115 Chapter 7 THE GRAVESITE AND THE NEW SACRED LANDSCAPE and thirteenth centuries, the traditional assemblage of holy sites andin the transformation tweLfth of older sites as well as the establishment of new ones. Historians suchin Bilād as Josephal- Shām Meri, as a wDaniellahole gr ewTalmon- at an Heller unprecedented, and Yasser pace Tabbaa due tpointo the apprto a opriationdramatic proliferation of funerary and memorial structures (mashāhid) and shrines (maqāmāt) of various types and a substantial rebuilding of structures around them during the Crusader and Counter-Crusader periods, during which events provoked an overall 1 More recently, Stephennie Mulder has demonstrated how changes in religious feelings andreligious architectural excitement patronage as well as created re- Islamization a unifying and “holy re- sanctification land” in medieval of the landscape.Syria that sectarian and social divides.2 However, while the expansion of the sacred landscape that centred on the shrines of the ʿAlīds, revered descendants of the Prophet, and cut across a relic associated with them has received considerable attention, the creation of new commemorated events in the life of revered figures of Islam’s glorious past or harboured unexplored. spacesTransformed of sacrality into ar sacredound thesites burial that provided places of proximity contemporary to the gracesaintl ofy thefigur deades is and still a qabr and ḍarīḥ, and sometimes as turba and maqām3— were material evidence of the quest for sanctity channel to God, the Sufi shaykhs’ gravesites—kno wn mostly by theziyārāt terms al-qubūr ) and supplication and worship at them was a widespread phenomenon in the entire medieval shared by members of local communities. Visitation of graves ( a fundamental feature of Islamic identity and spirituality. Pilgrimage guides, written for EgyptIslamic from Near the East thirteenth, where fr centuryequenting and tombs for Syria and shrinesfrom the of early saintl sixteenthy figures decentury,veloped attest into 1 Meri, The Cult of Saints Islamic Piety Constructions of Power and Piety , 257–61; Talmon- Heller, , 184–98; Tabbaa, 2 Mulder, The Shrines of the ʿAlids. , 32–49. 3 qabr and ḍarīḥ, see Meri, The Cult of Saints turba often denotes a tomb complex that contains the tombs of the descendants of a family or dynasty. Maqām, which is oftenOn the rendered use of the as t erms“oratory” or “station,” is a place that does not ordinarily, 265– 66. containA a grave but is mashhad (shrine) and also with masjid (small mosque). For more, see Meri, The Cult of Saints studiedinvariably for associat this book,ed thewith naming a holy offigur a placee, and as is maqām often usedfrequently interchangeably refers to the with place associated with , 269–70. In the sources a Sufi shaykh and the spiritual power that is to be found in that “station.” 116 116 empLaCements of authority and hoLiness that by the time they were compiled, the cults of saints and the prominence of visits to their graves had long become commonplace.4 their closeness to the divine given a concrete form and enduring symbolic meaning?5 How was the holiness of the revered Sufi shaykhs rooted in “embodied localities” and shed light on the incorporation of the burial places into the landscape of sacred sites, or lieuxThis finalde mémoire chapter (“places relates tofo thesememory”), questions in medieval through Syria,an examination and the beliefs, of accounts narratives, that practices, and material means that sustained6 their sacrality and ensured the centrality of the saintly figures in the lives of Muslim communities across time and space. The Burial Place By the early fourteenth century, the Syrian milieu was dotted with the lodges and their lodges, in cemeteries, or in natural environments. Successive generations of their biologicalgravesites descendantsof the Sufi mast anders companions and Friends were of buriedGod. The side revered by side sha in provincialykhs were towns buried and in villages, as well as graveyards and open spaces, clustered around their resting places. Burial by the side (mujāwir in close proximity to them (bi l-qur b ʿinda), served as a tangible means of maintaining companionship relationships) of in the perpetuity graves of and the furtherfirst gener expandedation of themast horizonsers, or at of least the Little is known about the shaykhs’ burial places as physical places in the period undersacralized land. study, that is, their structure, size, architectural features, or decorative elements. nearly all conformed to the typical form of tombs and mausoleums, namely, of domed squaresThe hist.7orian Many of of Islamicthese structures art and arwerechitecture probably Robert modest Hillenbr in sizeand and hasnot architecturallyobserved that differentiated from the surrounding buildings. But whatever their size and form, their association with the sacred made them made focal points for pilgrimages and devotional practices. Men and women would come to the burial places to seek the favours and 4 For the appearance of Egyptian and Syrian pilgrimage literature, see Meri, The Cult of Saints, them in Ayyubid Syria, see Talmon- Heller, Islamic 144–52. On the scholarly discourse on visits to the graves and the practices performed around 5 The expression “embodied localities” is borrowed from the anthropological study by Pnina Piety, 175–76. of saints’ shrines and cults in modern and contemporary South Asia. See Pnina Werbner and Helene WerbnerBasu, “Introduction: and Helene The Basu Embodiment on the embodiments of Charisma,” of Sufi in charismaticEmbodying Charisma: authority inModernit the sacry,ed Locality landscape and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, ed. Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (London: Psychology 6 Press, 1998), 3–21. element of the collective memory or heritage of certain communities: Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory:Coined The by PierrConstructione Nora, the of theexpression French Past refers to any significant place that has become a symbolic 7 Islamic Art and Architecture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Robert Hillenbrand, (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1994), 270. 117 117 the gravesite and the new saCred LandsCape mediationcontinued tofo spring.the Sufi shaykhs whose holiness was embedded in the land and to be in closeA large ph ysicalnumber pr oximity8of mystics to theirand asceticsbodies frestablishedom which thethemselvesy believed in aDamascus flow of gr andace Aleppo in the Ayyubid and early Mamluk periods were revered as God’s Friends in their circles of disciples and companions and society at large and imprinted their tangible and durable mark on the cityscapes and the areas surrounding them. Still, the major Syrian cities differed in the categories of saintly figures who extended the spheres of their influence and operation, as w9 Someell as asceticstheir demogr and piousaphic worshippers composition celebrated and sacr edas topography. As noted by Anne- Marie Eddé, ascetics and Sufis constituted two distinctive categories of holy figures in Aleppo. holy with no Sufi affiliation mentioned in their bio- hagiographies seem to have inclined toward Shiʿism. Biographical and hagiographical accounts that display the merits of the saintlDamascusy figures wasof Aleppo persistently are indicati Sunnive in of makeup their various and regained categories its and primacy the lasting as a political impact of Shiʿism on the religious fabric and sacred topography of a city. clustand eredreligious primarily centr ein underthe city’s Ayyubid western rule. part, As closefor A toyyubid the location Aleppo, of a shrines,sizeable which Shiʿi community remained in the city in the aftermath of the “Shiʿi century.” This community wwerehere associat a drop edof bloodwith thefell fromShiʿis the and decapitated continued headto dominat of the Prophet’se the sacr grandsoned typogr whileaphy. Among them are the magnificent Mashhad Ḥusayn, a sanctuary that celebrated the place were erected west of the city’s gates and stand to the present.10 being transported from Karbala to Damascus, and Mashhad al- Muḥasin. Both shrines places of locally venerated shaykhs— in their zāwiya homes, near the old cities’ gates, andRegardless in cemeteries of theand local other particula sacred rities,areas outsidein both theDamascus gates, where and Aleppo, large numbers the burial of people could gather and perform ritual acts— became an integral part of the hallowed ground of Syria that crystallized around the tombs and memorials of biblical prophets, the descendants and companions of the Prophet Muhammad, and the martyrs of the Counter- Crusade, and connected local communities to their own heritage as well as to Normally, shaykhs who dwelt in dense residential quarters were interred outside butthe sacrstill ednear hist theory gates of Islam. of the ancient cities of Damascus and Aleppo. The gravesite of places stood, side by side, near or in cemeteries areas where the Prophet’s companions Shaykh Arslān al- Dimashqī outside the Gate of Tūmā comes to mind. Some other burial 8 Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam (Chapel Hill: University For a seminal study on the bodies of Sufi saints as arenas of spiritual power, see Kugle A. Scott, 9 Eddé, La Principauté ayyubide d’Alep, 419–22. of California Press, 2007). 10 For more on the history of these shrines, see Mulder, The Shrines of the ʿAlids , 63– 99. 118 118 empLaCements of authority and hoLiness and followers (min al-ṣaḥāba wa- l- tābiʿīn) and relatives were believed to lie.11 Among these areas was the cemetery of Bāb al- Ṣaghīr (in the immediate surroundings of Damascus,Syrian historians south westand travellers.of the gate),12 one of the most significant Damascene burial grbeounds. the most Descriptions important of pilgrimage Bāb al- Ṣag sitehīr infr equentlySyria. After appear the Battlein the ofwritings Karbala, of the medie headsval The Shiʿis consider the cemetery of Bāb al- Ṣaghīr to of many martyrs, including that of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, as well as captive ʿAlīd’s women and children,13 were brought to Damascus by the Umayyad caliph Yazīd. A number of Damascus.these holy 14figures died in the city and were buried in the cemetery of Bāb al- Ṣaghīr in(see the Fig.