Category: religion

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Jews in the Muslim World

One of the great ironies of the Middle East conflict is that Jews and Arabs are, in a deep sense, brothers–they both hail from the same region, Hebrew and Arabic are closely related languages and Judaism and Islam are faiths of the same Abrahamic tradition. As with Greeks and Turks (see post of 2008.10.28), or Chinese, Koreans and Japanese, it seems that genetic/cultural/historical kinship and familiarity help breed contempt. But looking back in history, we see that antipathy between Jews and Arabs, or between Jews and Muslims more broadly, is far from a historical constant–much like real brothers, the two peoples have often lived side by side, peacefully coexisting.

In fact, our trip through the Muslim world has been almost equally a trip through the Jewish world, because so often throughout history where there were Muslims, there were Jews, and where there were Jews, there were Muslims. The connections between the populations were and are that intimate (not least in Palestine, of course). Through the photographs below, a journey through the Jewish populations (some of them, alas, now historical) of the Muslim world, radiating from Israel to Central Asia and Morocco, to Europe.

Even the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, a part of the state of Palestine under any future negotiated scenario, has a Jewish presence–in this case a building acquired by a right wing Israeli group imperiously announces its Jewish Israeli ownership.

Hasidic man with child looks over Jerusalem and the Islamic shrine of the Dome of the Rock, located on the Temple Mount.

Ever since the days before Moses, Egypt has been home to a Jewish population. (Graham Hancock suggests in his book The Sign and the Seal that a Jewish community based in now Aswan at one point had possession of the Ark.) Below, a picture taken through the locked gate of the 19th century Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue of Alexandria. Fear of anti-Jewish terrorism has the synagogue under constant guard.

Syria was home to a large Jewish community for hundreds/thousands of years, and the old city of Damascus contains a large Jewish Quarter. All but a handful of the Damascus Jews have, sadly, emigrated to the U.S., Israel and elsewhere, leaving their impressive family homes to be renovated as hotels and restaurants, and in many cases artists’ studios, in what is fast becoming a trendy part of town. The first two images are from Bait Farhi, a wealthy Jewish home that is being converted into a hotel (a translation of the writing in the first: “a fruitful vine by a spring” from Genesis 49:22). The third image is the studio of Mustafa Ali, a Syrian sculptor. (See post of 2008.04.07.)


In Iran, many more of the local Jews–some 25,000–have stayed, apparently able to live their lives and practice their religion in peace, as the autocratic/theocratic government continues the historical practice within Islam of letting people of other Abrahamic faiths practice their religions relatively unmolested. (Many Iranian Jews have of course chosen to emigrate, most famously to Beverly Hills.) In this photo, a Jewish man stands outside the tomb of Esther and Mordecai in Hamedan, Iran.

Yet further east was the domain of the Bukharan Jews, who lived not only in Bukhara but in other Central Asian cities, developing a unique culture that was a significant part of the religio-ethnic mosaic of that region. They even had their own language, Bukhori, which was something like Farsi/Tajik written in Hebrew characters. The most visible landmark of the Bukharan Jews in Bukhara may be the cemetery (first image), but a walk around the old city in now Uzbekistan reveals many more remnants of the Jewish population, including a synagogue (second image) and old Jewish homes such as Akbar House, now a bed and breakfast (third and fourth images). (translation of the writing in the fourth: again, “Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring” from Genesis 49:22)



The Old Bukharan Synagogue, in the Bukharan Quarter, Jerusalem. Many Bukharan Jews have also settled in Queens in New York City.

Equally famous for its resident Jewish population, including thousands who remain today, is Morocco, half a world away. All of the great historical cities of Morocco have a large Jewish quarter, known as the mellah.

The narrow streets and tall buildings of the mellah in Marrakesh show how densely populated these ghettoes were.

Jewish life continues in some of the mellahs. Here, Al Azmeh Synagogue in the mellah of Marrakesh.

Large Jewish cemeteries show how much greater were the historical Jewish populations of these cities. The first two images are from Marrakesh, the rest from Fez. In the fourth and fifth images, a small synagogue/museum attached to the cemetery next to the Fez mullah. The Arab decor in the second and fifth images shows how local Jews were very much a part of the local culture (as well as the universal Jewish culture).




Another synagogue, in the Fez mellah

As in pretty much everywhere else they lived, Jews performed a significant role in the commerce of Morocco. Here, a Jewish funduq, or caravansaray/inn in old Fez.

