as an object, but as a tiryāq—a “remedy”—through which seekers are oriented toward a lineage understood as spiritually salutary. Al-Wāsiṭī’s work is organized not by chronology but around cloak-lineages: each major initiatic family (Rifāʿiyya, Qādiriyya, Suhrawardiyya, Junaydiyya) is treated under the heading of its particular silsila, confirming that the khirqa had become the primary organizing principle for tracing Sufi authority (Al-Wāsiṭī [1305] 1888, pp. 2–5). This focus on lineage, evident in works like al-Wāsiṭī’s, underscores how the khirqa’s legitimacy is constructed through a documented claim to an authoritative lineage. By this period, the cloak can be understood not only as a broad Sufi emblem but as a marker of belonging that renders affiliation and method (ṭarīqa) legible through the idiom of transmission. This background, in turn, makes it possible to read the cloaks in Bab’Aziz as more than incidental apparel. This historical codification matters here not as antiquarian detail, but because it clarifies the normative background against which Khemir’s more fluid cinematic treatment of the cloak can be read. It functions as a cue to where a character stands and what forms of guidance their journey presupposes. Moreover, the tradition acknowledges the Khirqa Khiḍriyya (Khiḍr’s Cloak), a mode of investiture that bypasses human intermediaries. In the Kitāb Nasab al-Khirqa, a treatise commonly attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, this direct transmission is presented as a vertical form of initiation, providing a doctrinal precedent for the solitary wanderers depicted in Bab’Aziz (Bize 2022, p. 26).

While the khirqa originates as a symbol of ascetic refusal, its evolution reveals that dervish attire operates within a strict economy of regulation. This is not a juridical regulation in a modern sense but is enacted through doctrinal mechanisms that govern legitimacy. As Suhrawardī’s distinction makes clear, access to the garment was carefully managed as a form of spiritual governance. This principle became more pronounced as sartorial systems grew increasingly complex, especially from the Balkans to Anatolia. Within the Ottoman context, dervish dress evolved into a highly codified visual language, where specific items served as precise markers of order, rank, and spiritual station (Atasoy 2005, pp. 14, 153–54).

Two examples illustrate this regulatory logic vividly. In the Mevlevi order, the entire sartorial ensemble—from the felt hat (sikke) to the ritual performance of removing the black cloak—functioned as a symbolic universe transforming attire into a dynamic lexicon of spiritual states (Ambrosio 2012, pp. 99–102). Similarly, in the Bektashi order, the right to wrap a turban (sarık) around one’s cap was a privilege reserved for the rank of baba or higher, with the turban’s color—black, green, or white—functioning as a precise marker of one’s place within the spiritual hierarchy (Atasoy 2005, p. 53). It is precisely this rich background of codified, institutional dress that Khemir’s film brackets. By placing its dervish figures in an ontological landscape unmoored from specific affiliations, the film reframes the khirqa not as a regulated uniform but as a more generalized emblem. It condenses key orienting principles of the Sufi path while bracketing later institutional differentiations. Yet the inherited tradition of regulation remains the horizon of meaning, allowing the cloaks of these solitary figures to register as claims to authority that can be recognized, contested, or withheld.

3. Ibn ʿArabī on the Khirqa and the Ontological Grammar of Dress

To understand the full weight of the dervish’s attire in Bab’Aziz, we must turn to the intellectual tradition that explicitly informs the film’s narrative. Nacer Khemir cites Ibn ʿArabī as a primary inspiration, and this is no coincidence. In Ibn ʿArabī’s writings, the khirqa is never just a ritual object marking affiliation. It operates as a material idiom that renders the servant’s relation to the Real visible. In his treatise Kitāb Nasab al-Khirqa, Ibn ʿArabī directly links “donning the cloak” (libs al-khirqa) to the fundamental question of how a human being inhabits the divine names without appropriating them.

Central to this framework is the concept of takhalluq bi-asmā’ Allāh—the effort to take on the “character” of the divine names in a manner appropriate to human limitation (Bize 2022, p. 6). Here, investiture does not simply certify membership. It serves as a disciplined enactment of an ontological process. Expanding on this, Ibn ʿArabī traces the vestiture to a hadith qudsī where God declares that the heart of His faithful servant contains Him. The khirqa thus functions as an external sign of this internal capacity. Just as the heart “clothes” the Divine Presence, the mantle clothes the believer in the Divine Names, effecting a spiritual translocation that constitutes a form of “apotheosis” (Elmore 1999, p. 4).

The Qurʾānic motif of the “garment of God-consciousness” (libās al-taqwā) (Q. 7:26) provides the essential horizon for this reading. Ibn ʿArabī develops this concept in sustained detail within his magnum opus, Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya. For him, clothing is not merely illustrative; it is conceptual. He distinguishes an outward garment (libās al-ẓāhir) that covers physical nakedness from an inward garment (libās al-bāṭin), which is taqwā itself. This inward garment covers the heart’s “nakedness”—its ignorance and blameworthy dispositions. In this register, taqwā is not an abstract moral quality but a form of veiling that functions as an ethical-ontological safeguard. Ibn ʿArabī anchors this safeguard in the divine name al-Sattār, the One who veils (Ibn al-ʿArabī 1999, vol. 7, p. 317). The servant “clothes” himself in this name by conforming his comportment to its logic: covering faults rather than exhibiting them and restraining the ego rather than amplifying it.

This conceptual grammar reframes what the khirqa “does” within the master–disciple relationship. In Ibn ʿArabī’s account, investiture is not primarily about status. It is an event situated within companionship (ṣuḥba) and the transmission of a lived state (ḥāl). The cloak matters because it stands at the interface of the inward and the outward. It is a visible sign intended to support a transformation that cannot be reduced to visibility. For that reason, the khirqa is not treated as an automatic device that produces sanctity by mere contact. It is a material sign whose efficacy is conditioned by inner reality—by the master’s realized state and the disciple’s readiness to endure the discipline implied by the sign (Bize 2022, p. 9). In this sense, the cloak participates in a broader Akbarian concern: the problem of mediation (wasāʾiṭ). If the khirqa transmits, it does so only insofar as it remains tethered to adab and the concrete demands of the path.

At the same time, the idiom of “clothing oneself” in divine attributes carries a risk. “Donning” (libs) is a verb shared across registers. Ibn ʿArabī explores this tension through the well-known ḥadīth qudsī: “Grandeur (al-Kibriyāʾ) is My cloak (ridāʾī), and Majesty (al-ʿAẓama) is My wrapper (izārī). Whoever contends with Me in one of them, I punish him” (Ibn al-ʿArabī 1999, vol. 7, p. 360). Here, the “cloak” is not a decorative metaphor but a boundary marker. It names what belongs exclusively to the Real. Ibn ʿArabī reads divine veiling (setr) and disclosure (iẓhār) as intertwined. The Divine Essence is veiled from created grasping, yet through that very veiling, its ungraspable Magnificence becomes manifest. The “Robe of Grandeur,” in this sense, functions as an ontological veil (ḥijāb) that protects transcendence from appropriation.

Against this horizon, the Sufi khirqa—often humble, even patched—can be read as a performative practice of adab that responds to the peril named by the ḥadīth. The dervish too “dons,” but what he dons is the antithesis of the divine Robe of Grandeur. He wears a garment that refuses display and makes poverty visible. In wearing such a cloak, the seeker performs a declaration in material form: the only “robe” legitimately claimed is the robe of servitude. The paradox of takhalluq is navigated through a specific counter-gesture. “Putting on” becomes, in effect, a “stripping off” of self-assertion. The khirqa, therefore, cannot be reduced to a sign of affiliation. It materializes an ontological posture—faqr and ʿubūdiyya—through which the practice of taking on divine names is disciplined into humility rather than egoic claim. Read alongside the history of the cloak’s institutional differentiation, this Akbarian framing sharpens the interpretive stakes of costume in Bab’Aziz. Clothing functions here not as ethnographic detail but as a cue to the kind of servanthood and discipline the character’s journey presupposes.

4. The Paradox of the Khirqa Between Anti-Fashion and Spiritual Ostentation

As the previous sections suggest, early Sufi clothing—specifically wool (ṣūf) and the patched frock (muraqqaʿa)—was not adopted as a neutral style. It functioned as a deliberate refusal of the social meanings carried by dress. In a milieu where fine textiles indexed rank, comfort, and visibility, coarse garments operated as a countersign. They represented an “anti-fashion” posture that sought less to display an identity than to place identity under discipline. The cloak thus becomes a material expression of what al-Hujwīrī identifies as “the garb of God’s saints” (Al-Hujwīrī 1911, p. 56).

This sartorial stance articulates a fundamental opposition to the temporal mechanics of the fashion system. Where fashion operates through a logic of perpetual ‘revolution’—a restless forward movement that necessitates continuous obsolescence—the khirqa proposes a different kind of change. This dynamic can be understood not as a simple protest, but as a ‘re-volution’: a term Ambrosio uses to describe a ‘new cycle that moves beyond superficial change to express a more sincere, enduring truth’ (Ambrosio 2025, p. 136). For the dervish, this ‘enduring truth’ may be understood as the relative stability of a spiritually regulated mode of appearance. The cloak’s function is not to innovate—the engine of fashion—but to facilitate a cyclical return to this stable inner core, grounding the wearer in an atemporal prototype of spiritual identity that supersedes the instability inherent in secular self-fashioning.

