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Abstract
Much of the literature on “Islamic gardens” focuses on artistic and architectural features or religious symbolism attributed to the influence of Islamic beliefs and civilization. This study seeks to expand the scope of intellectual inquiry beyond traditional motifs and recurrent features to investigate the potential influence of Islamic ethical values on creating gardens. Following a brief overview of the history of “Islamic gardens” and a short survey of Qurʾānic terms denoting earthly and paradisiacal gardens, this research highlights theological and ethical principles derived from four Qurʾānic narratives featuring earthly gardens, natural landscapes and non-human creation. These principles are, then, incorporated into a holistic ethical framework for creating gardens that harmonizes theocentric, anthropocentric, and ecocentric priorities. This framework prioritizes faithfulness to God while upholding both serving humanity and safeguarding natural habitats and ecosystems as ethical imperatives and mutually reinforcing investments with spiritual consequences in this life and the hereafter. This study also presents several garden models (particularly botanic gardens and community gardens) considered suitable for adopting and applying the proposed tripartite framework. The last section of this study explores how Islamic institutions, including mosques and charitable organizations, can utilize the tripartite framework to create gardens and green spaces that contribute to fulfilling a range of spiritual, social and environmental objectives.
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Religious booklets formed a substantial part of the boom in commercial publishing and print culture in nineteenth and early-twentieth north India, cheaply available and widely reprinted by multiple publishers. This essay considers two popular texts that allow us to trace some of the range and of the linguistic and emotional contours of this production. Alif Be alphabet poems gesture towards the earlier history of Muslim oral traditions in north India. Short Wafātnāma verse narratives on the death of the Prophet Muhammad, conversely, were most likely produced by authors connected to Sunni reform movements and sought to focus their devotion on the Prophet alone.
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By the late nineteenth century, when printing press was popular across the world. In South Asia, there was increased production and dissemination of Tamil and Malayalam vernacular materials in Arabic script. This intermarriage of local languages with a cosmopolitan script was part of a larger trend of the time, and in South India those were advanced by Arabic-Malayalam and Arabic-Tamil literatures (also referred as Malabari and Arwī respectively). Hundreds of texts printed annually at the prime centres of Islamic printing on both Malabar and Coromandel coasts were circulated among mobile and immobile communities of the region across the Indian Ocean, Pacific and Atlantic littorals. The reach and impact of such vernacular printings are yet to be explored thoroughly, for these materials have been spread across several formal and informal collections and there has not been any systematic attempt to identify or catalogue them. In this article, I focus on uncatalogued Arabic-Malayalam materials at the British Library London on which I have been working on in the last few years. These materials from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries help us understand the history of the region, religion and printing. After a brief historical overview, I focus on some major features, themes, trends, places, and people in about 150 texts I consulted, and which I discuss in relation to broader histories of Arabic-Malayalam tradition.
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Songbooks were an especially popular product in the colonial-era book industry of northern India. From cheap chapbooks to multi-volume tomes, collections of lyrics covered a range of tastes and genres, appealing to different social settings and performance practices. This article excavates the worlds of music-making invoked by these books through the case study of khemṭā. The khemṭā dancing girl was a low-status performer, associated with the playboy culture of early-nineteenth century Calcutta. Khemṭā lyrics were considered especially salacious and sensual, and the common view today is that the genre was geared towards titillation rather than artistry. Following the exile of Wajid ʿAli Shah of Awadh (r. 1847–1856) to Calcutta, this genre began to be choreographed and performed in the royal court, and the former king began to collect – and compose his own – khemṭā lyrics. By the late nineteenth century, khemṭā dancers were performing at fairs across northern India, and their verses were being compiled and printed in different scripts and languages.
Khemṭā’s increasing popularity challenges the general impression of the late nineteenth century as a period of rising conservatism posed against “decadent” literary and musical forms. This view of the period presents an obstacle to making sense of the activities of Muslim lyricists, choreographers, dancers, and songbook editors. Countering this narrative, this article considers how khemṭā was printed, read, sung, and danced, and the modes of listening and arousal embedded in the printed song text.
Abstract
The development of prenatal diagnosis technologies has created challenging ethical situations and raised complex ethical questions. The hardest among these is the question of whether to continue or terminate pregnancies due to fetal anomalies. This article examines the Islamic methodological approaches that are employed to resolve contemporary issues pertaining to prenatal diagnosis and termination of pregnancy due to fetal anomaly. The objective is, firstly, to understand on which basis the various Islamic views and perspectives have been constructed, and secondly, to assess the rules and principles that Muslim jurists apply to arrive at decisions regarding prenatal diagnosis and termination of pregnancy across the different schools of thought. This helps in identifying the methodological characteristics of contemporary Islamic discourse on prenatal diagnosis and termination of pregnancy, and recognizing existing gaps. This methodological analysis aspires to generate further and richer discussion on how to develop thorough ethical approaches to prenatal diagnosis and termination of pregnancy due to fetal anomaly with the aim of advancing antenatal care for Muslim patients. Key concepts and principles within Islamic theology, law, and ethics are explored.
