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Adam Bursi, "Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
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An interview with Adam Bursi
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A
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B
Hello and welcome to another new episode of New Books and Islamic Studies, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm one of your co hosts, Shobana Xavier. Thank you so much for joining us today and I hope you're safe and well wherever you are. On today's episode, we are joined by Adam Bursi, who is an editorial assistant at Fortress Press, to discuss his new book, Traces of the Prophets, Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islamic, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2024. Using writings of early Muslims, Bursi recovers an important landscape of history of material objects, especially relics and tombs of prophetic figures as they were conceptualized in the 8th and 9th centuries. The book draws from various genres of writings, including biographies, hagiographies, hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad, Quran commentaries or juristic compilations to capture the tensions and also pract around tombs and relic veneration, especially to establish boundaries around similar pious practices as they unfolded amongst Jewish and Christian communities at the same time in the Near East. In the process, we learned that there were debates with regards to post mortem traces of Muhammad's tomb, which also impacted how spaces associated with him, such as a tree or a minbar, were perceived, as well as other prophetic figures like Ibrahim, Abraham or Daniel. Such examples raise conceptual questions around ideas of absence and presence in the bodies, and also prophetic figures, capacity to give intercession. In mapping these early debates and narratives, Bursi masterfully captures the dense relationships that early Muslims had with holy bodies and sacred spaces, be it with giant footprints and relic thievery and ideas of the afterlife. The book will be of interest to scholars who are interested in early Islamic history, but also scholars who work on contemporary shrine cultures. In our conversation today, we discussed some of Bursi's approaches to textual analysis with some of the sources that he engaged with for this book. What the Prophet Muhammad said about tomb and relic veneration, relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, particularly in terms of how they approach bodies and relics and notions of piety, intercession, and much, much more. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Adam Bursi about his new book, Traces of the Prophets, Relic and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam. Hi Adam, thank you so much for joining us on the new Books in Islamic Studies podcast. How are you doing?
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C
Good, thank you.
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B
Shobana, I'm really excited to talk to you about your new book, Traces of the Prophets. I just finished reading it, and it's fabulous. You did a lot of intense work there, so I'm really happy to process it all with you. As you know, we have a tradition on the podcast to know a little bit about who you are, especially your intellectual journey and what led you to writing this particular book.
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C
Yeah, sure. So how far back to should I go to undergrad or grad school or.
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B
Whatever speaks to you at the moment? So whatever you feel like is important for our listeners?
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C
Okay, sure. Yeah. So I went to undergrad at Kenyan College in Ohio in the US And I was a classics major and a religious studies minor. And as religious studies minor, I studied with Vernon Schubel and Nurtin Kilik Schubel, who are the resident experts in Islam there. And both of them really emphasize, like, the, the diversity of Islam as a, as a religious tradition, both historically and, and contemporaneously. But as a classics major, I studied Greek and Latin and I did a lot of work with, like, ancient Mediterranean religions. And then I went to grad school at Cornell University and I studied in the Near Eastern studies department. And I was really interested in the, the intersections and, and interactions between Jews and Christians and Muslims in the centuries that, that we call Late Antiquity, which were really like a foundational time period for all three religious traditions. So at Cornell, I spent a lot of time studying, like, Syriac and Hebrew and especially Arabic. And I had come in sort of expecting to focus on Syriac Christian literature with Kim Haynes Eitzen. But he ended up doing a lot more with Arabic and early Islam with David Powers and Ross Brann and Shaka Tarawa and Winder Yunus. But at the same time, while I was approaching these texts using tools that I'd gained from the sort of theoretical perspectives of studying late antiquity with Kim in Zeitzen. And I think it helped because that's a field that sort of incorporated more theoretically inflected methodologies or perspectives than have then sort of historically have been the case in the study of early Islam. And then my dissertation at Cornell was looking at the ways that bodies were used by Jews, Christians and Muslims in late antiquity and sort of rhetorically and ritually distinguishing between, like, licit practice or, you know, religion and illicit magic or sorcery. And so the book project is sort of a very long adaptation of that dissertation project, focusing less on magic and more on relics, which were a component of the dissertation project. But I saw that there was, like, enough material to sort of focus on that aspect or that ritual and rhetorical world of late antique religious practice in Islam particularly.
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B
That's great. As you're talking, I could see all the pieces coming together in terms of the book, especially in terms of the diversity of primary sources you engage with. I was really impressed because they weren't just Sunni sources. They were she. They were smiley. And I really valued that. And so I could see that as being part of your training and pedigree and also the linguistics that you bring to this. I was really amazed by your sources and kind of the archive that you were working with. And I'm not a textual person, so I often am so curious about scholars who do that kind of historical work and engage archives and texts. Like, what was your process? Like, what kind of questions do you ask? Or, like, what are you looking for when you're looking at, let's say, chronic commentary or hadith traditions, which you use a lot, or hagiography. So these stories associated with kind of holy figures, there's, like, a range of genre of texts you're using. So, like, how does Adam show up to those texts? And, like, what are you looking for, ultimately?