This paradox resonates with the contemporary reception of religious objects. In modern contexts, popular religious imagery is often dismissed as “tacky” or “trite.” Yet for many believers, such objects are not engaged as aesthetic items but are experienced as a comforting “presence” that offers stability (King 2010, p. 32). Similarly, the Sufi cloak functions outside the economy of worldly taste. Its value derives not from its appearance but from its capacity to make a spiritual state present and tangible. However, al-Hujwīrī crucially distinguishes the intent behind the dress. For the vulgar, it may serve as a means of worldly reputation; for the spiritual elect, it functions as a “mail-coat (jawshan) of affliction” (Al-Hujwīrī 1911, p. 48). In this context, the patched frock does not simply mark faqr (spiritual poverty) and ascetic restraint (zuhd). It performs them, staging in material form a withdrawal from the economy of comfort. Yet once Sufi paths became more publicly legible and institutionally organized, the same sign inevitably entered a new economy of meaning. The symbol of effacement could itself become a marker of distinction.

The result is not only a sociological reversal but also a tension internal to the very logic of “clothing” developed in Sufi discourse. This becomes especially clear when read alongside Ibn ʿArabī’s vocabulary of veiling and restraint. As discussed, the Qurʾānic motif of libās al-taqwā frames the proper “garment” of the servant as one that covers faults rather than magnifies the self. It is an ethical veiling anchored in the divine name al-Sattār. This veiling extends not only to faults (saw’āt) but also to virtues (maḥāsin), which the proper servant conceals from public view rather than displaying them (Ibn al-ʿArabī 1999, vol. 7, p. 317).

In that horizon, the peril lies in crossing the boundary between what may be “worn” by the servant and what belongs exclusively to the Real. Ibn ʿArabī stages this boundary through the ḥadīth qudsī in which Grandeur is described as God’s cloak (ridāʾ). To contend over these garments is to enter munāzaʿa (contention) with God (Ibn al-ʿArabī 1999, vol. 7, p. 360). The historical paradox of the khirqa emerges at precisely this point. A garment that began as an outward correlate of inward discipline could harden into a sign with its value under conditions of visibility. The cloak of poverty might then begin to confer moral standing without reference to the wearer’s inner state, allowing the symbol of faqr to be converted—quietly, even piously—into a veiled form of pride. This inherent tension is central to costume theory. As observed in cinematic studies, a garment can function as an “equivocal signifier,” acting both as a barrier and a medium for expression depending on context (Bruzzi 1997, p. 37). The khirqa, in its oscillation between a sign of worldly renunciation and a marker of spiritual rank, operates in precisely this equivocal manner. Its ultimate meaning is not fixed but is negotiated through the wearer’s intent and the viewer’s perception.

5. The Khirqa as Cinematic Skin and the Aesthetics of Texture

In Bab’Aziz, the dervish attire necessitates an analysis that transcends the notion of costume as a mere decorative supplement. Drawing on Stella Bruzzi’s theoretical framework, the khirqa functions here not as a passive prop but as a “spectacular intervention” capable of generating “independent meaning” (Bruzzi 1997, p. xv). Beyond this independence, the garment enables a specific metonymic usage where the khirqa indexes not the individual wearer, but the abstract concept of the ‘Dervish’. In this capacity, it transcends spatiotemporal boundaries, linking otherwise dispersed narrative layers through a recurring vestimentary sign, while always signifying the continuity of the spiritual function rather than the person embodying it (Çetin 2025, p. 64). This intervention is specifically spatial. The garment serves to articulate the desert not merely as a topographic location but as a “spiritual geography” (Weisenfeld 2003, p. 49)—a condition of placelessness where the material presence of the cloak interacts with the environment to convey the characters’ inner states.

This visual strategy mirrors the ontological structure of the Imaginal World (‘ālam al-mithāl). As Ibn ʿArabī expounds, this is a realm where spiritual meanings are granted sensory form and thus rendered perceptible to the eye (Chittick 1989, p. 126). A parallel logic operates within the film’s visual grammar, specifically through a mechanism described in film theory as “character-costume symbiosis.” In this mode of perception, the spectator ceases to distinguish the garment as an external prop, viewing it instead as an organic extension of the character’s reality (Annila 2014, p. 63). Through this fusion, the khirqa functions as a material locus. It allows the abstract attribute of faqr—understood here not as mere indigence, but as ontological poverty and the emptiness of the self before the Real—to acquire a visible body (Chittick 1989, p. 64). In this sense, the garment functions as an objective correlative for the dervish’s himma (the creative power of the heart), rendering a spiritual state concrete and perceptible in the external world. Within that shifting field, the khirqa functions as a mobile, intimate zone—an inhabitable “micro-space” that travels with the body. This cinematic function resonates with the classical depiction of investiture as a form of spiritual rebirth. Its frays, patches, and accumulated dust are not incidental surface details; rather, they act as registers of vulnerability and endurance, visualizing the slow settling of the inner journey into material form. This function aligns with Stella Bruzzi’s definition of costume as an independent “visual narrative element” that articulates meaning beyond the spoken word (Bruzzi 1997, p. xv).

