This book offers a fresh perspective on religious culture in the medieval Middle East. It investigates the ways Muslims thought about and practiced at sacred spaces and in sacred times through two detailed case studies: the shrines in honour of the head of al-Husayn (the martyred grandson of the Prophet), and the holy month of Rajab. The changing expressions of the veneration of the shrine and month are followed from the formative period of Islam until the late Mamluk period, paying attention to historical contexts and power relations. Readers will find interest in the attempt to integrate the two perspectives synchronically and diachronically, in a discussion of the relationship between the sanctification of space and time in individual and communal piety, and in the religious literature of the period.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
[...] clearly provides a deep immersion into medieval Muslim society and an understanding of the foundations of Islam in the modern world. -- Andrew Petersen, University of Wales Trinity Saint David * Bustan: The Middle East Book Review, 2021, Vol. 12, No. 1 * A splendid and much needed analysis of how notions of sancitity were translated into time and space. Talmon-Heller musters an impressive range of sources to reconstruct what sacred time and sacred space meant to Muslim communities in the pre-Ottoman Middle East. * Konrad Hirschler, Freie Universitaet Berlin * Sacred Space and Sacred Time makes important contributions to Islamic studies and to History of Religions debates on the sanctity of time and space. It is well-documented, offers fresh reflections on the thought of certain authors whose ideas have been widely studied (Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-H?ajj al-?Abdari?), and analyzes numerous others whose writings remain understudied. -- Linda G. Jones, Pompeu Fabra University * Medieval Encounters 28 (2022) * [...] it is not difficult to affirm that Talmon-Heller has made a major contribution to two (not so) peripheral themes in the framework of sacred spaces and times. She has done valuable work in exploring them in such an all-encompassing way that scholars in the area of Islamic Studies, religious anthropology and philosophy of religion will need to give her work serious consideration. -- Patriarca Giovanni, University of Bayreuth * Politics, Religion & Ideology, 22:2, *
Reihe
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
Illustrationen
29 black and white illustrations
Maße
Höhe: 242 mm
Breite: 157 mm
Dicke: 22 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-6096-5 (9781474460965)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Daniella Talmon-Heller is Senior Lecturer in the department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She is the author of Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids and Ayyubids (Brill, 2007), which won the 2008 Tel Aviv Book award for research on Middle East History. She is co-editor with Katia Cytryn-Silverman of Material Evidence and Narrative Sources: Interdisciplinary Studies of the History of the Muslim Middle East (Brill 2014). Her research interests include the history of the medieval Middle East, Islamic thought and practice, and comparative religion.
Autor*in
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle East StudiesBen-Gurion University of the Negev
Acknowledgements List of figures and maps
INTRODUCTION
1 Emic Terms and Etic Concepts
2 The State of the Art
PART I. A SACRED PLACE: The Shrine of al-Husayn's Head
3 From Karbala to Damascus: A Relic with Multiple Shrines
4 The Commemoration of al-Husayn in Fatimid Ascalon
5 Excursus: Donations to Mosque and Shrines
6 Why Ascalon? Christian martyrs and Muslim murabi?un (defenders)
7 Excursus: Medieval Pilgrimage: Victor Turner's Input
8 From Ascalon to Cairo: The Duplication of Sacred Space
9 Excursus: Fa?a?il ?Asqalan (The Merits of Ascalon) - a preliminary list of 9th-15th century works
10 From Shi?i to Sunni: The Shrine under the Ayyubids and Mamluks
11 Excursus - al-Husayn and Saladin in Palestinian Lore
12 The Shrine in Ascalon under the Ayyubids and Mamluks (twelfth-sixteenth centuries)
13 Excursus: Ibn Taymiyya on the Veneration of the Head of al-Husayn
14 Summary
PART II. A SACRED TIME: The Month of Rajab
15 Rajab in Pre-Islamic Arabia and in Early Islam
Truce
?Umra ('minor pilgrimage') and Ritual Slaughter
Fasting
Prayers and Supplications
Sermons
16 Excursus: The Founding of an Islamic Lunar Calenda
17 Rajab during Fatimid Rule
Official Rites of Rajab
?Umra and Ziyara
Prayers and Supplications
Fasting
18 Excursus: Istighfar
19 Rajab under the Ayyubids and Mamluks
Prayers and Supplications
The Night of Ascension
Fasting
?Umra ('minor pilgrimage') and Ziyara (visitation)
Charitable Giving and other Devotions
Processions
20 Excursus: Arabic Treatises in Praise of the Sacred Months
21 Summary
FINAL COMMENTS: Spacial and Temporal Sanctity
