Awards by Fadi Ragheb
Winner of the Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem, 2023
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1653946
The Jerusalem Quarterly is pleased to announce... more https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1653946
The Jerusalem Quarterly is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem: Fadi Ragheb from the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto. His essay on “Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1000-1800)” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly.
ARABIC VERSION: https://www.palestine-studies.org/ar/node/1653946
Doctoral Thesis by Fadi Ragheb
This dissertation is an investigation of the religiohistorical phenomenon of Islamic pilgrimage (... more This dissertation is an investigation of the religiohistorical phenomenon of Islamic pilgrimage (ziyāra) to Jerusalem during the Mamlūk period (648-922 A.H./1250-1517 C.E.). Through an in-depth analysis of the Faḍāʾil al-Quds (Merits of Jerusalem) corpus dating from the Mamlūk period, the study establishes that Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem increased significantly during this time. These texts, which also served as pilgrimage guides to Jerusalem, peaked in production during the Mamlūk centuries. Moreover, the corpus underwent notable changes in its structure, content, and authorship. The remarkable change in both the quality and quantity of texts produced at this time reflects a golden age of the Faḍāʾil al-Quds literature. The current study demonstrates that this increased production of texts corresponded to a substantial increase in Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Thus, it is argued that the Faḍāʾil al-Quds texts influenced and stimulated pilgrimage and, reciprocally, the increase in pilgrimage promoted the composition of more texts. It is hypothesized that the impact of the Crusades and the Sunni Revival movement contributed significantly to the growth of the practice in Jerusalem during the Mamlūk period.
Books by Fadi Ragheb
(https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-friday-mosque-in-the-city)
This edited volume explores the dy... more (https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-friday-mosque-in-the-city)
This edited volume explores the dynamic relationship between the Friday mosque and the Islamic city, addressing the traditional topics through a fresh new lens and offering a critical examination of each case study in its own spatial, urban, and socio-cultural context. While these two well-known themes—concepts that once defined the field—have been widely studied by historians of Islamic architecture and urbanism, this compilation specifically addresses the functional and spatial ambiguity or liminality between these spaces.
Instead of addressing the Friday mosque as the central signifier of the Islamic city, this collection provides evidence that there was (and continues to be) variety in the way architectural borders became fluid in and around Friday mosques across the Islamic world, from Cordoba to Jerusalem and from London to Lahore. By historicizing different cases and exploring the way human agency, through ritual and politics, shaped the physical and social fabric of the city, this volume challenges the generalizing and reductionist tendencies in earlier scholarship.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. Hilal Uğurlu and Suzan Yalman, Introduction
Section I: Spatial Liminalities: Walls, Enclosures, and Beyond
Susana Calvo Capilla, Liminal Spaces in the Great Mosque of Cordoba: Urban Meaning and Politico-Liturgical Practices
Mehreen Chida-Razvi, Lahore’s Badshahi Masjid: Spatial Interactions of the Sacred and the Secular
Fadi Ragheb, City as Liminal Space: Islamic Pilgrimage and Holy Sites in Jerusalem During the Mamluk Period 75
Section II: Creating New Destinations, Constructing New Sacreds
Suzan Yalman, Sanctifying Konya: The Thirteenth-Century Transformation of the Seljuk Friday Mosque into a ‘House of God’
Farshid Emami, Inviolable Thresholds, Blessed Palaces, and Holy Friday Mosques: The Sacred Topography of Safavid Isfahan
Abbey Stockstill, From the Kutubiyya to Tinmal: The Sacred Direction in Mu’minid Performance
Section III: Liminality and Negotiating Modernity
A. Hilâl Uğurlu, Perform Your Prayers in Mosques!: Changing Spatial and Political Relations in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Istanbul
May Farhat, Urban Morphology and Sacred Space: The Mashhad Shrine During the Late Qajar and Pahlavi Periods
Nebahat Avcıoğlu, Towards a New Typology of Modern and Contemporary Mosque in Europe, including Russia and Turkey
* The Friday Mosque in the City: Liminality, Ritual, and Politics is a part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series of Intellect Books, edited by Mohammad Gharipour and Christiane Gruber. (https://www.intellectbooks.com/critical-studies-in-architecture-of-the-middle-east)
Papers by Fadi Ragheb
in The Friday Mosque in the City: Liminality, Ritual, and Politics, eds. Hilâl Ugurlu and Suzan Yalman, 75-122 (Chicago: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 2020). (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/F/bo68884202.html), 2020
This chapter investigates Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the network of Islamic holy sites i... more This chapter investigates Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the network of Islamic holy sites in the city during the Mamlūk period. Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides on Jerusalem dating from the Mamlūk period, the study will first enumerate the holy sites visited by Muslim pilgrims on the Ḥaram al-Sharif complex. Second, the study will delineate the Islamic holy sites existing outside the Ḥaram and in and around the city. Third, the intensive building of Islamic religious institutions undertaken by Mamlūk authorities in Jerusalem will be examined to reveal how the sacred sphere further extended beyond the Haram complex and into the city and its environs, thus blurring the liminal spaces separating the sacred from the urban. Finally, the study will demonstrate how this phenomenon of blurred liminal spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem also existed in another important Islamic holy city – Mecca. Research will demonstrate how medieval Mecca’s holy sites were also not restricted to al-Masjid al-Ḥarām complex and its Ka‘ba, but, rather, numerous secondary holy sites were scattered throughout Mecca city and its surrounding mountains, resulting in the blurring of liminal spaces in Mecca as well. This chapter will thus attempt to show how, just like in medieval Mecca, the sacred in Mamlūk Jerusalem transcended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, and that the presence of Islamic holy sites and religious buildings both inside and outside the Ḥaram rendered the boundaries delimiting the sacred from the urban more fluent. The city of Jerusalem, it will be argued, thus became one wider liminal space during the Mamlūk period.