Moroccan Jews were not only in the big cities. In the first image, a Jewish cemetery in the Skoura Oasis, near the town of Ouarzazate. In the second image, the ruins of a synagogue in the Jewish Kasbah of Amezrou, near Zagora in the Draa Valley further south (see post of 2009.01.11 on the multiethnic Draa Valley).

What was in African Morocco was of course also in Moorish Iberia, and there were Jewish populations in all of the cities of Spain. In the first two images, the alleys of the Juderia, or Jewish quarter, of Cordoba (the minaret/steeple of the Great Mosque visible in the first image). In the third and fourth images, an old synagogue in Cordoba (note again the “Arabesque” decoration). The fifth image is a statue of Maimonides, a great Jewish philosopher–Jews were the third of the “three cultures,” along with the Muslims and Christians, that made Iberia during la Convivencia the great intell
ectual hotbed that it was (see post of 2009.02.04).




But of course la Convivencia was not to last, as the Catholic Monarchs completed the Reconquista and imposed their policies of ethno-religious cleansing. (See post of 2009.02.02.) In part because the Iberian Jews were so closely associated with the Moors and were suspected of being pro-Muslim conspirators, Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Alhambra Decree or Edict of Expulsion in 1492, exiling all Jews from Iberia. Many of the Sephardi Jews ended up in areas that were part of the (Muslim Turkish) Ottoman Empire, which sent boats to Spain to help transport them. (To the Ottomans, the skilled and wealthy Jews were highly desirable immigrants that the Spanish, blinded by their extreme sense of religious orthodoxy, were foolish to give up.)

The Old Synagogue in the old city of Sarajevo, now a museum of Jewish history in the region. Local Jews continued to use the Ladino language, a Jewish language derived from Spanish.

The Ashkenazi (or Eastern European) Synagogue in Sarajevo, built in the early twentieth century for the Eastern European Jews not of Spanish origin.

The Sofia Synagogue in now Bulgaria, one of the largest in the region, built to accommodate the descendants of the Sephardi Jews who settled in that part of the Ottoman Empire.

Strictly speaking it is not a part of the Muslim world, but a city known for its trade with the East of course had a local Jewish population that could make use of the significant Jewish mercantile networks throughout the East. A couple images from the “original” Jewish ghetto, in Venice.

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photo religion Spain

The Crusades Continue

Of all the verbal gaffes of former President George W. Bush, few come to mind that were more controversial and troubling as his use of the word “Crusade” to describe our war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. [Perhaps to call it a gaffe–rather than a sort of Freudian slip or intentional political ploy–is generous.] The problem with the word is of course that by comparing the war in Iraq to a historical war waged in the name of religion by Christians against Muslims, Bush suggested that the motive for the modern war was also religious, a continuation of some sort of historical feud between Christianity and Islam. And, coming from a man who professed to hold deeply evangelical Christian beliefs and who was supported by most of America’s radically religious right, this–that there was some sort of religious basis for the war–seemed all too plausible (especially after we failed to discover WMD).

(Let me be clear (as our newly-inaugurated President is apt to say): We are not destined to a “clash of civilizations.” Periods of peaceful, pragmatic coexistence are just as common in the past as incidents of religious conflict. And, if you consider every time the banner of religion is carried as a standard into war, there is usually an equally compelling economic or demographic force that lay under.)

At the time of the earliest Crusades, southern Iberia was very much a part of the Muslim world, in full control of the Almoravid and other Moorish dynasties; the Crusades action took place all the way across the Mediterranean. But Crusades-like Christian/Muslim violence made its way to the Iberian Peninsula, and by the end of the thirteenth century, Christian kingdoms had reduced Moorish holdings in Iberia to more or less modern Andalusia. Even before the time Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista with the defeat of Granada in 1492, Moorish rule was reduced to isolated cities surviving essentially as tributaries to the Castilian crown.

Ferdinand and Isabella. Some Spaniards today may think of them as heroes of the Reconquista, and Americans may think of them as the visionaries who financed the discovery of the New World, but I can’t help but think of them as the Milosevic of their day. Putting aside the actual conquest itself–territorial conquest was of course much more of an accepted norm back in those days–the ethnic cleansing that Ferdinand and Isabella undertook, most infamously in the Alhambra Decree that expelled all Jews from Iberia (the Sephardic diaspora). Their tools in creating a Christian Spain were forced conversion and expulsion–of people who were native to Iberia and whose ancestors had lived there for *hundreds* of years. It is no wonder that these were also the rulers responsible for genocide and the institutionalization of race slavery in the New World.

