This paper will explore the symbiotic relationship under the early Almohads between the congregational mosque known as the Kutubiyya and the urban expanse of Marrakesh. It will be shown that the Almohad mosque not only served as the ‘foundation stone’ of the city, but also became thoroughly enmeshed in the urban fabric, socializing and centralizing the religious experience in a manner that had not yet occurred in North Africa. This relationship was particularly important during the reign of ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, as he attempted to walk the line between his responsibility as the inheritor of a religious movement and his familial ambitions in creating the hereditary dynasty of the Muʾminids. In his construction of the Kutubiyya, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin embarked upon a massive renovation project that would reorient the city around the city’s new congregational mosque. These new urban spaces were activated through ritual and ceremony rooted in a Western Islamic tradition, which served to remind the city’s inhabitants of the origins of Muʾminid hegemony. The innovation of ʿAbd al-Muʾmin lies in the directionality of his urban project and ritual, which continually looked southwards to the Atlas Mountains and Tinmal, the spiritual home of Almohadism and the Muʾminid’s new dār al-hijra. Through such processional activity connecting the natural and the urban landscapes of Marrakesh, the Almohads actively appropriated symbols of the Prophet and instilled them with references to Ibn Tūmart (the founder of the Almohad movement), their Berber heritage, and their Atlas homeland. By making these visual references in the select spaces of dynastic public appearances, these ceremonies imbued ʿAbd al-Muʾmin’s new caliphate with a highly local identity that built upon ethnic and Islamic traditions in the region. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws from recent historical and archaeological scholarship, this paper will reveal how the dynasty exploited the potential inherent in the local landscape to create an urban space reflective of their own tastes and ambitions, as well as the key role the mosque played in this development.

Erected between 1612 and 1638 in Isfahan’s central plaza, Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan, the Shah Mosque was in all likelihood the first congregational mosque built by a ruler of the Safavid dynasty. An inscription on the mosque’s portal refers to the building as a congregational mosque erected by the order of Shah Abbas (r. 1587-1629). In popular parlance, however, the mosque was primarily known as masjid-i shah (the Shah Mosque). The ambivalent status of the mosque was caused in part by the presence of a formidable counterpart at the heart of the pre-Safavid Isfahan: i.e. the long established Friday Mosque, which despite the grandeur and opulence of its new rival never lost its status as the Friday Mosque of Isfahan. This essay analyzes the expressions, perceptions, and performances of urbanity and sacredness in and around Isfahan’s dual Friday Mosques in the seventeenth century. It shows how the Shah Mosque’s designated function as a venue for “congregational prayer” was overshadowed by its aesthetic charm, by its associations with specifically Shi?i themes and practices, and by its character as a space for representation of royal authority. The paper particularly focuses on the design and iconography of the monumental portal of the Shah Mosque. Moreover, drawing on unexplored Safavid literary sources, the essay analyzes the perceptions of the mosque by contemporary viewers. Rather than referring to the mosque as a place of communal prayer, Safavid poems highlight the mosque’s visual qualities and uncanny atmosphere. The analysis of the Shah mosque in relation to the space of the Maydan shows that the mosque proper was not the sole locus of pious veneration: the mosque’s portal in conjunction with other sites around the Maydan shaped a network of religious practices which did not fit into a strict dichotomy between the mosque and the urban space. Furthermore, comparing the urban context of the two Friday mosques of Isfahan reveals how their accessibility and degree of integration in the city’s spatial structure affected their function as public urban spaces. Unlike the Shah Mosque, the Old Friday Mosque was spatially integrated into the surrounding urban fabric and could be accessed from multiple entrances. These contrasting urban contexts gave each mosque a distinct character: the Shah Mosque was associated with royal might and visual pleasure, while the old Friday Mosque was the locus of popular piety and everyday practices of the city’s ordinary residents.

In the nineteenth century, when a wave of romantic nationalism swept the European continent, members of the Ottoman state began to seek a new basis for defining an “Ottoman citizenry”. From this new social base, they hoped to confront the ideological challenges of the era. That raised the necessity for tools and spaces of legitimation where subjects would get actively involved, be disciplined and transformed into “Ottoman Citizens”. Friday processions (the sultan’s ceremonial public appearances on the occasion of Friday prayers) served as one of those tools in the nineteenth century. Imperial mosques, being the spaces for those processions, were as important as ever. In this paper, I will focus on the Hamidian era (1876-1909) when the stately processions reached their peak in terms of importance but the number of venues decreased to one. The Hamidiye Mosque in Yıldız, which was built within the boundaries of the Yıldız Palace, can be referred to as “the mosque” for that period, since it was Sultan Abdulhamid II’s (r.1876-1909) predominant choice for all stately processions. What kind of a spatial organization did those processions require? How wide would their effect spread along the city? How did those processions include the elite and the regular Istanbulites? These will be some of the major questions that I will seek answers for. Mainly I will dwell on two related issues. First, I will address the differences between the premodern and modern imperial mosques of the Ottoman Capital in order to arrive at a general understanding of the spatial and social transformation that they underwent. Second, I will use a case study to suggest how the changing political inclinations affected the spatial organization of the Friday processions.

Islamic pilgrimage represented an inextricable part of life in Jerusalem during the medieval period. As Islam’s third holiest city and a place deeply connected with Biblical traditions, Jerusalem was visited by many Muslims from across the Islamic world. Considering the sanctity of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, it was a frequent sight to see many Muslims worshiping on the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, including Muslim pilgrims performing the annual iḥrām en route to the hajj. This phenomenon grew exponentially during the late-medieval Mamlūk period (648-922/1250-1517). The Mamlūk era thus produced the largest number of Islamic pilgrimage guides to Jerusalem, the Faḍā’il al-Quds, as well as a corpus of Muslim travelogue writings. Significantly, to a medieval Muslim pilgrim, the sacred in Jerusalem was not only limited to the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex. While the Ḥaram constituted Islam’s sacred epicenter in the city and a pilgrim's starting point, Islamic pilgrimage routes in Jerusalem extended to holy sites located beyond the Ḥaram. In fact, evidence from the Faḍā’il al-Quds pilgrimage guides and travelogue literature reveals a pilgrimage route that extended Muslims’ worship to a number of holy places outside the Ḥaram and within the city itself, including Miḥrāb Dāwūd in the City Gate, the Church of St. Mary (Miḥrāb Maryam), and the Mount of Olives (Ṭūr Zaytā). Since Islamic sacred spaces were scattered across Jerusalem, both inside and outside the Ḥaram, the rigid boundaries delimiting the Islamic sacred landscape from the secular urban space became less fixed, and, in turn, the city became one large liminal space. Using the Faḍā’il al-Quds and travelogue literature, this study will investigate Mamlūk Jerusalem’s network of Islamic holy sites on its Ḥaram complex and outside it. It will attempt to answer the following questions: First, which Islamic holy sites did Muslim pilgrims visit on the Ḥaram complex? Second, what other sites did Muslim pilgrims visit outside the Ḥaram? And, consequently, what were the routes taken by Muslim pilgrims around Jerusalem to reach these places? Finally, what were the rituals performed by Muslims at each sacred location? The study will thus attempt to demonstrate how, due to the presence of holy sites throughout the city, Islamic sacred spaces in Mamlūk Jerusalem extended beyond the Ḥaram al-Sharīf complex, where the sacred, it will be argued, did not cease to exist past the confines of the Ḥaram, but, instead, permeated the city.