The Political and Cultural History of the Kurds, edited by Amir Harrak, 201-37 (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), 2022
(Book website: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1062267)
For so long, scholarship in the Wes... more (Book website: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1062267)
For so long, scholarship in the West has argued that the memory of Saladin, the renowned, twelfth-century Kurdish-Muslim ruler, along with the memory of the Crusades, was “all but forgotten” in Islamic history prior to the onset of the modern period. Although recent studies have slowly begun to overturn this thesis, however, research on the topic so far has continued to neglect the many accounts on Saladin’s reign and the Crusades found in late medieval and early modern Arabo-Islamic historiography. This lacunae in scholarship is even more compelling considering that the sources dating from the early sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries reveal a rich record of Saladin’s achievements; the sources also include numerous reports on other major Muslim figures who fought the Crusades, such as the Zengid ruler Nūr al-Dīn and the famous Mamlūk sultans Baybars and Qalawūn. Therefore, the present study will posit the hypothesis that Saladin’s reign and accomplishments, along with the history of the Crusades in the region, were etched into the historical memory of the Muslim world long after the end of the epoch. It will advance this thesis by exploring the much-neglected Arabo-Islamic historiographical sources dating from the early sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries, such as the universal chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and other historiographical genres. Based on this explorative survey, the study will further advance the emerging thesis that the memory of Saladin was not neglected after his death, but, rather, the Kurdish sultan’s career, along with the Age of the Crusades in general, left a lasting impression on the Islamic Near East during the late medieval and early modern period.
Exchange in the Mamluk Sultanate: Economic & Cultural, ed. Marlis Saleh (Louvain, Paris, Bristol: Peeters, 2023), 103-123., 2023
Jerusalem Quarterly, 2023
Fadi Ragheb, "Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem duri... more Fadi Ragheb, "Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods," Jerusalem Quarterly 95 (Autumn 2023): 69-99.
The Holy Land was the destination for many Muslim pilgrims during the late medieval and early modern period. In addition to worshipping in Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif, Muslim pilgrims in the Holy Land also visited important Christian holy sites, such as the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, the Church of the Ascension, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. With a genre of medieval Islamic pilgrimage texts known as Fada'il al-Quds (Merits of Jerusalem) serving as their guide, Muslims visited these places and joined Christian worshippers in contemplating the sacred. Fada'il al-Quds texts informed Muslim pilgrims of the blessings (fada'il) of Christian holy sites by citing Islamic traditions, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith literature, and Companions' sayings (athar), to sanctify each Christian site and to command Muslims to perform certain Islamic prayers and rituals there. Despite the debate on the legality of Muslim pilgrimage to churches and protestations against the practice by some conservative 'ulama', the Fada'il al-Quds corpus, along with travelogue literature, reveals that Muslims increasingly visited churches, shared sacred spaces, and even participated in Christian ceremonies into the Ottoman period. Using Fada'il al-Quds and travelogue literature from the medieval and early modern period, this study 1 demonstrates that Muslims in the Holy Land shared sacred spaces with Christians in Jerusalem for centuries before the onset of the modern era.
in The Friday Mosque in the City: Liminality, Ritual, and Politics, eds. Hilâl Ugurlu and Suzan Yalman, 75-122 (Chicago: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 2020)., Sep 20, 2020
in The Friday Mosque in the City: Liminality, Ritual, and Politics, eds. Hilâl Ugurlu and Suzan Y... more in The Friday Mosque in the City: Liminality, Ritual, and Politics, eds. Hilâl Ugurlu and Suzan Yalman, 75-122 (Chicago: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 2020). (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/F/bo68884202.html)
This chapter investigates Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the network of Islamic holy sites in the city during the Mamlūk period. Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides on Jerusalem dating from the Mamlūk period, the study will first enumerate the holy sites visited by Muslim pilgrims on the Ḥaram al-Sharif complex. Second, the study will delineate the Islamic holy sites existing outside the Ḥaram and in and around the city. Third, the intensive building of Islamic religious institutions undertaken by Mamlūk authorities in Jerusalem will be examined to reveal how the sacred sphere further extended beyond the Haram complex and into the city and its environs, thus blurring the liminal spaces separating the sacred from the urban. Finally, the study will demonstrate how this phenomenon of blurred liminal spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem also existed in another important Islamic holy city – Mecca. Research will demonstrate how medieval Mecca’s holy sites were also not restricted to al-Masjid al-Ḥarām complex and its Ka‘ba, but, rather, numerous secondary holy sites were scattered throughout Mecca city and its surrounding mountains, resulting in the blurring of liminal spaces in Mecca as well. This chapter will thus attempt to show how, just like in medieval Mecca, the sacred in Mamlūk Jerusalem transcended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, and that the presence of Islamic holy sites and religious buildings both inside and outside the Ḥaram rendered the boundaries delimiting the sacred from the urban more fluent. The city of Jerusalem, it will be argued, thus became one wider liminal space during the Mamlūk period.
Podcast by Fadi Ragheb
Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast, 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aot79-r9Q7I
A podcast with Roberto Mazza, the executive direct... more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aot79-r9Q7I
A podcast with Roberto Mazza, the executive director of the Jerusalem Quarterly and host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast, on my article "Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem During the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1000-1800)", which won the 2023 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Unplugged Description:
"The Holy Land was the destination for many Muslim pilgrims during the late medieval and early modern period. In addition to worshipping on Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif, Muslim pilgrims in the Holy Land also visited important Christian holy sites, such as the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of Mary, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. With fada’il al-Quds (“Merits of Jerusalem”) pilgrimage texts serving as their guide, Muslims visited these places and joined Christian worshippers in contemplating the sacred. Fada’il al-Quds texts informed Muslim pilgrims of the blessings (fada’il) of Christian holy sites by citing Islamic traditions, such as Qur’anic verses, hadith literature, and Companions’ sayings (athar), to sanctify each Christian site and to command Muslims to perform certain Islamic prayers there. While fada’il al-Quds texts extolled Christian holy sites, they simultaneously debated whether Muslims were permitted to enter churches in the Holy Land. Despite the debate on the legality of Muslim pilgrimage to churches and protestations against the practice by some conservative ‘ulama’, the fada’il al-Quds corpus, along with travelogue literature, reveals that Muslims increasingly visited churches, shared sacred spaces, and even participated in Christian ceremonies into the Ottoman period. Fadi in this interview and his work provides a broad historical sketch of Islamic pilgrimage to Christian holy sites and demonstrates that Muslims in the Holy Land shared sacred spaces with Christians in Jerusalem for centuries before the onset of the modern era."