Unfortunately, I am sorry to report, a Crusades mentality continues in the Catholic Church of Spain, at least in Cordoba. As I mentioned in my previous post, Cordoba is home to the Great Mosque of Cordoba, a tenth century wonder of a mosque that celebrated Cordoba’s status as the capital of the Umayyads in Spain. In the early 13th century, after the conquest of Cordoba by the (Christian) Castillians, the church decided to convert the mosque into a cathedral. Perhaps recognizing that no building that they built could quite replace the mosque as an architectural achievement, they cut a huge rectangle into its halls to build a church *into* the building. The effect is somewhat surreal–you enter a mosque and at some point suddenly find yourself in a typical Catholic cathedral–but the construction project was also in its way a sort of compromise between historic preservation and establishing the primacy of the Catholic Church. [See posts of  2008.11.10, 2009.02.01, and 2009.03.23 on reuse of religious sites.]

That said, the Archdiocese of Cordoba has produced a totally reprehensible pamphlet that serves as tourists’ main guide to the building. Perhaps ashamed of the fact that today the construction of the church inside the mosque is viewed as a sort of architectural crime, and that the church inside is of far lesser interest to the average visitor than the atmospheric remains of the mosque, the pamphlet is little more than a religious diatribe commemorating the victory of Christian over Muslim, an “us versus them” that is disconcerting to read in the European Union of today:

“It was a joyful day for the entire Christendom, when the Great Mosque, an Islamic temple without equal in the world, which was renowned for its artistic beauty and its symbolic value for the world of Western Islam in terms of political and religious importance, was purified and sanctified with Christian rites after the reconquest of the city by the hands of Saint Ferdinand III, and transformed into a Church of Jesus Christ, dedicated to the Mother of God.”

“It is a historical fact that the basilica of San Vincente was expropriated and destroyed in order to build what would later be the Mosque, a reality that questions the theme of tolerance that was supposedly cultivated in the Cordoba of the moment.” [It is true that the mosque was built on the site of a former church, but it is likely that there was negotiation–whether completely fair we do not know of course–over the site. The relative levels of tolerance in the age of the Moors and during the Inquisition is beyond dispute.]

“It was a matter of recuperating a scared space that had suffered the imposition of a faith that was distant from the Christian experience. . . . Thus the reforms of the Cathedral were motivated by the need to restore the cult that had been interrupted by Islamic domination, and they were a response to the desire of contemplating Christian symbols, or the inconvenience of celebrating the Liturgy amid a sea of columns.”

“Thus the beauty of the Cathedral of Cordoba does not reside in its architectural grandeur, but in the apostolic succession of the Bishop as a symbol of his pastoral service and the unity of the Church, founded upon the Word of the Lord, the sacraments, and the community of believers.”

This, from the people who were guilty of ethnic cleansing and the many other crimes of the Inquisition.

To end this post, some photos of the Great Mosque of Cordoba:

Outside the main building, a courtyard similar to that in Seville (see post of 2009.02.01) is accented with a minaret/steeple.

One of the many doorways–mosques often have many entrances to facilitate the at-times huge flow of people who rush in at the prescribed prayer times.

Inside, the colonnaded hall that is so famous and the landmark feature of the building. The bicolored arches are said to have been inspired by Roman/Byzantine architecture.


Byzantine mosaic also ornaments the spectacular mihrab, arguably the most spectacular ever made.


A look down one row of columns reveals the disruption in the building; while the columns continue in other directions, a huge rectangle in the building was cut open to build a soaring cathedral into the mosque, filled with light.

The work done to build the church of course required some disruptions in the original structure.

The church is a beautiful one, but the most surprising thing is how once inside it, it feels like a church that could be almost anywhere else–and not at all in the middle of a mosque. Sixteenth century King Carlos V reportedly said, “You have built here what you or anyone might have built anywhere else, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world.”

As the pamphlet repeatedly points out, before the mosque, there was actually a church on the site. The old mosaics of St. Vincent’s.

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Morocco religion Spain

Reuse of Religious Sites II

In my post of 2008.11.10, I discussed a common phenomenon: the reuse of religious sites. In that post, I covered the Umayyad Mosque, a Pagan to Christian to Muslim conversion in Damascus; the Ayasofya, one of the greater Christian churches ever built, and now mosque/museum; and the Selimiye Mosque, an almost comical cathedral-turned-mosque in Cyprus. (That post is probably worth reading for some background and general thoughts on the practice.) Now a few months further into our trip, I thought I would revisit that topic, with some more examples.

Andalucia, Spain, where we are now, is one of the relatively few regions in the world where Islam (a relatively recent religion, compared to others) was at once dominant, but then overwhelmed by another faith. (The part of Palestine that is now Israel and parts of India come to mind as the only other major examples–other places that went Muslim stayed Muslim.)

Arab/Muslim influence on Spanish culture is not to be underestimated. In architecture, the decorative arts, language, music, dance and countless other aspects of civilization, the footprint of the Muslim period–after all, more than seven hundred years of history–is almost everywhere in Spain (and the New World, through Spain). Such iconic elements of Spanish culture such as ceramic tiling, flamenco and the cheer “Olé” are from the Muslim era in Iberia, as are words such as alcazar (al qasr) and ojalá (Allah). The mix of Christian Spanish and Muslim Arab brought us the great scientific and philosophical flowering called la Convivencia, which some believe helped usher in the European Renaissance through its introduction of classical and Eastern teachings into Western Europe. The Inquisition was successful in destroying this peaceful coexistence and its benefits, but even if essentially no Muslims (or Jews) were to remain in Spain, the brick and mortar of countless mosques survived the transition–as churches.

I am saving the greatest example of mosque-turned-church, the Mezquita or Great Mosque of Cordoba, for the next post, but below are pictures of other mosques and religious structures from the Muslim era, reused through to the present.

The church of Santa Maria la Mayor in Ronda may originally have been a Roman pagan temple and then a Christian church, but its most recent past life as a mosque is immortalized in the remains of a mihrab, visible inside.

Many church steeples in southern Spain clearly had past lives as minarets. The most celebrated is the tower of the Seville Cathedral, called La Giralda (first image), which is almost identical, save reornamentation on the uppermost levels, to the other minarets built by the Morocco-based Almoravids, such as the Koutoubia in Marrakesh (second image).

Below, a lesser minaret/steeple at San Sebastian church in Ronda

The minaret/steeple of San Juan church in Cordoba clearly reveals its much older age, compared to the rest of the church.

The minaret/steeple of San Marcos church in Seville. There are countless more examples.

Minarets are often the most recognizable survivors–presumably because the Christians found it convenient to keep such significant and majestic features, while they were willing to build a new church alongside–but other features also remain. Near the Giralda in Seville, a domed “koubba” of clearly Moorish origin (first image). A similar Almoravid “koubba” in Marrakesh that was part of the Ben Youssef Mosque complex was used for ablutions (second image).

The courtyard of the Seville Cathedral, known as the Plaza de las Naranjas (note that the Spanish–and English–words for the orange, like the fruit itself, came to the West through Persian/Arabic) clearly occupies the remaining open part of the main courtyard of the old mosque (compare to the courtyard of Cairo’s Mosque of ibn Tulun in the second picture below).

The use of the Moorish style in the interior of this chapel in San Pedro church of Seville argues that such styles can be said to be very much Spanish and in some sense native to Spain–as suitable for use in decorating a church as a mosque. Mozarabs (Christians living in Arab Iberia) and Mudejares (Muslims living in Christian Iberia) bridged a synthesis of culture that resulted in some of the greatest notes of la Convivencia, such as the Alhambra (post to come).

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religion

Islamic and Muslim

Today’s post is a somewhat unusual one, a bit of a soapbox piece, a riff on a bit of linguistic usage to which I have grown more and more sensitive on this trip: the distinction between the words “Islamic” and “Muslim.” Now, to anyone who thinks about it for more than five seconds, the basic difference in meaning between the two words is pretty obvious: Islamic is an adjective that refers to something related to the religion of Islam, while Muslim is both an adjective and a noun, and means, in addition to something related to Islam, a practitioner and things related to such practitioners. That said, there are somewhat more subtle differences between the two words as currently used that merit analysis and present food for thought.

Let us consider the difference between the words “Islamic” and “Muslim” through the phrases the “Islamic world” and the “Muslim world.” To a large extent, these two phrases are used interchangeably–googling “Islamic world” takes you to the Wikipedia entry for “Muslim world” and I myself have been guilty of using both to refer to our current trip. And, in some strict semantic sense, the two phrases may be equivalent–they both refer to the parts of the world where Islam is the dominant religion or a dominant cultural force, where most people are Muslim. But I believe there is a meaningful difference in connotation that people need to be aware of.