Volume 3, Prophetic Piety: Individual and Collective Manifestations
This third collective volume of the series The Presence of the Prophet explores the expressions of piety and devotion to the person of the Prophet and their individual and collective significance in early modern and modern times. The authors provide a rich collection of regional case studies on how the Prophet’s presence and aura are individually and collectively evoked in dreams, visions, and prayers, in the performance of poetry in his praise, in the devotion to relics related to him, and in the celebration of his birthday. They also highlight the role of the Prophetic figure in the identity formation of young Muslims and cover the controversies and compromises which nowadays shape the devotional practices centered on the Prophet.
Contributors
Nelly Amri, Emma Aubin-Boltanski, Sana Chavoshian, Rachida Chih, Vincent Geisser, Denis Gril, Mohamed Amine Hamidoune, David Jordan, Hanan Karam, Kai Kresse, Jamal Malik,Youssef Nouiouar, Luca Patrizi, Thomas Pierret, Stefan Reichmuth, Youssouf T. Sangaré, Besnik Sinani, Fabio Vicini and Ines Weinrich.
Contributors
Nelly Amri, Emma Aubin-Boltanski, Sana Chavoshian, Rachida Chih, Vincent Geisser, Denis Gril, Mohamed Amine Hamidoune, David Jordan, Hanan Karam, Kai Kresse, Jamal Malik,Youssef Nouiouar, Luca Patrizi, Thomas Pierret, Stefan Reichmuth, Youssouf T. Sangaré, Besnik Sinani, Fabio Vicini and Ines Weinrich.
Volume 3, Prophetic Piety: Individual and Collective Manifestations
This third collective volume of the series The Presence of the Prophet explores the expressions of piety and devotion to the person of the Prophet and their individual and collective significance in early modern and modern times. The authors provide a rich collection of regional case studies on how the Prophet’s presence and aura are individually and collectively evoked in dreams, visions, and prayers, in the performance of poetry in his praise, in the devotion to relics related to him, and in the celebration of his birthday. They also highlight the role of the Prophetic figure in the identity formation of young Muslims and cover the controversies and compromises which nowadays shape the devotional practices centered on the Prophet.
Contributors
Nelly Amri, Emma Aubin-Boltanski, Sana Chavoshian, Rachida Chih, Vincent Geisser, Denis Gril, Mohamed Amine Hamidoune, David Jordan, Hanan Karam, Kai Kresse, Jamal Malik,Youssef Nouiouar, Luca Patrizi, Thomas Pierret, Stefan Reichmuth, Youssouf T. Sangaré, Besnik Sinani, Fabio Vicini and Ines Weinrich.
Contributors
Nelly Amri, Emma Aubin-Boltanski, Sana Chavoshian, Rachida Chih, Vincent Geisser, Denis Gril, Mohamed Amine Hamidoune, David Jordan, Hanan Karam, Kai Kresse, Jamal Malik,Youssef Nouiouar, Luca Patrizi, Thomas Pierret, Stefan Reichmuth, Youssouf T. Sangaré, Besnik Sinani, Fabio Vicini and Ines Weinrich.
Author:
Abstract
The shift in the ṣalāt ʿalā al-nabī, from an individual or initiatory form of piety to a regular and collective pious practice, marks a turning point in the history of devotion to the Prophet. By presenting and analyzing a collection of majālis of prayer on the Prophet composed by Barakāt b. Aḥmad al-ʿArūsī [al-Qusanṭīnī] (d. circa 897/1492), an Ifrīqiyan ‘ālim sūfī, in 877/1473, shortly after the Dalāʾil al-khayrāt by al-Jazūlī (d. 869/1465), the present chapter aims to show that the Maghreb played an unsuspected and little-known part in this shift. It examines the early functions of this collection, providing evidence of one of the first assemblies of prayer on the Prophet in this part of the Muslim world, on its modern and contemporary circulation and uses, and on the long career of this book of Prophetic piety. It also casts light on its different motifs and impulses, and on the love, veneration and hope for the Prophet expressed by these poems of praise and prayer. Their role in imploring the Prophet for worldly succour and for intercession at Judgement Day are equally highlighted, as well as the role played by Sufism in the perpetuation and spread of such assemblies.
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This chapter examines the evolution of Chérif Ousmane Madani Haïdara’s theological discourse, focusing on the theme of devotion to the Prophet and the Ahl al-bayt in his preaching, from the 1970s to the present day. Devotion to the Prophet and to his family is a religious obligation: this is one of the principal ideas in the theology elaborated by Chérif Ousmane Madani Haïdara (born in 1955). Before reaching this conclusion and elaborating the theoretical framework supporting it, in the 1970s this major figure in Mali’s contemporary religious landscape relied first on the book al-Niʿma al-kubrā of Ibn Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, to justify the celebration of Mawlid al-nabawī. Then, during the 1980s to 1990s, he referred to Mawlid al-Munāwī to highlight the greatness and unparalleled spiritual elevation of Prophet Muḥammad, a greatness that justifies his veneration by the faithful. More recently, and based on the Qurʾānic text and ḥadīths, he supported the idea that this veneration is a religious obligation (farīḍa) in the same way as canonical prayer, zakāt, etc. This discourse on the veneration of the Prophet and his family is part of a Malian religious landscape that has been in continuous evolution since the 1970s, with Haïdara as one of its main actors.