Courses Taught and Syllabuses by Fadi Ragheb
Course Description:
The Crusades, and its legacy, had, and continue to have, a resounding impact... more Course Description:
The Crusades, and its legacy, had, and continue to have, a resounding impact throughout Islamic history and the modern day Middle East. During the medieval period, this epoch-forming movement, whether directly or indirectly, imprinted a lasting influence on the central Islamic lands ideologically, geopolitically, and culturally. This course will provide a historical and thematic survey of the Crusades from the Islamic perspective. It will examine the Muslim responses to the Crusades from the beginning of the movement in 1095 to the end of the Crusader presence in the region in 1291. The course will first begin with an overview of Islamic history from the Age of the Prophet down to the state of the Islamic world at the eve of the First Crusade in 1092. The course will then trace the Muslims’ political and military reactions to the Crusader expeditions and the development of the Muslim religious jihad policies during the 12th and 13th centuries under different Muslim rulers, such as Zengi, Nur al-Din, Saladin, and Baybars. It will then explore major themes such as the medieval Arabic sources on the Crusades and Arabo-Islamic historiography. Attention will be paid also to the systematic efforts of major Muslim polities, such as the Seljuqs, Zengids, Ayyubids and Mamluks, in forming cultural unity among the Muslims through the establishment of madrasas, Sufi shrines, and advancing the Sunni revival movement. Among the themes studied is the role of Shi‘i minorities during this period, in addition to Muslim views of the Franks, and aspects of Frankish-Muslim coexistence and cooperation. The course will conclude by examining the legacy of the Crusades in the modern Middle East and its depiction in modern Arab politics, history writing, art and film.
Course Description:
Using the extant medieval Arabic literary corpus as primary sources, coupled... more Course Description:
Using the extant medieval Arabic literary corpus as primary sources, coupled with secondary scholarly literature in English, this course will provide a historical and historiographical survey of the Crusades from an Arabo-Islamic perspective. It will examine the Muslim responses to the Crusades, from the beginning of the movement at the 1096 call for the First Crusade to Salah al-Din’s conquest of Frankish Jerusalem and the stalemate of the Third Crusade (1093). The course will examine each period within this era by sampling in Arabic the remarkably rich, Arabo-Islamic corpus dating from the classical medieval period. Students will read historiographical sources, such as passages from universal chronicles, regnal biographies, dynastic histories, and biographical dictionaries; literary sources, such as poetry, travelogue literature, and autobiography; as well as religious texts, such as Qur’an, hadith, tafsir, jihad treatises, and fada’il (religious merits of cities) literature that inform the Islamic response to the Crusades. The course will conclude by examining the legacy of the Crusades in the modern Middle East and their depiction in modern politics, history, religion, and culture. By the end of the course, students will develop gradual proficiency and familiarity in Classical Arabic through reading different samples of historical, religious, and cultural literature pertaining to the Age of the Crusades.
Book Reviews by Fadi Ragheb
Journal of International and Global Studies 7.2 (2016): 127-29, 2016
Conference Presentations by Fadi Ragheb
Announcing the online lecture series, “Rethinking Memory and Historiography of the Crusades in th... more Announcing the online lecture series, “Rethinking Memory and Historiography of the Crusades in the Middle East,” organized by Dr. Ahmed M. Sheir (Postdoc Researcher/ Fritz Thyssen Fellow, Centrum für Nah- und Mittelost-Studien (CNMS)/ Fachgebiet Islamwissenschaft, Philipps-Uniiverrsiittät Marburg)
Held on Thursdays, 5:00 pm CET (Germany) via WEBEX of Marburg University: https://uni-marburg.webex.com
Paper presented at the Pilgrimage Forum, Toronto, Canada, April 25, 2018.
Paper presented at American Academy of Religion’s 2018 AAR Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, Nove... more Paper presented at American Academy of Religion’s 2018 AAR Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, November 17-20, 2018. ABSTRACT: Using the Fada’il al-Quds texts and travelogue literature on Jerusalem from the medieval and early modern period, this paper will examine Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and trace Muslim and non-Muslim holy sites that were visited by Muslims in the city. After providing a short overview of the Faḍā’il al-Quds literature, the study will delineate the Muslim holy sites visited by Muslims in Jerusalem, before also exploring the Jewish and Christian holy sites that were extolled in the Faḍā’il al-Quds texts and that were visited by Muslims during this period. The study will then examine how the debate on whether Muslims were allowed to visit non-Muslim sites, such as churches, had changed over time. The paper will argue that by the time the early modern period rolled around, the traditions prohibiting Muslims from visiting non-Muslim holy places underwent a certain relaxation which led to Muslims increasingly visiting Christian sites and even participating in Christian ceremonies, thus providing evidence to Muslim-Christian sharing of sacred spaces in the Holy Land during the medieval and early modern period.
Paper presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Boston, Massac... more Paper presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Boston, Massachusetts, November 17-20, 2016.
ABSTRACT: Islamic pilgrimage represented an inextricable part of life in Jerusalem during the medieval period. As Islam’s third holiest city and a place deeply connected with Biblical traditions, Jerusalem was visited by many Muslims from across the Islamic world. Considering the sanctity of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, it was a frequent sight to see many Muslims worshiping on the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, including Muslim pilgrims performing the annual iḥrām en route to the hajj. This phenomenon grew exponentially during the late-medieval Mamlūk period (648-922/1250-1517). The Mamlūk era thus produced the largest number of Islamic pilgrimage guides to Jerusalem, the Faḍā’il al-Quds, as well as a corpus of Muslim travelogue writings.
Significantly, to a medieval Muslim pilgrim, the sacred in Jerusalem was not only limited to the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex. While the Ḥaram constituted Islam’s sacred epicenter in the city and a pilgrim's starting point, Islamic pilgrimage routes in Jerusalem extended to holy sites located beyond the Ḥaram. In fact, evidence from the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides and travelogue literature reveals a pilgrimage route that extended Muslims’ worship to a number of holy places outside the Ḥaram and within the city itself, including Miḥrāb Dāwūd in the City Gate, the Church of St. Mary (Miḥrāb Maryam), and the Mount of Olives (Ṭūr Zaytā). Since Islamic sacred spaces were scattered across Jerusalem, both inside and outside the Ḥaram, the rigid boundaries delimiting the Islamic sacred landscape from the secular urban space became less fixed, and, in turn, the city became one large liminal space.
Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds and travelogue literature, this study will investigate Mamlūk Jerusalem’s network of Islamic holy sites on its Ḥaram complex and outside it. It will attempt to answer the following questions: First, which Islamic holy sites did Muslim pilgrims visit on the Ḥaram complex? Second, what other sites did Muslim pilgrims visit outside the Ḥaram? And, consequently, what were the routes taken by Muslim pilgrims around Jerusalem to reach these places? Finally, what were the rituals performed by Muslims at each sacred location? The study will thus attempt to demonstrate how, due to the presence of holy sites throughout the city, Islamic sacred spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem extended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, where the sacred, it will be argued, did not cease to exist past the confines of the Ḥaram, but, instead, permeated the city.
Paper presented at the 2018 International Conference on Religion and Film, Toronto, Canada, May 3... more Paper presented at the 2018 International Conference on Religion and Film, Toronto, Canada, May 3-5, 2018. ABSTRACT: Filmed during the golden age of Arab Nationalism, Youssef Chahine’s 1963 Egyptian cinematic masterpiece Al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (“The Victorious Saladin”) portrays Saladin’s reign and rivalry with Richard I and the Third Crusade as an hommage to the modern Arab Nationalist movement and its Egyptian leader Jamal Abd al-Nasser. Yet intriguingly, Chahine’s masterpiece provides a surprisingly balanced view of medieval Muslims and Crusaders. Here, both Saladin and Richard I are similarly depicted as ideal rulers with a just cause, who also suffer treachery within their own camps. The film is also filled with diverse images of other Muslim and Christian characters, some positive and other negative. Furthermore, following the Arab Nationalist tenets of equality among Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, Chahine deploys a favourable image of Islam and Christianity, where, for example, he sets scenes to Christian hymns and a stunning portrait of Christmas Eve at the Crusader camp. This paper will thus reveal how Chahine, who himself is an Egyptian Christian, not only sculpts a nuanced and balanced cinematic image of medieval Muslims and Christians, but also imbues his narrative with a deeply personal and political outlook that colours the medieval episode with supra-religious Arab nationalist tenets extracted from the modern Age of Nasser.
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Awards by Fadi Ragheb
The Jerusalem Quarterly is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem: Fadi Ragheb from the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto. His essay on “Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1000-1800)” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly.
ARABIC VERSION: https://www.palestine-studies.org/ar/node/1653946
Doctoral Thesis by Fadi Ragheb
Books by Fadi Ragheb
This edited volume explores the dynamic relationship between the Friday mosque and the Islamic city, addressing the traditional topics through a fresh new lens and offering a critical examination of each case study in its own spatial, urban, and socio-cultural context. While these two well-known themes—concepts that once defined the field—have been widely studied by historians of Islamic architecture and urbanism, this compilation specifically addresses the functional and spatial ambiguity or liminality between these spaces.
Instead of addressing the Friday mosque as the central signifier of the Islamic city, this collection provides evidence that there was (and continues to be) variety in the way architectural borders became fluid in and around Friday mosques across the Islamic world, from Cordoba to Jerusalem and from London to Lahore. By historicizing different cases and exploring the way human agency, through ritual and politics, shaped the physical and social fabric of the city, this volume challenges the generalizing and reductionist tendencies in earlier scholarship.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. Hilal Uğurlu and Suzan Yalman, Introduction
Section I: Spatial Liminalities: Walls, Enclosures, and Beyond
Susana Calvo Capilla, Liminal Spaces in the Great Mosque of Cordoba: Urban Meaning and Politico-Liturgical Practices
Mehreen Chida-Razvi, Lahore’s Badshahi Masjid: Spatial Interactions of the Sacred and the Secular
Fadi Ragheb, City as Liminal Space: Islamic Pilgrimage and Holy Sites in Jerusalem During the Mamluk Period 75
Section II: Creating New Destinations, Constructing New Sacreds
Suzan Yalman, Sanctifying Konya: The Thirteenth-Century Transformation of the Seljuk Friday Mosque into a ‘House of God’
Farshid Emami, Inviolable Thresholds, Blessed Palaces, and Holy Friday Mosques: The Sacred Topography of Safavid Isfahan
Abbey Stockstill, From the Kutubiyya to Tinmal: The Sacred Direction in Mu’minid Performance
Section III: Liminality and Negotiating Modernity
A. Hilâl Uğurlu, Perform Your Prayers in Mosques!: Changing Spatial and Political Relations in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Istanbul
May Farhat, Urban Morphology and Sacred Space: The Mashhad Shrine During the Late Qajar and Pahlavi Periods
Nebahat Avcıoğlu, Towards a New Typology of Modern and Contemporary Mosque in Europe, including Russia and Turkey
* The Friday Mosque in the City: Liminality, Ritual, and Politics is a part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series of Intellect Books, edited by Mohammad Gharipour and Christiane Gruber. (https://www.intellectbooks.com/critical-studies-in-architecture-of-the-middle-east)
Papers by Fadi Ragheb
For so long, scholarship in the West has argued that the memory of Saladin, the renowned, twelfth-century Kurdish-Muslim ruler, along with the memory of the Crusades, was “all but forgotten” in Islamic history prior to the onset of the modern period. Although recent studies have slowly begun to overturn this thesis, however, research on the topic so far has continued to neglect the many accounts on Saladin’s reign and the Crusades found in late medieval and early modern Arabo-Islamic historiography. This lacunae in scholarship is even more compelling considering that the sources dating from the early sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries reveal a rich record of Saladin’s achievements; the sources also include numerous reports on other major Muslim figures who fought the Crusades, such as the Zengid ruler Nūr al-Dīn and the famous Mamlūk sultans Baybars and Qalawūn. Therefore, the present study will posit the hypothesis that Saladin’s reign and accomplishments, along with the history of the Crusades in the region, were etched into the historical memory of the Muslim world long after the end of the epoch. It will advance this thesis by exploring the much-neglected Arabo-Islamic historiographical sources dating from the early sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries, such as the universal chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and other historiographical genres. Based on this explorative survey, the study will further advance the emerging thesis that the memory of Saladin was not neglected after his death, but, rather, the Kurdish sultan’s career, along with the Age of the Crusades in general, left a lasting impression on the Islamic Near East during the late medieval and early modern period.