To try to pry apart the potential difference between the two phrases, let us consider a correlative phrase: What comes to mind when you hear the “Christian world”? Initially, you might just think that the phrase refers to the countries where Christianity has been a dominant cultural force, i.e., Europe and places where Europeans settled, such as the Americas. If you think a little longer, though, your mind might make reference not only to place, but to a time: a time when the Christian religion was perhaps the most dominant cultural force–the Middle Ages. The most abiding image of the “Christian world,” I would argue, is Europe in the medieval era, perhaps even more specifically the Crusades. After all, why use religion (“Christian”) as a designator, unless you want to refer to the significance of religion in the place/time that you are designating? If no particular reference to Christianity is desired, you have the choice of alternate descriptions–including the “Western world,” which in the present refers to substantially the same geography as the “Christian world.” If you use the phrase the “Christian world,” you are probably using it because you want to make reference specifically to religion as *the* dominant cultural force.

Now, back to “Islamic” and “Muslim.” Because the Islamic/Muslim world stretches from Senegal and Mauritania in Africa, up to Bosnia and Turkey in Europe, through the Levant and the Gulf, into Central and South Asia and then out to Western China and Southeast Asia all the way to the southern Philippines, there is no easy non-religious way to describe the Islamic/Muslim world–no easy geographical alternative such as “Western.” We are forced to use the religion as the descriptor. However, just as with “Christian” in the phrase the “Christian world,” using the word “Islamic” or “Muslim” tends to emphasize religion–instead of just noting it as the common feature that distinguishes the region, a way of delineating geography, it makes religion appear to be *the* dominant force in the region, to make the places seem more religious than they actually are. Simply by referring to the region as a unit, we accidentally suggest the dominance of religion in the region–there is no “secular” way to refer to these places as a group.

Which is where the developed distinction between “Islamic” and “Muslim” comes in handy. I believe that the words “Islamic” and “Muslim” have developed in practice a similar relationship to each other as the words “Christian” and “Western.” “Islamic” focuses attention on the religion itself, the precepts of the faith; “Muslim” has become more general and almost geographical. For example, consider “Islamic art” and “Muslim art.” Islamic art is art somehow related to the faith of Islam, such as perhaps Quranic calligraphy or mosque architecture; Muslim art is art made by a Muslim or someone in the Muslim world (and may be rooted in traditions from the Muslim world, but not strictly religious ones). Does this distinction have any historical philological basis? Perhaps not, but it is a useful one nonetheless. “Islamic history?” The history of Islam. “Muslim history?” The history of Muslims.

In keeping with this, I believe that we should avoid “Islamic” whenever possible, unless referring specifically to the religion and its precepts, as it tends to highlight in a misleading and unhelpful manner the role of religion in Muslim societies. Yes, there is such a thing as Islamic law or Islamic finance, but just as often people use “Islamic” when trying to make reference to the region as a region, and not to the religion–in those cases, “Muslim” comes in as a better and more descriptive alternative, such as in the phrases “Muslim cinema” or “Muslim cultures.” Or, better yet, we should look beyond religion and recognize the usually more dominant cultural or national forces, and use more specific adjectives, such as “Arab” or “Persian” or “Turkic,” or “Saudi” or “Malaysian,” or even “Middle Eastern.” After all, how often do people hold “Christian art” exhibits, “Christian voices” festivals or workshops of literature by “Christian women” (other than those dealing specifically with religion)? The more we look upon the Muslim world as some sort of monolith driven by religion, the more confused and skewed our perspective becomes and the more likely that the Muslim world will feel it necessary to band together, in an unhelpful way, as victims of Western misrepresentation and persecution.

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Mali photo religion

Religion in the Pays Dogon

Village of Ireli, on the main escarpment, cliff on left and plains on right

As noted in my posts of 12.04 and 12.07, the bend in the Niger made now Mali, in particular Timbuktu, a sort of gateway between Arab/Berber North Africa and black sub-Saharan Africa. As a gateway, Sahelian Mali also became a sort of transition zone between the two, where North African people and culture mixed with sub-Saharan African people and culture, resulting in composites. While for most ethnic and cultural aspects it seems the pivot point is around Timbuktu, there is another transition in the country, which takes place significantly further south–the transition from Muslim West Africa to Christian West Africa.

It is easy to imagine Africa, at its most colorful and “primitive,” as an animist society, a wild land of masked dances and worship of idols. But of course such a representation would be grossly inaccurate. North Africa and most of the countries on just the other side of the Sahara, such as Senegal, Mali, Niger, the Sudan and Somalia, are overwhelmingly Muslim, reflecting the reach of the religion’s conquest and transmission from the seventh century onward. Other countries in this middle part of Africa, such as Ethiopia, Eritrea and Nigeria, are approximately half Muslim, while further south the reach of Christian missionaries from the nineteenth century onward have resulted in a largely Christian populations. There are pockets of animism and traditional beliefs still left, but Africa is, largely, a Muslim and Christian continent.

Given the dominance of those two world faiths, some of the animist populations of Africa have received much notoriety and anthropological and tourist attention; among the foremost of such groups is the Dogon of Mali. With their complex cosmology, colorful rituals and historical resistance from the Muslim populations further north, the Dogon have survived to the twenty-first century as a vestige of animism. Trekking around the Dogon villages, one still sees the houses of the elder priests, or hogons, and the houses in which the village women are sequestered during menstruation, villagers still warn you not to step on this rock or that one, and phallic fetishes are still white from millet offerings. In Youga Dogourou, there was a basket for collections for the next Sigui, the traditional celebration which takes place every sixty-five years (the next is supposed to start in 2032).

Traditional hogon house, Sanga

An animist fetish, white from the grain offerings recently poured over, Youga Na

But while traditional Dogon culture is animist, it would be a serious mistake to say that the Dogon as a whole remain animist, that they uniformly subscribe to their traditional beliefs at the level of religion. No, for better or for worse, many or most of the Dogon have adopted religions of the outside world, namely Islam and Christianity, and conversion away from their traditional beliefs is ongoing.

Christian church, Sanga, in the background left, a mosque

The animist beliefs of the Dogon are certainly the main draw for tourists and quite a point of interest, yes, but what I found perhaps even more interesting is this incursion of the outside monotheistic faiths into Dogon society, how the Dogon Country thus serves as a modern battlefield for the two great Abrahamic faiths of Christianity and Islam. Just as Mali, especially around Timbuktu, acts as a transition zone between North African and sub-Saharan African culture, the Dogon Country acts as a transition zone between Muslim Africa and Christian Africa.

Mosque in Sanga

One story of the Dogon as a race is that they fled southward into their current home, the Bandiagara Escarpment, to escape slave raids from Muslim kingdoms to the north. In doing this they were able to preserve not only their freedom, but their animist faith. But the Dogon have not been immune from Islam’s general advance southward in Africa. In the villages that we visited, Muslim places of worship were by far the most visible, more so than sites of traditional worship or Christian churches. While we read in one guidebook that all Dogon villages had Christian, Muslim and animist populations, separated into their own quarters within the village, our (Christian) guide told us, and it certainly appeared, that at least one village that we visited was essentially entirely Muslim. Connections to the greater Muslim world were also peculiarly visible.

A Dogon mosque, in traditional Sudanese architecture, Yendouma. In the second picture, note the ostrich eggs, a feature common to traditional Dogon houses of worship and Malian mosques (as well as, historically, churches and mosques elsewhere).

While most Dogon mosques were constructed in a “local” style, by which I mean the typical Sudanese mosque architecture of the West African Sahel, at least one mosque in Sanga was built in an “Arab” style. This may fit into a pattern of money from the Gulf having a homogenizing or orthodoxizing effect on Islam’s more remote outposts–one person told us that Saudi money was used for much mosque construction in Mali, and that West African Muslims were returning from the hajj with quite conservative/orthodox views, with more and more local women appearing in burqas.

This Fulani Muslim missionary, presumably originally from Mali somewhere to the north of Dogon Country, greeted us near the village of Banani with great enthusiasm, pronouncing his almost overly Arab name with glottal/guttural fervor. In his hand, the Quran.

Muslim man in the Dogon, in keffiyeh

Christian missionaries have also been incredibly active in the Dogon. With a large presence in Sanga, an American protestant group based in Burkina Faso, just a few miles south of the Dogon Country, has been actively spreading the Christian faith among the Dogon since the 1930s, it appears with great success. We were told by our Christian guide that some villages were entirely Christian. (The hotel we stayed in in nearby Sevare was operated by a former missionary and son of missionary, known as Mac.)

