Searching for the Green Man: Researching Pilgrimage in Israel/Palestine and Egypt

This article examines contemporary pilgrimage in Israel / Palestine and Egypt, based upon field work conducted December 2017-February 2018 and personal narrative. My argument is twofold: first, I contend that Pilgrimage Studies allows scholars to move beyond reductive labels and consider the implicit ‘messiness’ of religious faith and ritual praxis. I introduce the Islamic al-Khidr and Moses story from Qur’an 18.60-82, as an interpretative model, suggesting that rigid categorization—especially concerning religious identity and sectarian division—promotes a false narrative of monolithic faith traditions that, upon closer examination, does not fully exist. Second, by referencing my ethnographic experiences, I consider pilgrimage as fundamentally located in the body, often fraught with moral ambiguity and physical trauma

Re-membering the Holy Family in Islamic Cairo

This paper examines the veneration of the Prophet Muhammad’s Holy Family, both historically and today. The paper draws upon affect theory and trauma studies to move beyond questions of historical/textual criticism to consider what ‘visiting’ the Holy Family means to their audiences. Affect theory compels us to imagine what bodies (both individual and social) experience, feel, and emote in story-telling and ritual performance within sacred space. Trauma studies likewise accentuates what bodies experience and feel, especially in deeply distressing physical or psychic struggles. Trauma studies, particularly, encourages us to focus on the power of ‘story’ in shaping individual (and social) identities, recognizing that, in many ways, we are a product of the stories we tell ourselves (and those society tells us). When approaching the Holy Family with these questions in mind, I consider (more specifically): what attracts practitioners and pilgrims to sacred spaces dedicated to broken bodies, and what do they experience therein? To answer such questions, I begin by surveying early medieval hadith and hagiographies that describe the Family’s lives and legacies, paying particular attention to al-Sayyida Zaynab and al-Husayn (the Prophet Muhammad’s grandchildren). I consider a variety of pilgrimage (or ‘visitation’) rituals, including story-telling and emotional elegies that ‘re-member’ the Family’s traumas, recognizable by most human beings as lived by mothers, fathers, sons, sisters, and kin groups. I also consider embodied ritual performances that link practitioners with the Family’s own bodies/relics through full sensory engagement (smelling, tasting, and feeling). Finally, the paper complements historical investigation (primarily hagiographies and pilgrimage journals) with recent fieldwork conducted at al-Sayyida Zaynab and al-Husayn mosques in 2019 and 2021. Through interviews and observation, I consider the embodied ritual performances within the shrine rooms that often disrupt traditional gender expectations

Brown Bag Book Club: G. Willow Wilson\u27s \u3cem\u3eMs. Marvel\u3c/em\u3e

A discussion of G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel [ISBN 978-0785190219], led by Dr. Mary Thurlkill, UM Department of Philosophy and Religion

Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam

Medieval scholars and cultural historians have recently turned their attention to the question of “smells” and what olfactory sensations reveal about society in general and holiness in particular. Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam contributes to that conversation, explaining how early Christians and Muslims linked the “sweet smell of sanctity” with ideals of the body and sexuality; created boundaries and sacred space; and imagined their emerging communal identity. Most importantly, scent—itself transgressive and difficult to control—signaled transition and transformation between categories of meaning. Christian and Islamic authors distinguished their own fragrant ethical and theological ideals against the stench of oppositional heresy and moral depravity. Orthodox Christians ridiculed their ‘stinking’ Arian neighbors, and Muslims denounced the ‘reeking’ corruption of Umayyad and Abbasid decadence. Through the mouths of saints and prophets, patriarchal authors labeled perfumed women as existential threats to vulnerable men and consigned them to enclosed, private space for their protection as well as society’s. At the same time, theologians praised both men and women who purified and transformed their bodies into aromatic offerings to God. Both Christian and Muslim pilgrims venerated sainted men and women with perfumed offerings at tombstones; indeed, Christians and Muslims often worshipped together, honoring common heroes such as Abraham, Moses, and Jonah. Sacred Scents begins by surveying aroma’s quotidian functions in Roman and pre-Islamic cultural milieus within homes, temples, poetry, kitchens, and medicines. Existing scholarship tends to frame ‘scent’ as something available only to the wealthy or elite; however, perfumes, spices, and incense wafted through the lives of most early Christians and Muslims. It ends by examining both traditions’ views of Paradise, identified as the archetypal Garden and source of all perfumes and sweet smells. Both Christian and Islamic texts explain Adam and Eve’s profound grief at losing access to these heavenly aromas and celebrate God’s mercy in allowing earthly remembrances. Sacred scent thus prompts humanity’s grief for what was lost and the yearning for paradisiacal transformation still to come.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/libarts_book/1060/thumbnail.jp

"Dove of the Church": Saint Columba from Seventh- and Sixteenth-Century Perspectives

[No abstract

Chosen among Women: Mary and Fatima in Medieval Christianity and Shi`ite Islam

Chosen among Women: Mary and Fatima in Medieval Christianity and Shi`ite Islam combines historical analysis with the tools of gender studies and religious studies to compare the roles of the Virgin Mary in medieval Christianity with those of Fatima, daughter of the prophet Muhammad, in Shi`ite Islam. The book explores the proliferation of Marian imagery in Late Antiquity through the Church fathers and popular hagiography. It examines how Merovingian authors assimilated powerful queens and abbesses to a Marian prototype to articulate their political significance and, at the same time, censure holy women\u27s public charisma. Mary Thurlkill focuses as well on the importance of Fatima in the evolution of Shi`ite identity throughout the Middle East. She examines how scholars such as Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi advertised Fatima as a symbol of the Shi`ite holy family and its glorified status in paradise, while simultaneously binding her as a mother to the domestic sphere and patriarchal authority. This important comparative look at feminine ideals in both Shi`ite Islam and medieval Christianity is of relevance and value in the modern world, and it will be welcomed by scholars and students of Islam, comparative religion, medieval Christianity, and gender studies.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/libarts_book/1089/thumbnail.jp

"Dove of the Church": Saint Columba from Seventh- and Sixteenth-Century Perspectives

[No abstract