mawlid-Texts from the 13th to the 18th Century: Prophetic Piety as Ritual Performance?

Basic data for this project

Description

From the late twelfth century onwards, a new form of texts emerges: prosimetric texts focussing on the birth of the prophet Muhammad (mawlid) that are often considerably short and rhetorically elaborated. The project captures mawlid-texts in three dimensions whose eminence may differ from text to text: as a literary genre, as a means of religious education, and as a script of ritual performance. It shall analyse mawlid as a prosimetric literary genre in the interstices of oral and written tradition, exploring questions of genre and authorship, analysing the rhetorical devices, and placing it within the literary production of the respective time frame and its emerging new aesthetics in general and within the praise poetry for the prophet in particular. It shall analyse mawlid as a means of religious education, identifying thematic features and the respective images of the prophet. Finally, the analysis of mawlid as a script of ritual performance will focus on the performative elements that are inscribed into the text and enable the participation of the audience, like prayers, corresponding body movements, rhythm, or poetic structures. The evaluation of text-immanent characteristics is supplemented by working with different types of source material, i.e. Arabic historiography, Arabic and European travelogues, and Muslim juridical literature on ritual practice and recitation techniques. This will be complemented by observations and audio material of contemporary performance practices of praise poems for the prophet, mawlid, and prayers stemming from the project leader's fieldwork in Syria and Lebanon in the years of 2008 to 2013. mawlid-texts interact with other literary texts and the emerging new aesthetics in the Mamluk period on the one hand and with emerging practices of piety on the other hand. The project thus aims to be a contribution to historical religious practice and to the literary history of the 13th to 18th century. Yet, the study does not only relate to historical practice and its texts. Rather, it deals with religious practice still valid for lived Islam today. This practice, however, finds itself currently on the defensive, facing the pressure of self-styled spokespersons of ‘correct Islam.'