Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes explores the creation, expansion, and perpetuation of the material and imaginary spheres of spiritual domination and sanctity that surrounded Sufi saints and became central to religious authority, Islamic piety, and the belief in the miraculous.
The cultural and social constructs of Islamic sainthood and the spatial inscription of saintly figures have fascinated and ignited scholars across a range of disciplines. By bringing together a broad scope of perspectives and case studies, this book offers the reader the first comprehensive, albeit variegated, exposition of the evolution of saintly spheres and the emplacements of spiritual power in the Muslim world across time and place.
Contributors: Angela Andersen, Irit Back, Devin DeWeese, Daphna Ephrat, Jo-Ann Gross, Nathan Hofer, Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, Sara Kuehn, Bulle Tuil Leonetti, Silvia Montenegro, Alexandre Papas, Paulo G. Pinto, Fatima Quraishi, Eric Ross, Itzchak Weismann, Pnina Werber, and Ethel Sara Wolper.
List of Figures and Maps
A Note on Transliteration, Names, and Translation
Introduction
PART 1: Creation and Revitalization
1 The Creation of Spheres of Spiritual Domination and Sanctity in Medieval
Syrian Landscapes: Hagiographical Narratives and Historical Legacies
Daphna Ephrat
2 The Creation and Institutionalization of the Sufi Landscape in Medieval
Upper Egypt
Nathan Hofer
3 The Cult of Saints and Shrine Architecture: The Making of Funeral Centers
of Devotion in the Medieval Muslim West
Bulle Tuil Leonetti
4 A Saint On the Move: Traces in the Evolution of a Landscape of Religious
Memory in the Balkans
Sara Kuehn
5 The Shrinescapes and Narrative Traditions of Khoja Ishaq Khuttalani
Jo-Ann Gross
6 Encountering Saints in the Hallowed Ground of a Regional Landscape: The
Description of Khwrazm and the Experience of Pilgrimage in
Nineteenth-Century Central Asia
Devin DeWeese
PART 2: Spatial Formation and the Power of Place
7 Sufi Buildings and Networks of Authority in Medieval Anatolia
Ethel Sara Wolper
8 Situating Iraqi Shrine Cities within the Alevi-Bektashi Sacred Landscape:
Networks of Saintly Families Linking Anatolia to Karbala and Najaf in the
Ottoman Era
Ayfer Karakaya-Stump
9 This is Makkah for Me! Devotion in Architecture at the Makli Necropolis
Fatima Quraishi
10 He who is the wondrous green dome is Ali: The Relationship between
Narratives of the Prophet Muhammads Ascension and the Communal Religious
Architecture of the Alevis
Angela Andersen
11 Bombay Mystical City: Muslim Shrines and Saints in the Urban Fabric from
1800 to Present
Alexandre Papas
12 Senegals Sufi Cities: Places beyond the State
Eric Ross
PART 3: Transformation and Globalization
13 Shifting Spheres along the Hajj Route from West Africa: The Case of the
Tijaniyya during the Colonial Period
Irit Back
14 The Entire Land is My Lodge: Naqshbandi Responses to the Challenges of
Modernity and Globalization
Itzchak Weismann
15 Charismas Reach: Spiritual Travel and Material Flows in a Sufi Saints
Wilayat
Pnina Werbner
16 Diasporizing Sainthood: Shaykh Ahmed, a Syrian Alawi Saint in
Argentina
Silvia Montenegro
17 Territories of Memory: Ritual and Dreams in the Making of a Contemporary
Syrian Saint
Paulo G. Pinto
Index
Daphna Ephrat, Ph.D. (1993), is Associate Professor of history at the Open University of Israel. She has written widely on the formation of religious leadership and associations in the medieval Islamic Near East, including Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety (Harvard UP, 2009).
Ethel Sara Wolper, Ph.D. (1990), is Associate Professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia (Penn State University Press, 2003) and has published widely on Islamic architecture and religious communities in the medieval and early modern Islamic world.
Paulo G. Pinto, Ph.D. (2002), is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil. He has done ethnographic fieldwork in Syria, Iraq, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, and is the co-editor of Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices (Edinburgh University Press, 2012).