Furthermore, this focus on the material object invites an analysis through the lens of material religion. As E. Frances King observes, the physical act of holding or wearing devotional artifacts constitutes a “haptic experience” that actively “stimulates memories” and generates narratives (King 2010, p. 39). Drawing on the concept of eidola (skins of the object), King suggests that through intimate contact, such objects can function as “skins” of the sacred, becoming “almost like second skins” to their owners (King 2010, p. 61). In Bab’Aziz, the camera invites the viewer to perceive the khirqa through precisely this logic: not merely as a costume, but as a textured surface that has absorbed time, travel, and devotion. A key feature of this visual language is its attention to texture. The film repeatedly leads the viewer from seeing the image as a primarily optical surface toward sensing it as something almost tactile. This sensory solicitation resonates directly with what intercultural film theory identifies as “haptic visuality,” a mode where the eye begins to operate, in effect, like an organ of touch (Marks 2000, p. 162). This mode of engagement aligns with the broader concept of “religious cinematics,” which posits that the film medium engages the body’s sense receptors—specifically the tactile and haptic—in ways parallel to religious ritual, creating a “mediated system” where meaning is generated not just intellectually but sensationally (Plate 2017, p. 101).

The woolly, coarse fabric of the khirqa is central to this effect: it draws attention less through spectacle than through material presence. As the cloak moves through wind and sand, its texture registers the dervish’s proximity to matter, making the desert’s abrasion feel like part of the character’s bodily discipline and spiritual training. The cloth thus functions as a kind of second skin in the sense discussed above, binding the dervish’s engagement with the desert to a Sufi ethic of humility—an embodied nearness to turāb (dust/earth) that resonates with themes of self-effacement. Moreover, the visual texture of the robe mirrors the classical prescription for the muraqqa‘a (patched robe), where patches were traditionally sewn with “random, haphazard stitches.” This deliberate aesthetic choice was intended to signal the wearer’s indifference to worldly symmetry and order, transforming the garment into a critique of visual vanity rather than a mere sign of poverty (Elias 2001, p. 283).

This attention to touch and trace also helps clarify how the khirqa carries memory. Work in religious material culture has shown how the physical act of lifting and holding a religious object can stimulate memories and generate narratives, making it easier for individuals to articulate what the object means to them (King 2010, p. xvi). Bab’Aziz mobilizes a similar logic: the cloak is shown as a surface that holds time. The spectator is invited to follow transformation not only through dialogue and explicit citations of Sufi texts, but also through the cloak’s wear—its seams, stains, and roughness—as though the garment were registering experience. In this register, the khirqa becomes a kind of visual archive, with the wayfarer’s passage through spiritual stations (maqāmāt) inscribed as texture rather than delivered as exposition.

5.1. The Prince as Icon of Spectacle and Conspicuous Leisure

Before the narrative turns to divestiture, it first renders the weight of worldly attachment visible. When the Prince is introduced (Khemir 2005b, 00:10:50–00:11:45), he appears not as a figure already in spiritual crisis but as someone positioned at the apex of social power. To analyze the sociological weight of this image, Thorstein Veblen’s theory of the leisure class offers a critical interpretative lens. While Veblen’s work addresses a specific economic context, it provides a framework for reading the trans-historical patterns of aristocracy depicted here. Veblen argues that for dress to signal high status effectively, it must “make plain to all observers that the wearer is not engaged in any kind of productive labor” (Veblen 2007, p. 113).

In this cinematic context, the Prince’s shimmering silks and polished layers function as a visual codification of this principle, operating as an “insignia of leisure.” His identity is constructed through a regime of “conspicuous consumption,” where the display of refined goods serves as the primary evidence of reputability (Veblen 2007, p. 49). This visual excess stands in sharp contrast to what Ambrosio identifies as “aesthetic minimalism” or “sobriety”—a mode of appearance rooted in religious ethics that rejects the accumulation of worldly signs (Ambrosio 2025, p. 134). By wrapping the Prince in layers of ostentation, the film visually prepares us for the radical shift toward the spiritual minimalism of the dervish. The contrast stages two competing regimes of visibility: display and ornament on the one hand, restraint and veiling (satr) on the other—where regulation names not a rulebook to be ‘followed’ but a disciplined orientation of what should (and should not) be made visible.

In this setting, sound, fabric, and architecture converge to produce an image of completeness that defines the standards by which worldly worth is measured. This social-aesthetic authority is sharpened in the ritual centered on water. The Prince is served water in a golden bowl—a vessel suggesting luxury—yet the scene’s emphasis lies on discrimination rather than mere opulence. He tastes the water, pauses, and identifies its origin with striking confidence. This act resonates strikingly with what Veblen identifies as what Veblen terms “pecuniary canons of taste,” where the cultivation of the aesthetic faculty requires “time and application” available only to those exempt from physical toil (Veblen 2007, p. 53). The Prince’s palate, therefore, serves as a demonstration of his familiarity with the “decorous employment of time and effort,” functioning as an instrument of both sensory and social classification.