The Holy Land was the destination for many Muslim pilgrims during the late medieval and early modern period. In addition to worshipping in Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif, Muslim pilgrims in the Holy Land also visited important Christian holy sites, such as the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, the Church of the Ascension, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. With a genre of medieval Islamic pilgrimage texts known as Fada'il al-Quds (Merits of Jerusalem) serving as their guide, Muslims visited these places and joined Christian worshippers in contemplating the sacred. Fada'il al-Quds texts informed Muslim pilgrims of the blessings (fada'il) of Christian holy sites by citing Islamic traditions, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith literature, and Companions' sayings (athar), to sanctify each Christian site and to command Muslims to perform certain Islamic prayers and rituals there. Despite the debate on the legality of Muslim pilgrimage to churches and protestations against the practice by some conservative 'ulama', the Fada'il al-Quds corpus, along with travelogue literature, reveals that Muslims increasingly visited churches, shared sacred spaces, and even participated in Christian ceremonies into the Ottoman period. Using Fada'il al-Quds and travelogue literature from the medieval and early modern period, this study 1 demonstrates that Muslims in the Holy Land shared sacred spaces with Christians in Jerusalem for centuries before the onset of the modern era.
This chapter investigates Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the network of Islamic holy sites in the city during the Mamlūk period. Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides on Jerusalem dating from the Mamlūk period, the study will first enumerate the holy sites visited by Muslim pilgrims on the Ḥaram al-Sharif complex. Second, the study will delineate the Islamic holy sites existing outside the Ḥaram and in and around the city. Third, the intensive building of Islamic religious institutions undertaken by Mamlūk authorities in Jerusalem will be examined to reveal how the sacred sphere further extended beyond the Haram complex and into the city and its environs, thus blurring the liminal spaces separating the sacred from the urban. Finally, the study will demonstrate how this phenomenon of blurred liminal spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem also existed in another important Islamic holy city – Mecca. Research will demonstrate how medieval Mecca’s holy sites were also not restricted to al-Masjid al-Ḥarām complex and its Ka‘ba, but, rather, numerous secondary holy sites were scattered throughout Mecca city and its surrounding mountains, resulting in the blurring of liminal spaces in Mecca as well. This chapter will thus attempt to show how, just like in medieval Mecca, the sacred in Mamlūk Jerusalem transcended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, and that the presence of Islamic holy sites and religious buildings both inside and outside the Ḥaram rendered the boundaries delimiting the sacred from the urban more fluent. The city of Jerusalem, it will be argued, thus became one wider liminal space during the Mamlūk period.
Podcast by Fadi Ragheb
A podcast with Roberto Mazza, the executive director of the Jerusalem Quarterly and host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast, on my article "Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem During the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1000-1800)", which won the 2023 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Unplugged Description:
"The Holy Land was the destination for many Muslim pilgrims during the late medieval and early modern period. In addition to worshipping on Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif, Muslim pilgrims in the Holy Land also visited important Christian holy sites, such as the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of Mary, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. With fada’il al-Quds (“Merits of Jerusalem”) pilgrimage texts serving as their guide, Muslims visited these places and joined Christian worshippers in contemplating the sacred. Fada’il al-Quds texts informed Muslim pilgrims of the blessings (fada’il) of Christian holy sites by citing Islamic traditions, such as Qur’anic verses, hadith literature, and Companions’ sayings (athar), to sanctify each Christian site and to command Muslims to perform certain Islamic prayers there. While fada’il al-Quds texts extolled Christian holy sites, they simultaneously debated whether Muslims were permitted to enter churches in the Holy Land. Despite the debate on the legality of Muslim pilgrimage to churches and protestations against the practice by some conservative ‘ulama’, the fada’il al-Quds corpus, along with travelogue literature, reveals that Muslims increasingly visited churches, shared sacred spaces, and even participated in Christian ceremonies into the Ottoman period. Fadi in this interview and his work provides a broad historical sketch of Islamic pilgrimage to Christian holy sites and demonstrates that Muslims in the Holy Land shared sacred spaces with Christians in Jerusalem for centuries before the onset of the modern era."
Courses Taught and Syllabuses by Fadi Ragheb
The Crusades, and its legacy, had, and continue to have, a resounding impact throughout Islamic history and the modern day Middle East. During the medieval period, this epoch-forming movement, whether directly or indirectly, imprinted a lasting influence on the central Islamic lands ideologically, geopolitically, and culturally. This course will provide a historical and thematic survey of the Crusades from the Islamic perspective. It will examine the Muslim responses to the Crusades from the beginning of the movement in 1095 to the end of the Crusader presence in the region in 1291. The course will first begin with an overview of Islamic history from the Age of the Prophet down to the state of the Islamic world at the eve of the First Crusade in 1092. The course will then trace the Muslims’ political and military reactions to the Crusader expeditions and the development of the Muslim religious jihad policies during the 12th and 13th centuries under different Muslim rulers, such as Zengi, Nur al-Din, Saladin, and Baybars. It will then explore major themes such as the medieval Arabic sources on the Crusades and Arabo-Islamic historiography. Attention will be paid also to the systematic efforts of major Muslim polities, such as the Seljuqs, Zengids, Ayyubids and Mamluks, in forming cultural unity among the Muslims through the establishment of madrasas, Sufi shrines, and advancing the Sunni revival movement. Among the themes studied is the role of Shi‘i minorities during this period, in addition to Muslim views of the Franks, and aspects of Frankish-Muslim coexistence and cooperation. The course will conclude by examining the legacy of the Crusades in the modern Middle East and its depiction in modern Arab politics, history writing, art and film.
Using the extant medieval Arabic literary corpus as primary sources, coupled with secondary scholarly literature in English, this course will provide a historical and historiographical survey of the Crusades from an Arabo-Islamic perspective. It will examine the Muslim responses to the Crusades, from the beginning of the movement at the 1096 call for the First Crusade to Salah al-Din’s conquest of Frankish Jerusalem and the stalemate of the Third Crusade (1093). The course will examine each period within this era by sampling in Arabic the remarkably rich, Arabo-Islamic corpus dating from the classical medieval period. Students will read historiographical sources, such as passages from universal chronicles, regnal biographies, dynastic histories, and biographical dictionaries; literary sources, such as poetry, travelogue literature, and autobiography; as well as religious texts, such as Qur’an, hadith, tafsir, jihad treatises, and fada’il (religious merits of cities) literature that inform the Islamic response to the Crusades. The course will conclude by examining the legacy of the Crusades in the modern Middle East and their depiction in modern politics, history, religion, and culture. By the end of the course, students will develop gradual proficiency and familiarity in Classical Arabic through reading different samples of historical, religious, and cultural literature pertaining to the Age of the Crusades.
