Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes - (Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section 1; The Near and Middle East) (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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).