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C
Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. And I mean, like, I would say that, you know, in all honesty, I'm definitely one of the people that have been assisted by the usage of, like, digital search methods. Like, so, you know what? I'm. I try to. I've tried to incorporate as many early texts as I. As I Could, you know, and so, I mean, one of the sort of interesting and maybe difficult things about the study of early Islam is that like the, the texts, you know, often there's a sort of like cross genre function of a lot of these texts where say, like a particular hadith or reports in Arabic might show up in, in a Quran commentary, but then also show up in historical texts and you know, juristic texts and lots of different places. So you can't, you can just focus on say, one genre of literature. But I think that you probably are going to be missing a lot of stuff if you just do that. And that, that's. And that to, to, to an extent is also true. You know, not just looking at Sunni texts, but also looking at shi and any body text to, to a lesser extent. So for me, yeah, like, there are definitely like places where I would start to, you know, because often say like Bukhari's Sahi is like a huge text. So where do you start looking? So there would be places where I might start looking for texts having to do with say, the hairs of the prophet as, as relics. And you would kind of, in some ways it would not always be where, where you might expect them. So there's material in the section of like the boss chapter, like the chapter on clothing, where there's material about the way that the prophet wore his hair, like whether he dyed it or not. But interestingly enough, like, that's also where we get this really interesting hadith about someone using the prophet's hair after his death as a sort of like healing object, a sort of object of power that was able to dispense healing when it was introduced into water and someone would then drink that water. So all to say, like, yeah, there wasn't like, there's not just one place to look for this stuff, but you kind of have to look around. There's no, there's not often say a chapter on relic practices or something like that. Although in some particularly later texts after the 10th or 11th century, I would say in particular there start to be like, more focused attention. But in the earlier period it seemed like this was just something that, yeah, I might get a stray mention here or there. In the muwatta of Malak IBN Anas, which is quite early hadith collection, there is like, there's different recensions of that text, but there often is like a chapter on greeting the prophet and this will be a place where you might have stuff about what you should do when, when you're at the prophet's tomb for Example in a lot of ways, yeah, there's just a lot of digging that goes on in terms of like just finding stray references here and there and, and yeah, so it's, it's difficult, but yeah, hopefully you find, you turn up things.
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B
You found some amazing things. I mean, I think one of the things that's really fascinating is there are just like the stories of giants and footprints and you know, it's just kind of miraculous, kind of magical things. It sounds in some sections of your earlier work before we get into some of the nitty gritty and some of the chapters kind of taking a look from bird's eye perspective, I guess what is kind of the broader intervention your work is making or what are you responding to before we get into kind of, I guess the case studies in some ways the arguments you make for it.
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C
Yeah, sure. So I would say broadly speaking. So my background, yeah, like I said, is in the study of late antique religions. And you know, a lot of scholarship over the last several decades has been situating the emergence of Islam within that background of the late antique near east and understanding the ways that early Muslims were in conversation with Jews and Christians and other religious communities. And the way that we can often situate, we can better understand early Islamic history by situating it within this context. And this is something that, you know, you find lot. There's lots of books about, you know, the way the books and articles about the way that we can understand say early Islamic literature through a late antique lens, you know, early Islamic hagiography or historiography or you know, that literature. But also like understanding early Islamic art from the perspective of the late anti near east and the ways that say the Dome of the Rock uses iconography or mosaic techniques that we can understand from within the context of the late antique world. So the sound, the surrounding religious and social and political history gives us a perspective on early Islamic phenomena. But one of the things that you know, has been, has been understudied is the extent to which relic practices were part of early Muslims religious lives. And often this, this has been understood as a reflection of Islam being a tradition that, that, that discourages and in fact has nothing to do with, with relic and tomb veneration. Right. So you know, we, I, many of us have probably heard this idea that, you know, this is not something that Muslims do either you know, venerating relics or going to visit tombs. And to the extent that it is, it's sort of marginalized as like popular religion or the religion of like unintelligent people. Or not. Not the. Not the elite proper Islam of sort of the scholars, the ulama. So all of this despite the fact that there's lots of evidence once we start looking for it. And what was interesting to me was in terms of like, because of, you know, the work that I've done with. With late anti Christianity and, and later and late antique Judaism as well, that, you know, relic and tomb worship was like very much part of the late antique world. So this was often seen as like a break that early. That was that early Islam had with the late antique world was in this particular area of religious ritual practice was in not doing things related to relic and tomb generation. But once they actually started to look at sources, it seemed like there was like a pretty good amount of evidence that there were a good number of Muslims that found relic and tombs generation as like, you know, perhaps not the. The key part of their religious practice as Muslims, but certainly a component part of it. And so the book is. Is trying to situate that this was something that early Muslims were doing at the same time that there certainly was also a rhetoric that said Muslims shouldn't do this. So, so looking at the ways in which Red Lake veneration, tomb veneration and the rejection thereof, like all of this stuff is mixed up in the ways that Muslims were defining themselves in their community in conversation with Christians and Jews and what they described as Christian and Jewish practice and what should or shouldn't be Muslim practice.