Book Reviews by Fadi Ragheb
Conference Presentations by Fadi Ragheb
Held on Thursdays, 5:00 pm CET (Germany) via WEBEX of Marburg University: https://uni-marburg.webex.com
ABSTRACT: Islamic pilgrimage represented an inextricable part of life in Jerusalem during the medieval period. As Islam’s third holiest city and a place deeply connected with Biblical traditions, Jerusalem was visited by many Muslims from across the Islamic world. Considering the sanctity of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, it was a frequent sight to see many Muslims worshiping on the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, including Muslim pilgrims performing the annual iḥrām en route to the hajj. This phenomenon grew exponentially during the late-medieval Mamlūk period (648-922/1250-1517). The Mamlūk era thus produced the largest number of Islamic pilgrimage guides to Jerusalem, the Faḍā’il al-Quds, as well as a corpus of Muslim travelogue writings.
Significantly, to a medieval Muslim pilgrim, the sacred in Jerusalem was not only limited to the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex. While the Ḥaram constituted Islam’s sacred epicenter in the city and a pilgrim's starting point, Islamic pilgrimage routes in Jerusalem extended to holy sites located beyond the Ḥaram. In fact, evidence from the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides and travelogue literature reveals a pilgrimage route that extended Muslims’ worship to a number of holy places outside the Ḥaram and within the city itself, including Miḥrāb Dāwūd in the City Gate, the Church of St. Mary (Miḥrāb Maryam), and the Mount of Olives (Ṭūr Zaytā). Since Islamic sacred spaces were scattered across Jerusalem, both inside and outside the Ḥaram, the rigid boundaries delimiting the Islamic sacred landscape from the secular urban space became less fixed, and, in turn, the city became one large liminal space.
Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds and travelogue literature, this study will investigate Mamlūk Jerusalem’s network of Islamic holy sites on its Ḥaram complex and outside it. It will attempt to answer the following questions: First, which Islamic holy sites did Muslim pilgrims visit on the Ḥaram complex? Second, what other sites did Muslim pilgrims visit outside the Ḥaram? And, consequently, what were the routes taken by Muslim pilgrims around Jerusalem to reach these places? Finally, what were the rituals performed by Muslims at each sacred location? The study will thus attempt to demonstrate how, due to the presence of holy sites throughout the city, Islamic sacred spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem extended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, where the sacred, it will be argued, did not cease to exist past the confines of the Ḥaram, but, instead, permeated the city.
The Jerusalem Quarterly is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem: Fadi Ragheb from the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto. His essay on “Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1000-1800)” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly.
ARABIC VERSION: https://www.palestine-studies.org/ar/node/1653946
This edited volume explores the dynamic relationship between the Friday mosque and the Islamic city, addressing the traditional topics through a fresh new lens and offering a critical examination of each case study in its own spatial, urban, and socio-cultural context. While these two well-known themes—concepts that once defined the field—have been widely studied by historians of Islamic architecture and urbanism, this compilation specifically addresses the functional and spatial ambiguity or liminality between these spaces.
Instead of addressing the Friday mosque as the central signifier of the Islamic city, this collection provides evidence that there was (and continues to be) variety in the way architectural borders became fluid in and around Friday mosques across the Islamic world, from Cordoba to Jerusalem and from London to Lahore. By historicizing different cases and exploring the way human agency, through ritual and politics, shaped the physical and social fabric of the city, this volume challenges the generalizing and reductionist tendencies in earlier scholarship.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. Hilal Uğurlu and Suzan Yalman, Introduction
Section I: Spatial Liminalities: Walls, Enclosures, and Beyond
Susana Calvo Capilla, Liminal Spaces in the Great Mosque of Cordoba: Urban Meaning and Politico-Liturgical Practices
Mehreen Chida-Razvi, Lahore’s Badshahi Masjid: Spatial Interactions of the Sacred and the Secular
Fadi Ragheb, City as Liminal Space: Islamic Pilgrimage and Holy Sites in Jerusalem During the Mamluk Period 75
Section II: Creating New Destinations, Constructing New Sacreds
Suzan Yalman, Sanctifying Konya: The Thirteenth-Century Transformation of the Seljuk Friday Mosque into a ‘House of God’
Farshid Emami, Inviolable Thresholds, Blessed Palaces, and Holy Friday Mosques: The Sacred Topography of Safavid Isfahan
Abbey Stockstill, From the Kutubiyya to Tinmal: The Sacred Direction in Mu’minid Performance
Section III: Liminality and Negotiating Modernity
A. Hilâl Uğurlu, Perform Your Prayers in Mosques!: Changing Spatial and Political Relations in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Istanbul
May Farhat, Urban Morphology and Sacred Space: The Mashhad Shrine During the Late Qajar and Pahlavi Periods
Nebahat Avcıoğlu, Towards a New Typology of Modern and Contemporary Mosque in Europe, including Russia and Turkey
* The Friday Mosque in the City: Liminality, Ritual, and Politics is a part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series of Intellect Books, edited by Mohammad Gharipour and Christiane Gruber. (https://www.intellectbooks.com/critical-studies-in-architecture-of-the-middle-east)
For so long, scholarship in the West has argued that the memory of Saladin, the renowned, twelfth-century Kurdish-Muslim ruler, along with the memory of the Crusades, was “all but forgotten” in Islamic history prior to the onset of the modern period. Although recent studies have slowly begun to overturn this thesis, however, research on the topic so far has continued to neglect the many accounts on Saladin’s reign and the Crusades found in late medieval and early modern Arabo-Islamic historiography. This lacunae in scholarship is even more compelling considering that the sources dating from the early sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries reveal a rich record of Saladin’s achievements; the sources also include numerous reports on other major Muslim figures who fought the Crusades, such as the Zengid ruler Nūr al-Dīn and the famous Mamlūk sultans Baybars and Qalawūn. Therefore, the present study will posit the hypothesis that Saladin’s reign and accomplishments, along with the history of the Crusades in the region, were etched into the historical memory of the Muslim world long after the end of the epoch. It will advance this thesis by exploring the much-neglected Arabo-Islamic historiographical sources dating from the early sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries, such as the universal chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and other historiographical genres. Based on this explorative survey, the study will further advance the emerging thesis that the memory of Saladin was not neglected after his death, but, rather, the Kurdish sultan’s career, along with the Age of the Crusades in general, left a lasting impression on the Islamic Near East during the late medieval and early modern period.
