Space, Ritual, and Religious Experience and the Ottoman hajj, c. 994/1586–1194/1780

Abstract

This dissertation examines the confessional, devotional, and spatial aspects of the hajj and Ottoman religiosity between 994-1194/1586-1780. It probes the place of the hajj in debates about correct belief and practice after the late sixteenth century and the boundaries within which the hajj itself eventually came to be understood and practiced in this time. It investigates the lived experiences of the thousands of Ottoman pilgrims who undertook the hajj every year, as well as how the hajj was celebrated and memorialised by ḥajjīs and Muslim men and women in locations throughout the Empire. The dissertation further examines how the construction, interpretation, and experience of sacred space in Mecca and Medina evolved across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both correlatively and causatively with other developments in the Empire’s religious landscape. By bringing together questions of confession, devotion, and sacred space in relation to the hajj, the dissertation breaks new ground in our understanding of Ottoman Islam, as well as the history of Muslim religious practice more generally. The dissertation applies a novel methodology to a range of sources that have typically been examined separately, including guidebooks, pilgrimage narratives, and hajj-related objects and images, in order to track the impact of the hajj on multiple registers of Ottoman Islam and vice versa. The dissertation shows that the hajj was as much an arena of confessional polarisation as it was a platform of confessional ambiguity; while a range of actors in the Empire sought to bring hajj practice into line with their own vision of Sunni Islam, others were less concerned with these questions, and were more preoccupied with the opportunities offered by the hajj for varied devotional practice. The dissertation also shows that the increased circulation of pilgrims and objects between the Holy Cities and locations throughout the Empire also resulted in the greater prominence of hajj- and Kaʿba-based piety beginning in the late sixteenth century. Finally, the dissertation shows that the seventeenth century saw a greater emphasis on the sacrality of Mecca itself, especially as aspects of the hajj and the Prophetic ziyāra became localised and as other cities like Cairo and Damascus became more popular sites for sacred practice.