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B
And I think your capacity and ability to do like a broad stroke of what's happening in Jewish and Christian context and also early Muslim communities is one of the strengths. Huge contributions of the book for listeners and for maybe contemporary scholars like me, what kind of are basically the periods we're dealing with, like you're looking at 8th 9th century. Right. Is that. That's what you're kind of classifying as late antique or.
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C
Yeah, right. So I mean, so the. Yes, exactly.
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B
Right. This is a basic question.
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C
Yeah. No, no, but it's good because like, so one of the difficulties and one of the sort of criticisms I can imagine that reviewers might have or at least, you know, problematizing some of what I'm doing is the fact that a difficulty in studying early Islam is that we don't have sources for say, like that are contemporaneous with literary sources that are contemporaneous with like the Prophet Muhammad and the companions. Right. So a lot of the sources that I'm looking at, not exclusively, but like a good number of them are, you know, hadiths about the prophet or hadith, like reports about the companions, companions behavior and the generation immediately following them as well. And these are often embedded in texts that are from, yeah, perhaps the 8th or 9th century, but often, you know, later than that, but are describing the 8th and 9th centuries. And so this is a, you know, this is, this is just, it is a problem and you know, it's a problem that historians often run, run into is you know, the, the source critical question of like, how do you deal with text like this? And it, you know, one of the benefits over the last, you know, several 20 years or so has been a sort of text critical methodology that's looked at. It's called the isnan kumatin technique of like combining the isnads of hadiths with analyzing the, the reports, the text of the reports themselves to say, okay, can we, when we line up all the different versions of say a hadith of the Prophet, can we, you know, can we say something about like where it's what, what, what geographical area it's circulating? Is there like a time and place where it seems to emerge from? Is there a time and place where say like important differences in the text start to come up? So does the prophet say you, you should visit his tomb in this time and place versus like you shouldn't? Right. Does that indicate something? Perhaps not about what the Prophet himself said, but what about like certain communities in the early Islamic world are saying? Right, so yeah, the, the period that I'm mostly Examining is the 8th and the 9th centuries, as you said, though incorporating, certainly incorporating texts that are, that are from after that time period as well.
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B
And the first chapter really kind of sets up some of the basic stuff, but also you get into some hadith traditions and what the Prophet Muhammad himself kind of about what one can and not one can and cannot do around relic veneration. And one of the things that comes up in this chapter, there's a lot of things that come up, but this kind of how relic veneration also was kind of a boundary setting move by some early Muslim communities, especially as you're saying, in terms of distinguishing from Jewish and Christian communities. So you're also kind of dealing with that throughout the book. But so yeah, maybe we could talk a little bit about what did the Prophet say? And then perhaps this other kind of meta version of like, well, how do we read some of these sources? Maybe because these are kind of, you know, really maybe polemical tools to distinguish and identify what the boundaries about being Muslim are against kind of the near east you're dealing with, which is really against Jews and Christians too. Right? Yeah.
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C
Right. Yeah.
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B
So, okay, that's your entire chapter there. But yeah, maybe you could just pick out a couple of things that you might want the listeners to know. There's no way that you'll be able to kind of keep all of it up for us.
