Mawlids (festivals celebrating a prophet or saint) and ziyaras, (tomb visitations) are both religious practices closely tied to and associated with tasawwuf (Sufism). In Cairo, saints (awliya') were widely celebrated publicly in the 19th century. However, this is not clear from the secondary literature on Islam in 19th century Cairo, as it generally emphasizes the appearance of Islamic modernism and Islamic reform movements, which it is argued eschewed tasawwuf. Since tasawwuf did not disappear from the public arena in the 19th century, but rather, continued to flourish (DeJong 1978, Delanoue 1982, Chih 2019, Mayeur-Jaouen 2019) I argue that understanding tasawwuf as it was practiced is necessary to understand the manifestations of modernity in Cairo. Further, I argue that it is crucial to understand the role tasawwuf played in the cityscape of Cairo, including its visual and auditory manifestations to properly understand what life in Cairo was like. The constant presence of rituals and festivities associated with tasawwuf in 19th century Cairo is vividly described in a wide range of primary sources. I thus based my research on travelogues in English, French, and Arabic, ziyara manuals, hagiographical writings, and compilations of biographies and events, the most famous being by the Egyptian historian ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (d. 1825). Another major source for my work is a volume in Ali Pasha Mubarak’s (d. 1893) “city plans” (20 vols) dedicated almost exclusively to mosques, madrasas, and zawiyas where Sufi practices took place in the 19th century. From these sources it is evident that mawlids, ziyaras, and other rituals associated with tasawwuf were woven into the lives of Cairenes throughout the 19th century. As big public celebrations, the mawlids were sites for the “ordinary resident” and the elites alike. These mawlids were spread throughout the year and throughout the city, and it was thus not possible for the Cairene to not witness, and at least indirectly partake in the celebrations. The practice of ziyara brought people of differing social and economic backgrounds to the mosques and zawiyas both inside the city walls and into the Qarafa, the large graveyard at the bottom of the Moqattam hills in Cairo, to visit the graves of the saints. Thus, in this paper, I show how daily and annual devotional rituals and celebrations related to tasawwuf shaped the city of Cairo in the nineteenth century.