Crucially, this sensory act serves as a precise analogue for the Akbarian epistemological axiom that “knowledge comes only through tastings.” In this context, the Prince’s physical discernment of water functions as a prefiguration of dhawq (spiritual tasting). Within Akbarian epistemology, this term signifies far more than sensory perception; it denotes a mode of direct, sapiential knowledge distinct from rational conjecture. Through dhawq, the wayfarer (sālik) verifies spiritual realities not by definition, but by an unmediated encounter that collapses the distance between the knower and the known, yielding a certainty as undeniable as physical experience (Chittick 1989, p. 220). The world the Prince inhabits is governed by refined taste and aesthetic judgment, mirroring a modern sensibility where objects are evaluated by their artistic merit. In contrast, the dervish world operates on a different register of value. As King (2010, p. 35) notes in her study of domestic religion, sacred objects often defy aesthetic norms; their value lies not in their visual beauty but in their ability to fit into the “comfort zone” of life as an enduring “presence.” The Prince’s journey, therefore, can be read as a fundamental shift in perception: from the connoisseur who masters objects through taste to the seeker who is mastered by a sacred presence embodied in a humble cloak.

In doing so, the scene resonates with a well-known metaphor in Rūmī’s Masnavi about dhawq (taste) as the capacity to distinguish what is truly “sweet” from what only resembles it. Rūmī notes that opposites can appear similar in form—clear water and brackish water may both look transparent—yet only the one who possesses dhawq can tell the difference (Rūmī 2004, I: 276–277). Read alongside this image, The Prince’s connoisseurship can be taken as more than an index of luxury: it hints at a faculty that could, under different conditions, be redirected toward spiritual discernment. At the same time, the scene allows a faint dissonance to surface. Despite the perfection of the setting and the Prince’s mastery of its pleasures, his body language—his brief pauses, his distracted gaze—suggests a restlessness that cannot be fully absorbed by what surrounds him. He seems to sense another “taste,” one that exceeds the refinements he already possesses. In this light, the spectacle of fashion, gold, and music is not simply decorative; it establishes the density of the self, which the narrative will later ask him to relinquish. The scene stages worldly identity in its fullest visibility so that the subsequent dismantling of that identity—through divestiture—can be experienced not as a minor gesture, but as a genuine loss with real weight. The transition out of the tent’s sensory plenitude begins when the prince leaves its protected enclosure and moves into the open desert, where he encounters a gazelle. This encounter evokes a specific Akbarian metaphor regarding the fluctuation of the spiritual self: ‘From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle’ (Ibn al-ʿArabī 2006, p. 22). In this poetic imagery, the ontological duality between the hunter and the prey dissolves, suggesting that the seeker is ultimately both the pursuer and the object of pursuit (Ibn al-ʿArabī 2006, p. 22, n. 5). The gazelle, therefore, operates less as a physical animal and more as a projection of the prince’s own soul—an elusive sign drawing him away from his temporal power toward his spiritual reality. Although the sequence is staged as a pursuit, the film gradually shifts emphasis from hunting to being drawn; the Prince’s movement can be read less as a calculated chase than as a form of attraction (jadhba) that reorients him toward an encounter with beauty and, ultimately, toward a solitary pool in the desert (Papan-Matin 2012, p. 120).

When the retinue locates him (Khemir 2005b, 00:18:09–00:19:05), the mise-en-scène replaces the earlier visual excess with stillness. The Prince sits by the water, while a dervish nearby provides a concise interpretive cue. Asked whether the Prince is admiring his reflection—an implicit invocation of Narcissus—the dervish replies, “No, he is contemplating his own soul.” The exchange redirects the water away from vanity and toward self-attention; rather than confirming the ego (nafs), the scene frames the pool as a site of inward regard and self-scrutiny (Papan-Matin 2012, p. 121). In readings of the film, this “desert-and-water” configuration has often been associated with kashf (unveiling) and with a shift from discursive reasoning toward experiential knowing (Öztürk 2019, p. 63).