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C
But, yeah, no, thank you for. Yeah, like setting that up. So, yeah. So the chapter sort of starts out and this. I had initially sort of started the whole book with this material because I thought it was like a really good entry point. But I ended up moving it is that there's this hadith where. Or a set of hadiths where the prophet's on his deathbed and he says in different versions, either says, you know, drive the Jews and Christians, excuse me, out of the Arabian Peninsula because they've taken the tombs of their prophets as. As. As massage it or mosques. And so this was interesting to me in terms of, you know, both. There's like this really strong rhetorical move that's made in sort of situating this at the end of the prophet's life and like making this. One of the final things that the prophet says is like, you know, not only distinguishing Muslims from Jews and Christians because he. In some versions, he says, I want the whole, you know, the whole of the Arabian Peninsula to be Muslim. Right. So he does this thing where he. There's this creation or this distinction of a Muslim religious community from Jews and Christians. There's also this distinguishing of sacred space where the. The Arabian Peninsula, or in some versions it's the Hijaz. And saying this should be a purely Muslim community or a purely Muslim space distinct from Jews and Christians or ABs. Without Jews and Christians. And in tying that creation of a Muslim community to the absence of mosques on prophets, tombs, or that the. The thing that's made the Jews and Christians worth kicking out of the Arabic, the Arabian Peninsula is there building to building mosques on the tombs of their prophets. Right. And so this. This is a hadith that often gets cited as like, you know, the sort of like classical Muslim position about like tomb. Tomb veneration, tomb worship, building mosques on top of prophets, tombs. And it's certainly there within the sources and it gets cited by a lot of later people like, Like Ibn Taymiyyah, you know, voices that are very critical of relic and tomb veneration within Islamic. But of course, when we look at lots of other sources, there's lots of evidence, both literarily and then even in. In the archaeological record that that Muslims are, are building, are building mosques on, on the tombs of, of their prophets or you know, in the, in the case of the Prophet's mosque in Medina, they're incorporating the Prophet's tomb into the mosque space in a certain way or at least into the, the greater mosque space. But also, you know, this was something that, it was important for my reviewers that I, that I incorporate was looking at some of the archaeological evidence that we have too where at the mosque at Rusafa that's, that's built by one of the last Umayyad caliphs. There's this incorporation of the, the relics of the Christian saint Sergius into, not into the mosque but directly adjacent to the mosque. And many scholars have argued that it seems as though he's or the construction of this mosque space was like very much trying to draw upon the sort of sacred aura of the location of the relics there. And then in the case of the Cathisma Church, which is a location that's just south of Jerusalem in Palestine, this location that in the, starting in the, I think the fifth or sixth centuries, I can't remember, I can't remember exactly was a, as an important Christian sanctuary because it was believed to be a spot where Mary had sat. So the, the, it's called the Cathesma Church because the word cathedral means seat or chair and in Greek. And it was believed to be a spot where Mary had either sat or in some traditions maybe even the spot where she'd actually given birth to Jesus. And there's archaeological evidence that this was a holy space that was taken up by Muslims in, in the 8th century. These are the incorporation of a mihrab indicating, you know, indicating the importance of prayer towards Mecca and, and the building of, or the incorporation of a mosaic floor in this time period that has some, some pretty clear Islamic valences to, to the story of Jesus birth that's told in the Quran. And also some overlaps with some, some of the Dome of the Rock imagery. So basically alongside this, this Hadith tradition that does have the Prophet saying you should not be doing these things, there's a lot of literary evidence also of Muslims doing precisely pricely this, this contra thing as well as some material evidence that it was also happening.
- [25:24]
B
Yeah, fabulous. And you know, I think chapter two and three look at other prophetic figures which I loved because it's just not about veneration towards the Prophet Muhammad. And this is kind of also where you're, there's like boundary negotiation with other traditions like Jewish Christian traditions who may have Shared like prophecy with these figures. The Maqam Ibrahim, I think, is chapter two. And you'd start off with the story of this figure called George. And so can you tell us a little bit about George and what he was trying to say? Deal and why?
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C
Yeah, it's this, it's this kind of strange story that I, I've not found except in one later history of, of Mecca. But it shows up in Al's Makkah, which is a text from the 9th century, and it's basically the story of this guy named Jirges in, in Arabic or George in English, who is. It's ambiguous in the, it's intentionally ambiguous in the original Arabic it says he was either a Jew or a Christian and he came to Mecca. I'm not sure why, but he became a Muslim while he was there. And that night he stole the Maqam. Well, the next day the Maqam Ibrahim was discovered stolen. And then the people in Mecca started to look for it and they found it in George's possession. And they asked, why did you do this? And he said, well, I wanted to bring it to the king of Rome or the king of Rome, so the Byzantine emperor. And as a result of his theft, he's killed. And that's where the story ends. And it's just sort of, you know, you could just see it as a sort of like, kind of strange little, little local flavor about things that were happening in Mecca. But to me, it was interesting in terms of the parallels you can draw between this rather strange Islamic story and a lot of Christian stories from late antiquity about the theft of relics, about people that out of great piety and wanting to have the relic for their own or to bring it to a place where they feel like it would receive the, the veneration that it's due, they will, you know, steal a relic. And, and this is a whole genre of, of late antique and medieval Christian literature. And. Yeah, so I was interested in sort of like situating this, this Islamic story about the theft of the Maqam Ibrahim, which, you know, I, I think a lot of listeners probably already know. But for those that don't, the Maqam Ibrahim is this stone with a set of footprints in it that according to tradition is the. It work is a set of miraculously inscribed footprints that the prophet Ibrahim or Abraham. These footprints were sort of, you know, miraculously set into stone at the moment that are during the time when the prophet Abraham was constructing the Kaaba in Mecca with his, with his son Ishmael. And so There's a lot of traditions about the importance of this stone, where it originally was nearby the Kaaba. But yeah, it's, you know, nowadays it's set within this dome right to the east of the Kaaba. For some period of time in earlier centuries, it seems to have been actually kept inside of the Kaaba at different times and only taken out. But yeah, the chapter, chapter two of my book focuses on the Maqam and different stories about the ways that people were venerating the Maqam Ibrahim, the Abbasid caliph El Mahdi. There's several stories about him coming and actually pouring water into the Maqam Ibrahim and then drinking that water as a sort of source of blessing and transmitting, you know, giving water to other people for. To. So they could have it to drink as well. Yeah. And sort of the way that the Maqam Ibrahim actually functions, I would argue, as a kind of relic itself right at the center of the Islamic sacred space.
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B
It's a great chapter. And I think you also are conceptually tussling with, like, issues of absence and presence in a relic. Like what. And this is like a thread in the entire book of, like, what's actually constituting the attraction or the pull, Right? Absolutely, yeah. And this continues a little bit into chapter three. And I think I said David accidentally before, but you deal with Prophet Daniel here. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I made a mistake. But this is also interesting because this is kind of has this other, like, military, political context, I guess, and also dealing with these other issues of apocalypticism and perhaps what Daniel represents in some of these traditions. So can you tell us why perhaps, maybe people would be trying to hide a tomb, like, sense. And what to hide would, like, what. What's up with that?
- [30:39]
C
Yeah, yeah. So this is a chapter where. Yes. So the. The story that I opened the chapter with is about during the. The Islamic conquests of the. The region of Khuzestan and Western Persia, there's this story about the discovery of the Prophet Daniel's body in this. In the city of. Of Asus or Two Star, and different versions in the story. And basically, you know, it's kind of like a lot of Christian stories where there's like this discovery of an ancient tomb of a holy person. And importantly, like, the. Daniel's discovered. And, you know, he's like, obviously centuries old, but he's. He's completely undecayed. He's a perfectly preserved body, sort of illustrating the holiness of this prophet's body. But in Christian stories from around this time, that body would then be transported and installed in a shrine or placed in a church where people could venerate it. Maybe not per public veneration, but buried under the church's floorboards so that it could exude its holiness into the surrounding space. But in this story instead, you know, there's lots of different versions of the story that I, that I deal with in the chapter and other ones that I don't even deal with in the chapter, but that, that instead of, you know, taking the body and then installing it in some holy place, instead the Muslims who discover it are commanded by the Caliph Omar Ibn Al Khattab to just put it back. Put the body back where it was and hide it, or either put it back where it was and make sure that no one can find it or even put it under the river so that no one can access it, build or, I'm sorry, dig, you know, 13 different graves in the middle of the night and then just put it in one of those to make sure that no one knows where it is. And yeah, so in the chapter, I try to make clear that this is one of several different stories that exist in early Islamic texts about the discovery of holy persons, tombs, whether it's prophets tombs or. Yeah, mostly prophets tombs, martyrs tombs. And this seems to be a sort of like, topos within a lot of early Islamic literature. And when people have. Have read these stories, they, they. It's usually. They're usually read within the context of what we think of as sort of Islamic iconoclasm. Right. The. The rejection of relic and tomb veneration. They say, well, they're. They wanted to bury this, a holy body like this, so that it wouldn't be venerated. And I think that. That there's some truth to that. Right. I don't think that that's like a completely inaccurate way of reading these stories, but I think what we also find are these traditions about how there's, you know, tens or hundreds of holy bodies in places in regions like Mecca or Syria, or lots of different places throughout the Islamic world where the existence of lots of different holy people's tombs that are not necessarily publicly available for worship nonetheless are part of what is said to make these places sacred. And I read these stories about finding holy bodies and then reburying them as part of this creation of an early Islamic sacred space or early Islamic. The sacralization of early Islamic geography by saying that there are all of these different hidden tombs throughout the landscape. So that there's a sort of like. Yeah, like you said, there's A sort of present absence or absent presence of the holy person's relics that you won't necessarily be able to go and worship Daniel's tomb, although in later centuries they do exactly that. But you'll be able to. To say that there's all of these different prophets and other holy people's tombs spread throughout the landscape in hidden places.
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B
And it's so fascinating to think about. It's like the soil and the places that you walk upon are like constantly porous with some kind of sacred presence, you know?
- [35:09]
C
Exactly. Yeah.
