Medieval Jerusalem And Islamic Worship

"Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship" provides fascinating new information about the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, rituals and pilgrimage to these places during the early Muslim period. It is based primarily on early primary Arabic sources, many of which have not yet been published.

Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship treats of the holy sites of the Muslims in Jerusalem and the ceremonies and pilgrimage to these places during the early Muslim period. It is based primarily on primary Arabic sources, some of which have been used for the first time. Emphasis is given to the works of “Literature in Praise of Jerusalem”, an important and unique source for the history and topography of the city. Many of the topics in this book have never been dealt with before, e.g. the detailed description of the first known guide for the Muslim pilgrim to Jerusalem, that dates from the 11th century, and the supplementary discussion of the 16th-century guide. Both guides are still in manuscript and have never been published.

Medieval Jerusalem examines an old question that has recently surfaced and given rise to spirited discussion among Islamic historians and archeologists: what role did a city revered for its holiness play in the unfolding politics of the early Islamic period? Was there an historic moment when the city, holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, may have been considered as the administrative center of a vast Islamic world, as some scholars on early Islam have recently claimed? Medieval Jerusalem also emphasizes the city’s evolution as a revered Islamic religious site comparable to the holy cities Mecca and Medina. Examining Muslim historiography and religious lore in light of Jewish traditions about the city, Jacob Lassner points out how these reworked Jewish traditions and the imposing monumental Islamic architecture of the city were meant to demonstrate that Islam had superseded Judaism and Christianity as the religion for all monotheists. He interrogates the literary sources of medieval Islamic historiography and their modern interpreters as if they were witnesses in a court of law, and applies the same method for the arguments about the monuments of the city’s material culture, including the great archaeological discoveries along the south wall of the ancient Temple Mount. This book will be of interest to a broad range of readers given the significance of the city in the current politics of the Near East. It will in part serve as a corrective to narratives of Jerusalem’s past that are currently popular for scholarly and political reasons.

The purpose of this book is to draw attention to the sites of life, politics and culture where current and past generations of the Islamic world have made their mark. Unlike many previous volumes dealing with the city in the Islamic world, this one has been expanded not only to include snapshots of historical fabric, but also to deal with the transformation of this fabric into modern and contemporary urban entities. Salma Khadra Jayyusi was awarded Cultural Personality of the Year by the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for her profound contribution to Arabic literature and culture in 2020. The paperback edition of The City in the Islamic World was published to celebrate the occasion.

Explores life in eleventh-century Jerusalem for the ruling Muslims, as well as "The Peoples of the Book," Christians and Jews, who came as pilgrims or lived there.

This book offers a fresh perspective on religious culture in the medieval Middle East. It investigates the ways Muslims thought about and practiced at sacred spaces and in sacred times through two detailed case studies: the shrines in honour of the head of al-Husayn (the martyred grandson of the Prophet), and the holy month of Rajab. The changing expressions of the veneration of the shrine and month are followed from the formative period of Islam until the late Mamluk period, paying attention to historical contexts and power relations. Readers will find interest in the attempt to integrate the two perspectives synchronically and diachronically, in a discussion of the relationship between the sanctification of space and time in individual and communal piety, and in the religious literature of the period.

Examines the socio-cultural history of the regions where Islam took hold between the 7th and 16th century. This two-volume work contains 700 alphabetically arranged entries, and provides a portrait of Islamic civilization. It is of use in understanding the roots of Islamic society as well to explore the culture of medieval civilization.

Contains 13 essays which encompass just over four-and-a-half centuries of the thousands of years of Jerusalem's past--from the Muslim conquest in 638 until the eve of the Crusader onslaught in 1099. Topics include the physical infrastructure, the authorities and the local population, art and architecture in the early Islamic period, the temple and the city in liturgical Hebrew, Christian attitudes towards Jerusalem in the early middle ages, the Muslim view of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva of Eretz Israel. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR