Sacred Place and Sacred Time, New,
'In the Medieval Islamic Middle East'
A Historical Perspective
*[A5] Paperback - 290 pages,
by Daniella Talmon-Heller,
~ Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic
History and Literature.
Description :
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 Imam 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.
Sacred Place and Sacred Time explores the construction of sanctity and its manifestations in the medieval Muslim Middle East.
*** Draws on a wide variety of primary sources from many genres: narrative and documentary sources, travelogues, epigraphic and material evidence, legal, devotional and prescriptive religious literature,
*** Deals with the perspectives of Sunnis, Shi`is of the Ithna`ashariyya and Isma`ilis, which are rarely treated simultaneously in research,
*** The ‘long durée’ treatment of religious phenomena offers a wide perspective, examining both continuity and change,
*** The material is organised to allow modular reading, telling two stories with theoretical implications that go beyond the case studies,
*** Truly interdisciplinary, it studies textual evidence and material sources in tandem and integrates the study of religious thought, practice and literature within political contexts.
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.
Review :
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-Ḥajj al-ʿAbdarī), and analyzes numerous others whose writings remain understudied. – Linda G. Jones, Pompeu Fabra University, Medieval Encounters 28 (2022).
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.
Table of Contents :
---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 murābiṭūn (defenders),
---7. Excursus: Medieval Pilgrimage: Victor Turner's Input,
---8. From Ascalon to Cairo: The Duplication of Sacred Space,
---9. Excursus: Faḍāʾil ʿAsqalān (The Merits of Ascalon) - a preliminary list of 9th-15th century works,
---10. From Shiʿi 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,
------ʿUmra (‘minor pilgrimage’) and Ritual Slaughter,
------Fasting,
------Prayers and Supplications,
------Sermons,
---16. Excursus: The Founding of an Islamic Lunar Calendar,
---17. Rajab during Fatimid Rule,
-----Official Rites of Rajab,
-----ʿUmra and Ziyāra,
------Prayers and Supplications,
------Fasting,
---18. Excursus: Istighfār,
---19. Rajab under the Ayyubids and Mamluks,
------Prayers and Supplications,
------The Night of Ascension,
------Fasting,
------ʿUmra (‘minor pilgrimage’) and Ziyāra (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.
More Islamic History.
Also see Islamic Theology
*Dimensions : : 23.3 x 15.5cm.