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B
And so I think I really, this chapter really struck me in that way. So I really appreciated kind of the way in which we revisited or kind of provided a different analysis of possibility, some from some of these stories around Prophet Daniel. Of course, all this kind of culminates with the Prophet Muhammad's body in the next chapter. And I think the same issues are coming up again. Right. I think some of this idea, and I love the phrasing that you use post mortem kind of presence, like, I mean, existence, like what is actually residually left of the, of the Prophet Muhammad, specifically these negotiations of dates, like if it's 40 days of residual presence or if it's like three days. And it was really striking to me that a lot of these kind of intellectual Muslims, you know, literate Muslims, are really negotiating these things. Right. And in terms of, I think one instance there was a fear that perhaps somebody had stumbled upon the body of the Prophet and they had saw the foot or something like that, and, and they were panicked about what, what that meant, like, should there be a foot or are we, you know, and so you did a really great job of walking us through in this chapter. So you, maybe again, you won't be able to do all of it for us, but give us a little bit of like, what were people thinking about what happened to the Prophet Muhammad when he died?
- [36:28]
C
Right? Yeah. So I mean, and like you, I thought this was. This is one of the more interesting things is that like, rather than. And this is something that it's not just, you know, something that happens in the study of Islam, but in other religious traditions as well. There's this assumption that like, relic veneration is this thing that like the masses do. Right. Not that that to the extent that elites participate in this kind of cult practice, it's like for political gain or something like that. Right. Versus like what. When you actually look at a lot of texts that there's like, yeah, very, very much literate, theologically literate, not just literate. In terms of being able to read and write, but like, very much engaged in the sort of, like, yeah, making Islam, like, thinking through the theological and thick tradition of like, what it means to be a Muslim. So, yeah, these are some, these are some of the people that are very much talking about, like, well, what is the prophet's body like after his death? Right. So there's like, stories that pop up from, from quite early and you know, scholars like Stephen Shoemaker and others have argued that, like, these stories are so, so strange that it seems unlikely that they would have been just completely made up out of wholesale, that they're. That the prophet's companions from like, the moment of the prophet's death were like, debating whether, well, is the prophet actually dead? Is he. Did he like, go up and commune with God for some amount of time, just like Jesus did or like Moses did when he went up on Mount Sinai to talk to God for, for 40 days? Is, is that what's happening? But then so and so, and according to different versions, that's why they don't immediately bury the prophet's body and don't do so until it starts to show signs of decay. Like, you know, signs of smell or like, physical sign, like the stomach starting to bloat from, from decay. And right alongside those stories that clearly are trying to say, like, no, the prophet was, was, was a human being like anyone else, you know, like, he was not. There was nothing sort of supernaturally special about, about the prophets, you know, sort of corporeal existence. And right alongside those stories are ones that are very much invested in saying, no, the prophet didn't show any sign of decay. And in fact, those store the, these versions where the prophet doesn't decay. Then there's even ones where people say, like, you know, where hadith, where the prophet says, like, you know, after you die, I'll be able to. Or I'm sorry, after I die, I'll be able to, you know, intercede with God for you. And they, Some people around him will ask like, well, how will you do that when your body is. Has decayed in the ground? And I'll say, well, prophets, bodies don't decay. And so there seems to be the, the existence of these hadiths seems to indicate that there is some sort of important scene in the prophets, you know, postmortem existence, like, that the ability of the prophet to sort of like, exist in a body is seen as. As important. Right. Even though, you know, there are plenty of theological arguments you could make for why it doesn't it wouldn't necessarily have to make sense. Right, right. Because God could just reconstitute the Prophet as he will do with all like on the day of Resurrection. But for whatever reason, the, the Prophet's continued sort of undecayed existence was seen as something that was worth arguing for. And so, yeah, we have like scholars like Sayyid IBN Al Musayyib who is saying, no, the Prophet does. There's nothing, there's no importance in say like going and visiting the Prophet's tomb because he's not so much invested in the question of whether the Prophet died or not, but the question of like, well, why would you go visit the Prophet when he has been taken up to heaven by God? So there's these hadiths which, which pop up in both Sunni and Shiitext that say that within a certain number of days after death, prophets bodies, like perhaps so that they don't decay, are immediately taken up by God. They're not laying in their tombs after a certain number of days, but they're taken up to God to live with him in heaven. And so there's lots of different, you know, so there seems to be this sort of intellectual battle that takes place between people on different sides of these questions. And it takes place partially in the realm of different hadiths that are put into circulation about, you know, the Prophet said, encouraging Muslims to come and visit his tomb or saying, it doesn't really matter if you visit my tomb, if you say a prayer for me, it will reach me wherever you are in the world and wherever I am in the world. And so there's this sort of literary. We see, we have literary pieces of what, what is probably a sort of theological and ritual debate that's going on in the 8th and 9th centuries about a lot of different questions about the Prophet's continued existence after death. And the related sort of ritual question of like, well, should we go to the Prophet's tomb medina where his tomb is in order to visit him there? Is that an important thing to do? Is that something that is actually discouraged? And we have traces of evidence of these different positions that different Muslims, different Muslim communities were taking in this regard. And what was interesting to me is that while this is usually thought of as something that like divides Sunnis and Shiites, right, that Shia, the Shia community or Shia communities are those that encourage, you know, the visitation of tombs of, you know, say the Prophet and the Imams. But in fact we have both. The Shia voices for the most part are pro pilgrimage to the Prophet's tomb. But we also have pro Sunni voices that are, that are in favor of that kind of practice as well. So this is something that was transcending these sectarian communities in a way that I think will be surprising to some people.
