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Final Comments: Spacial and Temporal Sanctity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2020

Daniella Talmon-Heller
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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Summary

I implore by the sanctity (bi-aurmat) of the sacred month and the sacred house

(The Prayer of Umm Dawud)

Making the shift from the ‘microscopic’ investigation of the history of the shrine(s) of the head of al-Ousayn and the rites of the month of Rajab to ‘macroscopic’ observations of the medieval Islamic construction of the sacred, I found marked similarities between the understanding of holy days and holy places. From the etic perspective it may be said that there were common strategies for the consecration of places and times and for the ‘invention of tradition’, as well as a common Islamic vocabulary by which to describe them.

Both were imagined as channels of enhanced accessibility to God, wherein his mercy is exceedingly bountiful, or as settings that promise especially rewarding transactions: the remission of sins and the incredible multiplication of recompenses for the performance of a wide variety of religious devotions. Some medieval Islamic scholars warned that this increase was coupled with harsher divine retribution for sinning and desecration – typically associated with bloodshed, the ‘excessive’ presence of women, intermingling of the sexes, violation of a prescribed code of conduct and rowdy behaviour of sorts. Rarely, however, do we get an explicit emic view of the juxtaposition of the sanctity of places and time from the medieval sources. Ibn Taymiyya, who often voices singular views, stands out in this context as well, by distinguishing between rituals of place and time, and by defining the first as more offensive to the Islamic conception of tawhid (monotheism) than the latter (to the exclusion of the prescribed hajj), as they more closely resemble pagan rites. He is one of very few scholars to make such a comparison2 and to ciriticise so vehemently the very sanctification of times and places, other than those explicitly pronounced as sacred in the Qurʾan. Most Muslims of his generation held a very different view of sacred topography and of the religious calendar, identifying multiple noble and blessed settings in both.

Clearly, sacred place and time were not competing categories in the religious experience of Muslims in the medieval Middle East.

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Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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