Al-Rifaiya and the snakes

“I swear to you, inhabitant of the place to come crawling by order of the benefactor” Al-Rifaiya is a name of an old Egyptian profession, performed by a specialist in snake hunting. Its origin goes back to the greatest Sufi groups in Egypt and Arab world. Al-Rifaiya has 7 million followers. If you want to know more, read the following article.

Oath of Al-Rifaiya

“I swear to you, inhabitant of the place, a serpent, a scorpion, or a snake, to come crawling by order of the benefactor, if you dissent you die by the permission of the survivor who doesn’t die”, an oath said by Al-Rifai on the snakes to come out of its burrows peacefully. So that Al-Rifai gives her safety and doesn’t harm her, as she gave him safety and respond to his call which is called “Oath of Al-Rifai”

How is a snake tamed?

And about the method of learning to hunt snakes, Ibrahim said “ It takes about 40 days, after we take the oath from the Sheikh of the Rifai way, which we recite in the places where snakes are, and after hunting the snake, we take off “2 teeth” connected to the sweat of poison, after which we put them in the water so that it is not able to cause any harm after that, then we put the snake in the "village" designated for carrying snakes and the task ends with delivering the snakes to the Sheikh of the Order or throwing them in the distant mountains.

Al-Rifaiya’s mission & vision

Mohamed Mahmoud Ibrahim, the eldest son of Al-Rifai’s said: “we’re 4 brothers who have been working in the profession of hunting snakes and poisonous insects for many years. We learned from our father the skill of snake hunting and we still work in this profession and we consider it a great reward, as we contribute in saving people from the dangers of snakes and scorpions that may take their lives in moments because of the deadly poison that these insects contain inside”.

Al-Rifaiya isn’t a witchy act or like some people say it’s a jugglery. Al-Rifaiya is a profession that has been inherited for many years, but it didn’t spread in the right way. So now we barely hear about it even in news-papers. We, as a society, have to work on bringing back the legacy of Al-Rifaiya’s, for instance we can allow the profession to be presented in form of shows at the circus. For example, in India, they do shows where you can see different moves for the snakes, so if we do something like that in our own way to benefit from the profession, I think we’ll do it better because we created it so we will rock it.