Saʿdiyya (سعدية) or Jibawiyya (جباوية) is a Sufi tariqa and a family lineage of Syrian and Shafiʿi identity. It grew to prominence also in Ottoman Egypt, Turkey, and the Balkans and it is still active today. They are known for their distinctive rituals and their role in the social history of Damascus. Like many other tariqas, the Saʿdiyya is characterized by the practice of khawāriḳ al-ʿādāt (deeds transcending the natural order) such as healing, spectacles involving body piercing, and dawsa (trampling), for which they are best known; the sheikh would ride a horse over his dervishes, who were lying face down making a “living carpet” of men. They had a wide appeal among the middle and lower classes. The founder of Saʿdiyya was Saʿd al-Dīn al-Shaybānī al-Jibāwī, who took the tariqa from the Yūnisī and Rifaʽi lines, his dates remain uncertain, but he is thought to have died near Jibā, a few kilometers north of Damascus in 736/1335. With time, many Damascene Saʿdīs became extremely wealthy through their successful business and their big extension of the baraka they inherited. One of them was Muḥammad ibn Saʿd al-Din (d. 1020/1611), who became a sheikh in 986/1578 and amassed great wealth, and during whose time Saʿdiyya became renown. They often used this wealth to offer a safe haven of hospitality for Ottoman dignitaries at their main zawiya in the turbulent Mīdān quarter. For this and other reasons, there was a lot of competitiveness among the Saʿdīs over the mashaykha. Founder The story of Saʿd, after whom the tariqa and its members got the name, plays a symbolic role for the order. Historical details about him and his life are very scarce, and literary production by the members of the tariqa is also hard to find. Besides the aforementioned year of 736/1335 and place near Jiba for his death, which was proposed by D’Ohsson fitting with al-Wāsiṭī’s comments, there are other sources with completely different time periods and places proposed for his birth and death. According to 20th-century Saʿdī awrād, he was born in Mecca in 460/1067 and died in Jiba; al-Nabhānī placed Saʿd in the Mamlūk 8th/14th century. Yūnus al-Shaybānī, the father of Saʿd al-Dīn, is traced genealogically by the Egyptians to Idrīs I. Through him and Saʿd’s mother, Saʿd is considered both Ḥasanī and Ḥusaynī. He spoke of being from the ‘’protectors of Kaʿba’’ and claimed to have been the ‘’sheikh