The Holy Land was the destination for many Muslim pilgrims during the late medieval and early modern period. In addition to worshipping in Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif, Muslim pilgrims in the Holy Land also visited important Christian holy sites, such as the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, the Church of the Ascension, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. With a genre of medieval Islamic pilgrimage texts known as Fada'il al-Quds (Merits of Jerusalem) serving as their guide, Muslims visited these places and joined Christian worshippers in contemplating the sacred. Fada'il al-Quds texts informed Muslim pilgrims of the blessings (fada'il) of Christian holy sites by citing Islamic traditions, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith literature, and Companions' sayings (athar), to sanctify each Christian site and to command Muslims to perform certain Islamic prayers and rituals there. Despite the debate on the legality of Muslim pilgrimage to churches and protestations against the practice by some conservative 'ulama', the Fada'il al-Quds corpus, along with travelogue literature, reveals that Muslims increasingly visited churches, shared sacred spaces, and even participated in Christian ceremonies into the Ottoman period. Using Fada'il al-Quds and travelogue literature from the medieval and early modern period, this study 1 demonstrates that Muslims in the Holy Land shared sacred spaces with Christians in Jerusalem for centuries before the onset of the modern era.
This chapter investigates Islamic pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the network of Islamic holy sites in the city during the Mamlūk period. Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides on Jerusalem dating from the Mamlūk period, the study will first enumerate the holy sites visited by Muslim pilgrims on the Ḥaram al-Sharif complex. Second, the study will delineate the Islamic holy sites existing outside the Ḥaram and in and around the city. Third, the intensive building of Islamic religious institutions undertaken by Mamlūk authorities in Jerusalem will be examined to reveal how the sacred sphere further extended beyond the Haram complex and into the city and its environs, thus blurring the liminal spaces separating the sacred from the urban. Finally, the study will demonstrate how this phenomenon of blurred liminal spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem also existed in another important Islamic holy city – Mecca. Research will demonstrate how medieval Mecca’s holy sites were also not restricted to al-Masjid al-Ḥarām complex and its Ka‘ba, but, rather, numerous secondary holy sites were scattered throughout Mecca city and its surrounding mountains, resulting in the blurring of liminal spaces in Mecca as well. This chapter will thus attempt to show how, just like in medieval Mecca, the sacred in Mamlūk Jerusalem transcended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, and that the presence of Islamic holy sites and religious buildings both inside and outside the Ḥaram rendered the boundaries delimiting the sacred from the urban more fluent. The city of Jerusalem, it will be argued, thus became one wider liminal space during the Mamlūk period.
A podcast with Roberto Mazza, the executive director of the Jerusalem Quarterly and host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast, on my article "Sharing the Holy Land: Islamic Pilgrimage to Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem During the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1000-1800)", which won the 2023 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Unplugged Description:
"The Holy Land was the destination for many Muslim pilgrims during the late medieval and early modern period. In addition to worshipping on Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif, Muslim pilgrims in the Holy Land also visited important Christian holy sites, such as the Mount of Olives, the Tomb of Mary, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. With fada’il al-Quds (“Merits of Jerusalem”) pilgrimage texts serving as their guide, Muslims visited these places and joined Christian worshippers in contemplating the sacred. Fada’il al-Quds texts informed Muslim pilgrims of the blessings (fada’il) of Christian holy sites by citing Islamic traditions, such as Qur’anic verses, hadith literature, and Companions’ sayings (athar), to sanctify each Christian site and to command Muslims to perform certain Islamic prayers there. While fada’il al-Quds texts extolled Christian holy sites, they simultaneously debated whether Muslims were permitted to enter churches in the Holy Land. Despite the debate on the legality of Muslim pilgrimage to churches and protestations against the practice by some conservative ‘ulama’, the fada’il al-Quds corpus, along with travelogue literature, reveals that Muslims increasingly visited churches, shared sacred spaces, and even participated in Christian ceremonies into the Ottoman period. Fadi in this interview and his work provides a broad historical sketch of Islamic pilgrimage to Christian holy sites and demonstrates that Muslims in the Holy Land shared sacred spaces with Christians in Jerusalem for centuries before the onset of the modern era."
The Crusades, and its legacy, had, and continue to have, a resounding impact throughout Islamic history and the modern day Middle East. During the medieval period, this epoch-forming movement, whether directly or indirectly, imprinted a lasting influence on the central Islamic lands ideologically, geopolitically, and culturally. This course will provide a historical and thematic survey of the Crusades from the Islamic perspective. It will examine the Muslim responses to the Crusades from the beginning of the movement in 1095 to the end of the Crusader presence in the region in 1291. The course will first begin with an overview of Islamic history from the Age of the Prophet down to the state of the Islamic world at the eve of the First Crusade in 1092. The course will then trace the Muslims’ political and military reactions to the Crusader expeditions and the development of the Muslim religious jihad policies during the 12th and 13th centuries under different Muslim rulers, such as Zengi, Nur al-Din, Saladin, and Baybars. It will then explore major themes such as the medieval Arabic sources on the Crusades and Arabo-Islamic historiography. Attention will be paid also to the systematic efforts of major Muslim polities, such as the Seljuqs, Zengids, Ayyubids and Mamluks, in forming cultural unity among the Muslims through the establishment of madrasas, Sufi shrines, and advancing the Sunni revival movement. Among the themes studied is the role of Shi‘i minorities during this period, in addition to Muslim views of the Franks, and aspects of Frankish-Muslim coexistence and cooperation. The course will conclude by examining the legacy of the Crusades in the modern Middle East and its depiction in modern Arab politics, history writing, art and film.