- [42:52]
B
It really was to me. And I think you did a fabulous job giving space to all that diversity, because I think, I don't think you allowed kind of our contemporary perceptions of sectarian history, which may or may not have been real, to kind of impose what at this time would have been just like proto moments before those things really coalesced into what we imagine them to be today. And you continue with this discussion, moving from the Prophet's actual body and post mortem existence to actually what you call traces, which is a theme that you're building throughout the book. I've existence maybe that were associated with the Prophet, such as a tree, you know, particular war or a member of the pulpit. And so the final chapter, substantive chapter, really further pursues us and there's a really, I think, an overwhelming question of intercession and we kind of are evoking it. With your previous question as well. I'm like, what are the purposes of these spaces? But I think you also, in that chapter, you evoke, use Jafar Sadiq a lot. And he himself, when he was writing some of the stuff, wrote in a place that had, you know, a residual presence or some association with the Prophet Muhammad too. Right. Which I thought was really, really interesting. So what were like, you know, why would a particular tree or a place associated with the Prophet Muhammad be important? Like, what were people doing at these places or what were they trying to do?
- [44:16]
C
Yeah, this is a great question, one that I, I'll answer the question, but I think it's really interesting that it's not always clear what people were doing there. But. Yeah, so I think it's not Jafar Sadiq that you're talking about, but actually Bukhari is the one who was like composing some of his texts, like by the Prophet's tomb or between the tomb and the minbar.
- [44:38]
B
But.
- [44:39]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [44:39]
B
Sorry, sorry.
- [44:40]
C
Yeah, yeah, sure. But you know, indicating that like there's something to be, something to be had for being in this space that like it. It in that something in the space.
- [44:51]
B
Space.
- [44:52]
C
There's. Well, that's one way to read it. Right. That like being in this space imbues something in the individual. Or perhaps it's just a sign of one's own piety to be in this, this space. Right.
- [45:04]
B
The chapter is places where the Prophet prays.
- [45:09]
C
Yeah. So basically this is about the ways in which not just the Prophet's body and grave itself is sort of imbued with this authority or sacrality by early Muslims, but also. Yeah. Other historical places in Mecca and Medina that are associated with things the Prophet did there, things that the early Muslim community did there and that, you know, so there might be say like a place where the Prophet was said to have like had dinner at one place and that this was remembered as, as, as a particularly sacred, or not particularly sacred, but as a sort of sacred space or. Yeah. And where I get the chapter's name, like places where the Prophet had, had prayed become places where people are visiting and seemingly based on, you know, the, the sources that we have are coming and praying at these places and these might be mosques obviously, but also just like little spots throughout Medina and Mecca. And I don't deal with it, I don't think in this chapter, but in some forthcoming stuff that I'm dealing with, there's also this commemoration of these spaces through perfuming of them, you know, as like places perhaps through the, the sensorial experience of, of the perfumed space or perhaps if you can't even smell it through the, the putting. The perfume is called haluk and it's, it has a lot of saffron in it. So like maybe just the being able to see that this space like that, so there it would imbue that object, this place with, with red or yellow, very strong color. So there are particular places where the Prophet was remembered to have prayed that that was covered in this kind of perfume seemingly in order to sort of mark it as a, as a sacred space. So in some cases people are coming and praying at these, at these locations. In the case of the Prophet's minbar, we get mentions of people like rubbing their hand over it and then putting their hand from onto their own face. And I argue this seems, you know, this seems to indicate that, you know, there's some kind of tactile holiness that's associated with the, you know, the, the Prophet minbar, probably because the Prophet himself having touched this space, been in the space and then moving that holy touch onto your own body. But yeah, there's, there's, there's mentions of. So in the case of one in, in one mosque in Medina where the Prophet was remembered to have sat a rock on which the Prophet a rock within the mosque where the Prophet was remembered to have sat, women are reported to have come there and, and sat on it themselves. And, and in order to, if they were having trouble conceiving and becoming pregnant. They come and. And they would miraculously be able to conceive after that. So there's like a few things that are happening that at these kinds of spaces that are sort of, you know, they're not part of like the five pillars of Islam, but they're certainly a sort of a form of a pious practice that people are doing. And I think this is where I close the chapter, is like, looking at the ways that Muslim scholars, like, how do they deal with these kinds of practices, like, in terms of, like the fic tradition. And for the most part, you know, Muslim scholars are not saying this is like a required part of Islamic practice. Right. But nor are they saying, absolutely don't do it. So neither are they like, requiring it, but nor are they saying, you absolutely should never do this, but more saying it's a sign of your own piety that you can do if you would like to do it. So look again, sort of contesting this, the assumption that Muslims, and particularly the Muslim scholarly class, was going to treat this kind of behavior as like, illicit and wrong and to be avoided. But. But at the same time, nor are they absolutely saying everybody has to do it either, but sort of in a mid place, in a midway location in between those two extremes, which is itself an interesting sort of scholarly position to take, I think.