The sequence culminates in an investiture gesture (libs al-khirqa) that presents transformation through layering rather than replacement. A dervish approaches the Prince with the emblems of initiation—a woolen cloak (khirqa), a turban, and a staff—and the Prince does not remove his royal garments but places the rough wool directly over his silk caftan (Khemir 2005b, 01:17:17–01:19:35). Visually, the gesture subordinates rather than erases the signs of rank, and it constructs change as a reordering of outward appearance rather than a complete break with the past. In this sense, the film gives a concrete form to the logic of satr (veiling): the inward orientation (bāṭin) associated with dervishhood comes to encompass and restrain the outward form (ẓāhir) of kingship. The khirqa therefore functions not simply as a costume but as an index of a reconfigured self-relation, one that can be situated within the Qurʾānic horizon of libās al-taqwā (the garment of God-consciousness), insofar as it frames humility as a visible discipline without implying that the wearer’s history is annulled. In this symbolic layering, the film visualizes the theological status of the cloak itself. The khirqa is not merely an alternative garment but is understood within Sufi tradition as the signifier of “the spiritual potency and sanctity passed from the Prophet to his successors,” and eventually to the sheikh of the order (Ambrosio 2012, p. 101). By placing this garment over his royal attire, the Prince visually enacts the subordination of worldly power to spiritual authority.

5.2. The Transfer of the Shroud and the Continuity of the Khirqa

As the film approaches its conclusion, the khirqa is reframed less as a personal garment than as a vehicle for continuity. Bab’Aziz has completed his journey (Khemir 2005b, 01:16:40). Sitting at his gravesite, he performs a final act of preparation: he removes his cloak, deliberately unwinds his turban, and lays the long white cloth upon the sand (Khemir 2005b, 01:26:50–01:26:58). This gesture operates as a direct visual metaphor for the preparation of a burial shroud (kefen). The scene grounds itself in a specific principle of Sufi sartorial ethics, which dictates that a dervish’s white turban (destar) should be of sufficient length to serve as their shroud upon death (Atasoy 2005, p. 206).

For the dervish, the objective reality of death is not an abstract concept, but a tangible presence carried on the head. The garment serves as a bridge between the physical and the metaphysical. This symbolism aligns with a wider tradition where the turban (imāma) is associated with readiness for death (Ambrosio 2012, p. 102), paralleling the Mevlevi understanding of the white tunic (tennure) as a representation of the shroud (Atasoy 2005, p. 227). By focusing on the unwound fabric—now a simple white cloth detached from its function as headwear—the cinematic image creates a conceptual death evocation. It signals a ritual readiness that marks the garment’s instrumental status in worldly life while opening the possibility of its transfer.

The condition of the recipient is staged in sharp contrast to the Prince’s earlier initiation. Hasan’s trajectory is defined less by chosen renunciation than by dispossession. In pursuit of the Red Dervish, he loses what he has, is stripped of his clothing, and arrives in Bab’Aziz’s presence naked (Khemir 2005b, 01:27:30). This forced nakedness is more than a plot detail; it functions as an image of absolute exposure. A body deprived of social markers is reduced to vulnerability, a condition that resonates with Sufi descriptions of fanāʾ as the undoing of the self’s claims and attachments (Schimmel 1975, p. 142). If the Prince approaches poverty (faqr) through aesthetic reorientation, Hasan arrives at a comparable threshold through loss. The film uses this contrast not to equate the paths but to show how different modalities of stripping can converge on a similar readiness.

The transfer itself is framed by Hasan’s expressed fear of death. In response, Bab’Aziz first reframes death not as an end but as a transition, using Rūmī’s analogy of the unborn child who fears leaving the womb for a world it cannot comprehend (Rūmī 2013, III: 50–65). He then contextualizes this transition within the Sufi tradition by also invoking the metaphor of death as a wedding night (Shab-i ʿArūs). This dual framing suggests that the death Hasan fears is, in fact, the necessary annihilation (fanāʾ) of his old self. It is in this context of spiritual transformation that Bab’Aziz entrusts his cloak to Hasan. Hasan dons the khirqa directly onto his bare skin (Khemir 2005b, 01:29:57). This silent transmission mirrors the initiatic method described by Ibn ʿArabī in the Nasab, where the master does not instruct verbally but enters a specific spiritual state (ḥāl), impregnates his garment with the energy of that state, and casts it upon the disciple. Through this “flow” (sarayān), the deficiency in the disciple is rectified without a single word (Elmore 1999, p. 23). Cinematically, the gesture shifts the cloak from “covering” to “configuration.” It is not simply that the naked body is clothed; rather, the film lets clothing signify a new ordering of the self, now placed under the discipline and memory carried by the garment. By receiving the cloak, the disciple is figuratively “born” from his master, entering a lineage where baraka (spiritual power) is transmitted through the threefold bond of investiture, instruction, and companionship (ṣuḥbat) (Schimmel 1975, pp. 102, 235). In this sense, the khirqa functions as a material relay. It is an object that bears traces of an earlier life and, through that bearing, anchors continuity across the film’s shifting bodies and encounters (de Souza and Alves 2023, p. 13). When Hasan walks away (Khemir 2005b, 01:30:20), the image invites the viewer to register not only a character departing but the persistence of a dervish idiom that outlasts any single bearer.