Using the extant medieval Arabic literary corpus as primary sources, coupled with secondary scholarly literature in English, this course will provide a historical and historiographical survey of the Crusades from an Arabo-Islamic perspective. It will examine the Muslim responses to the Crusades, from the beginning of the movement at the 1096 call for the First Crusade to Salah al-Din’s conquest of Frankish Jerusalem and the stalemate of the Third Crusade (1093). The course will examine each period within this era by sampling in Arabic the remarkably rich, Arabo-Islamic corpus dating from the classical medieval period. Students will read historiographical sources, such as passages from universal chronicles, regnal biographies, dynastic histories, and biographical dictionaries; literary sources, such as poetry, travelogue literature, and autobiography; as well as religious texts, such as Qur’an, hadith, tafsir, jihad treatises, and fada’il (religious merits of cities) literature that inform the Islamic response to the Crusades. The course will conclude by examining the legacy of the Crusades in the modern Middle East and their depiction in modern politics, history, religion, and culture. By the end of the course, students will develop gradual proficiency and familiarity in Classical Arabic through reading different samples of historical, religious, and cultural literature pertaining to the Age of the Crusades.
Held on Thursdays, 5:00 pm CET (Germany) via WEBEX of Marburg University: https://uni-marburg.webex.com
ABSTRACT: Islamic pilgrimage represented an inextricable part of life in Jerusalem during the medieval period. As Islam’s third holiest city and a place deeply connected with Biblical traditions, Jerusalem was visited by many Muslims from across the Islamic world. Considering the sanctity of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, it was a frequent sight to see many Muslims worshiping on the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, including Muslim pilgrims performing the annual iḥrām en route to the hajj. This phenomenon grew exponentially during the late-medieval Mamlūk period (648-922/1250-1517). The Mamlūk era thus produced the largest number of Islamic pilgrimage guides to Jerusalem, the Faḍā’il al-Quds, as well as a corpus of Muslim travelogue writings.
Significantly, to a medieval Muslim pilgrim, the sacred in Jerusalem was not only limited to the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex. While the Ḥaram constituted Islam’s sacred epicenter in the city and a pilgrim's starting point, Islamic pilgrimage routes in Jerusalem extended to holy sites located beyond the Ḥaram. In fact, evidence from the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides and travelogue literature reveals a pilgrimage route that extended Muslims’ worship to a number of holy places outside the Ḥaram and within the city itself, including Miḥrāb Dāwūd in the City Gate, the Church of St. Mary (Miḥrāb Maryam), and the Mount of Olives (Ṭūr Zaytā). Since Islamic sacred spaces were scattered across Jerusalem, both inside and outside the Ḥaram, the rigid boundaries delimiting the Islamic sacred landscape from the secular urban space became less fixed, and, in turn, the city became one large liminal space.
Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds and travelogue literature, this study will investigate Mamlūk Jerusalem’s network of Islamic holy sites on its Ḥaram complex and outside it. It will attempt to answer the following questions: First, which Islamic holy sites did Muslim pilgrims visit on the Ḥaram complex? Second, what other sites did Muslim pilgrims visit outside the Ḥaram? And, consequently, what were the routes taken by Muslim pilgrims around Jerusalem to reach these places? Finally, what were the rituals performed by Muslims at each sacred location? The study will thus attempt to demonstrate how, due to the presence of holy sites throughout the city, Islamic sacred spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem extended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, where the sacred, it will be argued, did not cease to exist past the confines of the Ḥaram, but, instead, permeated the city.
Intriguingly, Khwandamir also reports that Sultan Jaqmaq’s embassy requested copies of five books apparently not found in the Mamlūk libraries, including a copy of the tafsīr of the great Ḥanafi theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Mātūrīdī (d. 333/944), the Ta’wīlāt Ahl al-sunna. This request is not surprising since Shāh-rukh’s court at the time had an esteemed scriptorium. Furthermore, Sultan Jaqmaq’s passion for collecting religious books and his dedication to religious learning is reported in Mamlūk sources, such as al-Sakhkhāwī’s al-Ḍaw’ al-lāmi‘.
Considering the concurring accounts about the cordial relations between the two courts, and the reported exchange of embassies and gifts, including books, this paper will first research the Mamlūk sources to delineate the history of the embassies shuttling between the courts of Jaqmaq and Shāh-rukh, and examine the nature of the gifts exchanged and the practice of gifting conducted between the two rulers. The paper will then conduct a bio-bibliographical investigation into the fate of the manuscript copy of Mātūrīdī’s tafsīr given by Shāh-rukh’s court to Jaqmaq’s embassy, in an attempt to identify its existence and current location. The results of this historical and bio-bibliographical inquiry will help advance current scholarship on Mamlūk-Timurid relations, embassy exchanges, and gifting between the courts, while shedding light on cross-regional cultural transmission of religious knowledge between the Mamlūk sultanate and other Muslim courts of the period.
ABSTRACT: As the eponymous founder of the Zangid dynasty (1127-1233), which ruled in parts of Iraq and Syria during the Age of the Crusades, Zangī (r. 1127-1146) was an important Muslim leader in the history of the central Islamic lands and Muslim-Crusader relations. Growing up in the royal court of Mosul, Zangī witnessed the disintegrated political landscape in Muslim Syria and Iraq during the First Crusade. At the time, the proliferation of independent Muslim rulers and petty city-states created instability in the region and was directly responsible for the success of the First Crusade and the establishment of Frankish dominions in the Levant. After ascending to power in Mosul, Zangī embarked upon two decades of continuous military campaigns. He eventually carved out a state that included northern Iraq, Kurdish territories, and most of Syria. Zangī thus unified a large swath of territory and helped end the instability plaguing the Muslim region. Significantly, after building his state, he was then able to conquer Frankish Edessa, an event that brought him great fame and instigated the Second Crusade. This paper will therefore describe the particular campaigns of Zangī that helped unify the fragmented region before examining how his unifying efforts contributed to the conquest of Frankish Edessa. It will be argued that Zangī first needed to bring stability to Muslim areas before deploying a successful counter-Crusade strategy, a feat he accomplished by unifying Muslim territories under his rule and ending the disintegration of the Muslim political landscape in Syria and northern Iraq.