Christian church, Sanga

Religion is largely what makes the Dogon so unique, and so it is easy to feel sad about the tremendous loss of culture that the conversion of the Dogon represents. Given that most of the Dogon customs relate back to their religion and cosmology, it is hard to predict how much of the unique elements of their culture will persist if all of the Dogon convert to Islam and Christianity. While of course the Dogon should be free to follow their conscience, it seems that both the Muslims and the Christians see the animist Dogon as ripe pickings, or perhaps low hanging fruit, and one wonders what material incentives are being provided by the more powerful faiths. No doubt, affiliating oneself with an American Christian outfit can lead to educational and work opportunities that might not otherwise be available in this impoverished corner of West Africa, while becoming a Muslim may help a Dogon become better integrated into Malian society outside of the Dogon Country. Perhaps, rather than decrying the missionary work of the Christians and Muslims, it is best to take comfo
rt in the fact that, to a certain extent, converted Dogon have succeeded in keeping some of their own traditions (the Christian faith in particular can be notoriously syncretic) and that the brew of religions in this Christian/Muslim transition zone does not seem to have led to conflict, such as the recurring violence in, say, central Nigeria, central Sulawesi or the former Yugoslavia.

Grain harvest, Youga Piri

Categories
Mali photo religion

Tabaski, or On Sacrifice

For the most part, our itinerary within the Muslim world has been planned based on visa procurement, climate and, most of all, routings to minimize air travel and maximize our ability to see related places in close succession, the better to compare and contrast them. However, there are some detours we have made for the sake of experiencing special days, such as holidays and festivals, in special places. Perhaps our most significant such planning was to spend Ramadan in Egypt, where it is said to be the most festive (which in hindsight might have been a mistake, see post of 9.23). We arranged our time in Mali to spend Tabaski, also known as the Eid el-Kbir (and countless other names, depending on from where in the Muslim world you hail), in Timbuktu.

Tabaski is a commemoration of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God. According to Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, and in full obedience Abraham took his son up the designated mountain, the son carrying wood for the fire to follow the slaughter. At the last minute, after his son had already been bound and as his throat was about to be slit, an angel announced that the whole thing was a test, and Abraham offers God a ram in place of his son. Now, every year, Muslims around the world slaughter a ram (or some other animal) in the name of God, and celebrate a feast, which is shared not only with friends and family but with less fortunate neighbors.

Tabaski is, as I mentioned above, sometimes called the Eid el-Kbir, which means the “Great Feast,” and indeed it is one of the largest holidays in the Muslim calendar, at least by nomenclature even greater than the festival ending Ramadan, Eid ul-Fitr, which is also known as the “Lesser Feast.” The build-up to Tabaski is tremendous. All over Senegal and Mali, we saw huge herds of sheep and makeshift sheep markets (consisting of adult rams, the only animals considered suitable for the sacrifice), the vendors often Fulani, the nomadic herding people seen all over Africa, in their characteristic hats. We were told that, predictably, the price peaks prior to the holiday, with the leftovers sold at a discount starting the late afternoon of the night before. (To clear confusion (we certainly were confused in the beginning), the animals pictured here are all sheep–West African sheep do not have the woolly fleece that most of us are accustomed to, and so look like goats.)

Sheep on the Faidherbe Bridge in St. Louis, Senegal

Sheep being washed at a market in Bamako, Mali

Sheep at the Monday Market in Djenne, Mali, chased from behind by Fulani herders

Sheep being led to market in Timbuktu, Mali, past the Sankore Mosque

Sheep market, Timbuktu, Touaregs in their blue bubus

I do not recall the name of the author, but it has been postulated that man created religion in order to explain how we could eat other animals. Especially in the case of domesticated animals, such as sheep and cows, to whom we as fellow mammals can grow attached, we needed some kind of justification for why we had the right to kill them, in order to consume them for food. Just as a young child growing up on a farm may be disturbed the first time he sees what he thought a household pet go to the slaughterhouse, our distant ancestors saw a moral conflict and created the framework of religion in which to couch it. It may all have started as a ritual or ceremony to commemorate the life of the animal, the sacrifice that it is making for our survival; from there, the slaughter developed into an offering of the animal to the gods, although of course the meat generated would turn up in our stomachs. This theory would explain why animal sacrifice has played and continues to play such a big role in many religions–because the slaughter of animals was the reason that the religions developed in the first place. I personally don’t take much stock in this theory–the religious impulse seems much more primal and less rational–but I like it because it paints such a sympathetic picture of mankind. We are, at some deep level, all ethical vegetarians, and had to create the tremendous byzantine construct of religious dogma in order to justify our murder of fellow living creatures.