This emphasis on transfer is consistent with the film’s broader cyclical structure. Encounters function as nodes through which the film figures spiritual progression, echoing the maxim reiterated at the outset: ‘The ways to God are as many as the breaths of created beings.’ Here, the khirqa acts as one of the principal devices for making continuity visible. Julian Droogan’s analysis of ‘material agency’ offers a critical framework for decoding this autonomy; he argues that objects function as ‘indices’ that force the viewer to infer a link to their origin (Droogan 2013, p. 172). To articulate how this mechanism constructs authority, we can turn to David Morgan’s analysis of network theory in religion. Morgan argues that social orders are often stabilized by ‘investing a particular set of relations’—such as hierarchy and lineage—into material forms like dress (Morgan 2016, p. 277). Viewed through this lens, the cloak functions as a ‘non-human agent’ that does not merely cover the body but actively maintains the spiritual network. Consequently, its authority derives not from being Bab’Aziz’s personal possession, but from its capacity to anchor this web of relations as a detached, active force.

5.3. Visual Polyphony and Semiotic Unity

In the closing movement of Bab’Aziz, the narrative focus shifts from individual itineraries to collective arrival. The dispersed paths finally gather at the long-invoked meeting place. Crucially, Khemir avoids staging this convergence as a single, climactic “dhikr scene.” Instead, unity is constructed through a constellation of fragmented scenes: processions across open ground, clustered circles in courtyards, and wider views where lanterns and small fires punctuate the architecture.

The effect is cumulative rather than episodic. By returning to the same motif—voices and bodies assembling, dispersing, and reassembling—the film frames togetherness as something composed across multiple sites and timeframes, rather than contained in one privileged ritual instant. This structure allows “audible difference” to remain part of the film’s argument. Chants and songs appear in different languages and registers, accompanied by varied rhythms, ensuring that linguistic plurality is not erased but held within a shared ritual form.

We see a similar variation in costume. Colors, cuts, and textures differ, and the camera allows heterogeneity to remain visible. Yet, across this closing montage, the khirqa begins to function as a decisive common sign. It is not a uniform in the strict sense, but it operates as a supra-identity that renders multiplicity legible as belonging. Simmel notes that dress performs a dual function: it integrates individuals into a community while simultaneously demarcating that community from the social sphere through the “exclusion of all other groups” (Simmel 1957, p. 544). The closing sequences mobilize this double movement, creating a visual boundary that defines the dervish world against the outside. What the viewer sees, then, is not the dissolution of difference but its re-situation within a shared semiotic order. The khirqa gathers divergent languages and geographies under a recognizable idiom of dervishhood. The worn surfaces of the cloaks—dust, frayed edges, creases—reinforce this sense of continuity. As King argues regarding commemorative rituals, material objects act as mediators of “community memory,” sustaining traditions through visual and physical presence (King 2010, p. 55).

In Bab’Aziz, the khirqa operates a temporal logic distinct from the market. While fashion operates by continuously disturbing the social equilibrium, the dervish’s attire aligns with Simmel’s concept of the “classic.” It maintains a structural composure by concentrating its form around a fixed spiritual center, thereby remaining immune to the restless fluctuations that define general life (Simmel 1957, p. 557). In the final analysis, the film constructs unity not by cancelling plurality but by holding it within a single horizon of orientation—a cinematic figure of waḥda in which many paths remain many yet appear together through the shared sign of the cloak.

6. Conclusions

Nacer Khemir’s cinema exemplifies what S. Brent Plate calls a “georeligious aesthetic,” where films become religious not simply through content but “due to their form and reception” (Plate 2003, p. 1). In Bab’Aziz, the khirqa operates as a central engine of this aesthetic. It exceeds the status of historical costume to function as a cinematographic apparatus—an element that does real work by organizing visibility, distributing meaning across bodies, and making inner change readable through material form.

We can identify three distinct modes in which this apparatus operates. At first, the cloak acts as a threshold object. In the initiation arcs of the Prince and Hasan, metanoia is not left as a private declaration; it becomes a visible event. The image shows transformation taking shape through the very act of donning the khirqa. Beyond this transitional role, the garment ensures continuity. It appears as a material archive whose surface carries wear, memory, and lineage. Its transfer from one bearer to another allows the film to imagine dervishhood as a current that persists beyond the lifespan of any single individual. Continuity is secured not by the endurance of the body but by the endurance of the sign.

Most fundamentally, the khirqa functions as an instrument of embodiment. It translates abstract spiritual states—such as faqr (spiritual poverty) or submission—into concrete, sensible reality. Through texture, wear, and the way it embraces the body, the garment externalizes the internal. This is the core of the “haptic visuality” we have traced throughout the film: the garment does not simply represent a spiritual condition but presents it as a corporeal experience.

