Saints and Sanctity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Alexandre Coello de la Rosa;Linda G. Jones;

Author:Alexandre Coello de la Rosa;Linda G. Jones;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2020-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

3 Saint veneration among the Mudejars

The Andalusians, like their coreligionists in other parts of the Arabo-Islamic world, acknowledged and venerated individuals recognized as intimate friends of God (awliyā’ Allāh) due to their extraordinary piety, asceticism, constant God-consciousness, charismatic gifts, and spiritual powers to mediate divine intercession. The ziyāra, or “visit,” to the shrine or tomb of a saint was the most common form of saint veneration in the Islamic West. Muslims took advantage of journeys undertaken for other purposes (the pilgrimage to Mecca, visiting relatives, studying, commerce, or simply exploring the world) to visit the tombs of local and regional saints. Ibn Jubayr of Valencia (d. 614/1217),35 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa of Tangier (d. c. 769/1369),36 and most intriguingly, two Mudejars from the Crown of Aragon, Aḥmad b. Fatḥ b. Abī Rabī‘ of Tortosa (late fourteenth century)37 and the fifteenth-century Almerian Mudejar Ibn al-Sabbāḥ,38 wrote autobiographical travel accounts known as riḥlas. As always, the objective of personal visits to these tombs and shrines was to pray, venerate the saint, and seek his or her intercession and baraka. The anniversary of the saint’s death, known as the mawlid, provided the occasion for the organized celebration of dhikr and other collective rituals. These were led by a Sufi master, often accompanied by liturgical music and chanting (samā‘), the recitation of poetry composed by the saint or by others to honor him or her, a special meal, and the distribution of alms and food to the poor.39 Local pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints on such occasions usually attracted throngs of people from all sectors of society. These practices associated with saint veneration continued in the Muslim-governed territories and attracted Mudejars; as noted in the previous section on the status of the Mudejars, subject Muslims had permission to travel to these regions for private religious and familial purposes or for trade.

Indeed, there is compelling evidence that the Mudejars and Moriscos continued to visit the tombs and shrines of Andalusian saints. These sacred sites included mosques, Sufi lodges (zāwiyas), and frontier fortresses (rābiṭas) located in Rota (near Cádiz), Granada, Málaga, the Ebro Valley, Zaragoza, Burriana, Játiva, Alicante, and Denia, where there was “a celebrated holy” shrine that drew massive numbers of pilgrims.40 Benifato, an enclave in the Valley of Guadalest in Alicante, was the location of numerous tombs of saints of the Sīdi Būnuh lineage.

The most famous of these local saints was Ibn Sīd Būnuh al-Juzā‘ī al-Qusṭanṭānī (d. 624/1227).41 His was the tomb of the “reputed saint,” mentioned in the Aragonese royal archival records, which attracted Mudejar pilgrims from all over the Crown of Aragon, as noted in the first section of this chapter.42 According to his biographer, the Valencian Ibn al-Abbār, Ibn Sīd Būnuh came from an illustrious family of Sufi scholars, all of whom were born in Zanīta (Atzeneta), an enclave of Denia. He received a traditional Islamic education in qur’anic recitation and commentary (tafsīr), hadith, and Mālik ibn Anas’s compendium of jurisprudence, al-Mudawwana al-kubrā. On his way to Mecca to perform the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.