In the aftermath of the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage
pursued by Islamist groups like ISIS, many observers have
erroneously come to associate Islamic doctrine and practice with
such acts. This book explores the diverse ways Muslims have engaged
with the material legacies of ancient and pre-Islamic societies, as
well as how Islam's own heritage has been framed and experienced
over time. This is a new collection of articles previously
available in issues of the International Journal of Islamic
Architecture. The tragically familiar spectacles of cultural
heritage destruction performed by the Islamic State group (ISIS) in
Syria and Iraq are frequently presented as barbaric, baffling, and
far outside the bounds of what are imagined to be normative,
'civilized' uses of the past. Often superficially explained as an
attempt to stamp out idolatry or as a fundamentalist desire to
revive and enforce a return to a purified monotheism, analysis of
these spectacles of heritage violence posits two things: that there
is, fact, an 'Islamic' manner of imagining the past - its
architectural manifestations, its traces and localities - and that
actions carried out at these localities, whether constructive or
destructive, have moral or ethical consequences for Muslims and
non-Muslims alike. In this reading, the iconoclastic actions of
ISIS and similar groups, for example the Taliban or the Wahhabi
monarchy in Saudi Arabia, are represented as one, albeit extreme,
manifestation of an assumedly pervasive and historically on-going
Islamic antipathy toward images and pre-contemporary holy
localities in particular, and, more broadly, toward the idea of
heritage and the uses to which it has been put by modern
nationalism. But long before the emergence of ISIS and other
so-called Islamist iconoclasts, and perhaps as early as the rise of
Islam itself, Muslims imagined Islamic and pre-Islamic antiquity
and its localities in myriad ways: as sites of memory, spaces of
healing, or places imbued with didactic, historical, and moral
power. Ancient statuary were deployed as talismans, paintings were
interpreted to foretell and reify the coming of Islam, and temples
of ancient gods and churches devoted to holy saints were converted
into mosques in ways that preserved their original meaning and,
sometimes, even their architectural ornament and fabric. Often,
such localities were valued simply as places that elicited a sense
of awe and wonder, or of reflection on the present relevance of
history and the greatness of past empires, a theme so prevalent it
created distinct genres of Arabic and Persian literature (aja'ib,
fada'il). Sites like Ctesiphon, the ancient capital of the
Zoroastrian Sasanians, or the Temple Mount, where the Jewish temple
had stood, were embraced by early companions of the Prophet
Muhammad and incorporated into Islamic notions of the self.
Furthermore, various Islamic interpretive communities as well as
Jews and Christians often shared holy places and had similar
haptic, sensorial, and ritual connections that enabled them to
imagine place in similar ways. These engagements were often more
dynamic and purposeful than conventional scholarly notions of
'influence' and 'transmission' can account for. And yet, Muslims
also sometimes destroyed ancient places or powerfully reimagined
them to serve their own purposes, as for example in the aftermath
of the Crusader presence in the Holy Land or in the destruction,
reuse and rebuilding of ancient Buddhist and Hindu sites in the
Eastern Islamic lands and South Asia. This volume presents thirteen
essays by leading scholars that address the issue of Islamic
interest in the material past of the ancient and Islamic world,
with essays examining attitudes about antiquarianism in the Islamic
world from medieval times to the present. Main readership will be
among scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, researchers,
educators and academic libraries working or studying in the fields
of the ancient world, antiquities, heritage and the Islamic world.
General
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