- [49:38]
B
No, absolutely. Because reading the book, I kept thinking about so much of this seems like the things that I find in fieldwork when I go to shrines. And like, especially Sufi shrines, they're not necessarily prophetic ones, but some of them are claimed to be. You know, I've been in Alexandria and I've heard, you know, different stories about different prophets being entombed there. And like, all of the stuff where Mary. And so you do kind of hear these stories. But as I was reading through your book, I was like, oh, this seems quite similar to some of the things I've seen. And I think it's helpful. Also, just as you're saying, there wasn't an explicit don't do this or yes, do this, but people have been kind of negotiating and compromising on this kind of element for a long time. And I think that's what you're taking your epilogue into is like a kind of not a contemporary example, but you're moving us a few centuries ahead and looking at the example of a sandal of the Prophet Muhammad and kind of the cult that's emerging. And we hear stories about hair also of the Prophet Muhammad. So what would you want scholars Especially scholars like me who do this. But think of contemporary shrine cultures, like, what would you want us to take away from a book like yours?
- [50:46]
C
Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's exactly it. And I'm really. It. It makes me feel good to hear that you feel like, yeah, this. This resonates with things that you're seeing in your own field work. And to me, that. That's kind of the point. And, you know, in some ways, it's a narrow point that I've just like, expanded to a whole book's worth is that, like, this is something that the Islamic tradition has been grappling with from the very beginning. Right. But it's not the sort of classical narrative is that, like, all relic and tomb veneration was treated as like a despicable bid.
- [51:21]
B
Ah.
- [51:21]
C
From the very. From the beginning of Islam that it's only in the sort of medieval centuries that that, you know, popular practice starts to seep in. And according to, like, Ibn Taymiyyah and certain other voices, it's. It's the. The practices of Jews and Christians that Muslims are adopting. And what I'm arguing is that, like, this was very much like something that was native to Islamic tradition from basically the. The very beginning. Which is not to say that it was, like, wholeheartedly accepted, but that it was like a set of practices and stories and attitudes towards sacred space and sacred materiality that was being discussed from very early, both positively and negatively. So situating these kinds of things, like, very much within the Islamic tradition from the very beginning, and that there's. As you said, it's not something that was. That a definitive take was. Was evident from the very existence, but from the very beginning, but like, the existence of different positions on these kinds of issues from. From very early within Islamic tradition.
- [52:28]
B
It's fabulous you've written it in such an accessible way. I was able to get through it, and I'll definitely be citing it in my own scholarship in the future. So congratulations to you. I know the book just came out, so hopefully you're celebrating and resting and just enjoying the fact that the book of this huge amount of labor is out in the world. Is there anything on the horizon in terms of future work or what are you up to these days?
- [52:52]
C
Yeah, I have some chapters that are sort of like things that I wanted to be in the book but didn't make their way in about visiting tombs and other secret spaces to bring rain and like I said, about perfuming of sacred spaces associated with the Prophet's prayer space and some material about the sort of like heavenly nature of the Kaaba and early Islamic tradition, some chapters. I mean I also have a lot of stuff still about magic within an early Islamic tradition that I would really like to get back into. But yes I'm very grateful to have this project done for now and yeah we'll see what happens in the next few years.
- [53:36]
B
Oh that's fabulous. Yeah definitely bask in the glory of it all and celebrate. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us and chat with us. I hope our listeners will definitely pick up the book and engage all the more other stuff that we didn't get to as well. Thank you Adam.
- [53:48]
C
Thank you Shabran.
- [53:52]
B
And that was my conversation with Adam Bursi about his new book Traces of the Prophets, Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you will join us again next time. Until then take care.
- [54:09]
C
Of.