7 - Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

Summary

Chapter Seven explores how local histories bind their cities to prophetic authority through sites of pious visitation (ziyārat) and other sources of blessing or sacred power (baraka). It assesses the impact of physical interment of sacred bodies as sites of pious visitation (ziyārat) or other manifestations of blessing or sacred power (baraka). Pious visitations take Muslims to the burial places of saints, the Prophet’s descendants, and other pious individuals whose tomb, home, or former prayer cells are sources of baraka. These types of visitation all tie prophetic legacy to a specific place. This chapter analyzes the sacred in the urban landscape and places local histories and their claims to prophetic authority, piety, and sanctity in the context of broader scholarship on the urban environment in the Islamic world. This section also situates the discussion of pious visitation and sacred power within the framework of material culture in the medieval Islamic world and in the context of early Christianity and medieval European Christianity. This chapter analyzes pious visitation and sacred power from the perspectives of material culture, memory, power, metanarrative, semiotics, and hybrid identities.