Contested Holy Cities: The Urban Dimension of Religious Conflicts by Michael Dumper

Author:Michael Dumper [Dumper, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367728595
Google: ERgHzgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 55834905
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-01-15T07:44:36+00:00

The bottlenecks of Muslim pilgrimage in Jerusalem

Jerusalem, the birthplace of monotheism, has a storied history of pilgrimage. Muslims, Christians, and Jews have journeyed to the city to perform religious rituals throughout the centuries, and they continue to come today. While pilgrims from each religious tradition encounter bottlenecks as they navigate the urban space, I focus on the bottleneck experience of Muslim pilgrims in contemporary Jerusalem. For Muslims, Jerusalem is the site of al-Aqsa Mosque (The Farthest Mosque), the third holiest site in Islam. They also refer to it as al-Haram al-Sharif (The Nobel Sanctuary) and consider the site sacred. The site’s sacred character derives from Muhammad’s Night Journey, where he was transported, via winged horse, from Mecca to al-Aqsa Mosque and then drawn into the heavens in a profound divine encounter (al-Qur’an, Surah 17). The blessings Muslims receive while praying within the mosque’s precincts were thenceforth multiplied as many as 500 times. Today, some 10 million visitors come to the sacred site every year. And during Ramadan, Islam’s sacred month of fasting, some 300,000 Muslims journey to the al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers. While they come from various places (Gaza, Israel, or abroad), I focus on the Muslims who make the pilgrimage from the West Bank.

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