The Rifai tariqa order, which had a particular impact on the common people, on the Roma Gypsies of India and of the Arab world and which is famed for its rites of mortification, still practices its sama ceremonies (listening and practicing singing that leads to trance-like ecstasy) and its dhikr or hadra ceremonies (danced and sung ritual to reach out to the divine presence), known in Zanzibar as “Maulidi ya Homu” from the Arabic word mawlid, the festival of the birth of the saints and of the Prophet. The Mtendi Maulid ensemble belongs to one of the oldest orders on the island and is led today by Ustadh Majid Said Mansour, who created this ensemble in the 1960s, inheriting his knowledge from his grandfather. The beauty of the gestures of this choreographed ritual transfixes, in which men dressed in kanzu and in kofia, traditional white robes and headwear, sway their knees and evoke the movement of the waves of the ocean, all in a long wave of meandering curves.