In the film’s closing movement, the khirqa provides a semiotic canopy that enables plurality to appear as belonging. Amid differences of color, cut, and texture, what becomes sociologically legible is not sameness but “unity in multiplicity” (waḥdat al-kathra). Here, the cloak performs the dual function inherent in religious material culture described by King (2010, p. 1): it serves as a “visible indicator of belonging” for those within the community while operating as a demonstration of difference to those outside (King 2010, p. 16). The final sequence visualizes this dynamic, presenting dervishhood not as a homogenous identity but as a shared idiom capable of hosting diverse expressions.

In functioning as this unifying framework, the sartorial language of the film can be read as a stabilizing index that resists novelty-driven fashion logics. It does not merely symbolize the tradition; it helps make ethical reference points perceptible within the film’s visual grammar, shaping how personal transformation and social cohesion become thinkable on screen. Within this grammar, the khirqa functions as a legible code that invites the viewer to track spiritual orientation without disrupting narrative flow, allowing the garment to appear less as a costume imposed from the outside than as a lived extension of dervish practice. As such, it works as a tangible element that gathers divergent paths under a shared horizon while preserving the film’s emphasis on plurality.

Ultimately, Bab’Aziz can be approached in terms that foreground the khirqa’s function as what King (2010, pp. 39, 61) describes as a “second skin”—a surface that operates as an archive on which history and discipline become legible (King 2010, pp. 39, 61). Khemir’s handling of the garment sustains a haptic register of attention, allowing the medium—as an “impressionable and conductive skin” (Marks 2000, p. xi)—to register the cloak’s insistence on a meaning that is felt rather than merely seen. In this respect, the film’s emphasis on texture and contact aligns with accounts of embodied and sensory devotion in Sufi practice; the Mevlevi order, a major Sufi tradition, offers a particularly clear instance of a devotional culture that mobilizes sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell as sites of meaning-making (Ambrosio 2012, pp. 205–6). Nor does the khirqa remain a neutral sign of “period” authenticity: its wool (ṣūf) and patchwork (mu-raqqaʿa) are cinematically foregrounded as tactile cues of ascetic discipline—coarseness, wear, and transfer—rather than as marks of lack. Read alongside the article’s discussion of the ṣūf–Sufi etymological nexus, this material emphasis keeps the cloak close to its ascetic semantic field, so that the khirqa emerges as both a trace of practice and a carrier of accumulated memory, sedimented through use and transmission. In this way, the garment can be read as a multi-layered cultural text: a material surface through which time, identity, and the sacred are carried forward and re-inscribed within the cinematic image.

The cinematic deployment of the cloak can be read as a structural analogue to the Qurʾānic motif of the “garment of God-consciousness” (libās al-taqwā). Ibn ʿArabī’s account of the imaginal register (ʿālam al-mithāl) offers a conceptual frame for this claim, insofar as spiritual states may assume sensible form without being reduced to mere materiality. Khemir’s film renders a comparable movement in cinematic terms—one that we describe as sartorial weaving: a layered configuration in which ascetic discipline, authorization, and a temporality exceeding the individual body are interlaced across the image. The concept names the specific cinematic-semiotic operation through which the film draws on meanings already operative in Sufi practice, where the khirqa functions as an iconic object across multiple registers, without implying a claim about authorial intention. The film does not introduce the khirqa as a newly minted symbol; rather, it re-articulates an inherited semiotic repertoire within a cinematic grammar, foregrounding the cloak as a unifying idiom while remaining relatively uncommitted to tarīqa-specific or locally historicized codes. In this sense, the bāṭin is not “explained” but textured, becoming apprehensible through folds, seams, and acts of transfer. To read the khirqa, then, is to engage the narrative already woven into its surface—an archive that cinema can activate without claiming to exhaust.

In Bab’Aziz, this reading treats the khirqa less as a costume than as a recurring formal cue through which visibility, transmission, and ethical transformation become trackable on screen. It does not claim to exhaust the historical plurality of khirqa practices across Sufi orders; rather, it offers a film-specific way of approaching vestimentary form as cinematic meaning that can be explored comparatively across other films and devotional garments. More broadly, the analysis suggests that religious dress is best approached as a material-semiotic interface through which practices of identification, representation, and regulation are negotiated across settings and audiences. In this respect, the haptic register offers an alternative to purely discursive accounts of spiritual experience: rather than translating inner states into abstract terminology, it renders them perceptible through material surfaces, in a manner closer to the imaginal logic of ʿālam al-mithāl. Precisely because the khirqa moves between embodied discipline and public legibility, it invites an explicitly interdisciplinary vocabulary—drawing on the sociology and anthropology of religion, film and fashion studies, and the psychology of visual form—to account for how garments can carry ethical orientation, social belonging, and affective charge without being reducible to any single historical or institutional frame. Read against fashion’s novelty-driven temporality, the khirqa appears as an anti-fashion idiom: a regulated material sign that stabilizes spiritual affiliation and ethical formation as something the image can repeatedly return to.