And so, today, that is how I will think of Tabaski. Not as the celebration of a Judeo-Christian-Muslim God who would order his subject to commit filicide–to a nonbeliever such a lord, urging his follower to act against all sense of decency, would not seem to represent a religion worth respecting, let alone believing–but as a sort of tribute to the animals we eat. Not a statement on the expendability of the life of living things as a gesture of our subservience to some master, but as recognition that an act that may seem ordinary, slaughtering an animal for meat, is actually one that is fraught with moral problems, one that is to some extent comparable to killing a fellow human, though perhaps not your own son. Yes, the animals are being killed in the name of God, but the “animal sacrifice” here is neither primitive or savage (neither I nor likely you, dear reader, are vegetarians, and contribute to the deaths of hundreds of animals each year); that in the case of Tabaski (and all halal meat, for that matter) the slaughter is (quickly) performed in the name of God makes it if anything less barbarous, an attempt to place the slaughter within an ethical framework that is conscious and takes note that a life is being taken and to justify it with the loftiest aims.

Our Timbuktu Tabaski experience? We began Tabaski by attending prayer just north of the town, in the desert location preferred by the town’s Touareg/nomad population (the black African population prays in the mosques in the town itself). At first we weren’t sure to what extent we would be welcome to observe, but any such concerns were quickly allayed by the number of people telling us exactly where and when to go to see the prayer and happily mimicking photo-taking by clicking an imaginary camera. Our primary concern, it turned out, was to be the breakdown in discipline we seemed to be causing when dozens of boys, not much interested in praying, crowded us for pictures.

After prayer and a brief sermon was the time of the sacrifice, when the families returned to their homes for the preparation of the feast.

Pools of blood were a common sight in the sandy streets of Timbuktu.

We took our Tabaski meal with our generous hosts, Shindouk and Miranda of Sahara Passion (link), who welcomed us to join them for Tabaski as they did for all meals during our stay. We were told that the extended family would slaughter two rams, one on Tabaski and one on the next day, all to be shared with family and neighbors.

As we ate our meal in the courtyard of the house, we heard the plaintive cries of Sheep #2, who was tied to a post a few feet away–did he know what had happened to his friend? did he know what was to come? He seemed thirsty, and hungry, as he bleated and tugged at a nearby thatch basket, as if to unravel it for food.

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Laos photo religion Senegal

Religious Education in West Africa

An African notebook, to be wiped and reused

Islam, like the other great religions of the world, has a long and rich tradition of teaching and learning. Universities in the Islamic world, such as those of Fez and Cairo, are among the earliest anywhere, and Muslim scientists contributed much to many disciplines, especially during Europe’s so-called dark ages (see post of 6.13). In addition to general learning in the Islamic world, however, there is of course also Islamic education–religious education–which takes place in the madrasa, or Islamic religious school. A prejudiced western mind might imagine that the Islamic world is full of madrasas, of mullahs and imams and eager bearded students. Well, it’s possible that Islamic religious education in the east is more popular than Christian religious education in the west (one reads that seminaries are gravely empty these days), but, in this modern age, it is most definitely secondary in prevalence to secular education, to the fields and disciplines, from the humanities to the sciences, that are more likely to contribute to someone’s livelihood. Even as tourists who seek out mosques, it was not that common an occurrence for us to run into crowds of madrasa students in the Middle East. Which is why, traveling through Senegal, we have been astonished by the visibility of large numbers of religious students, called talibes, in the country.

Talibes are an interesting phenomenon. For the most part, they seem to be quite young children who come from all over the countryside to learn from religious leaders called marabouts. The students finance their education–feed themselves and pass along money for their upkeep to their teachers–by begging for alms, which in addition to being their only possible source of income, given that most come from poor families and are too young to do most kinds of work, is intended to teach them humility and give fellow citizens an opportunity to fulfill their religious requirement of charity. In a city such as St. Louis, the old French colonial capital where we are now, the little kids can be found by the dozens, carrying around their characteristic empty tin cans or plastic buckets and begging for money and food.

The easiest comparison, and a very apt one, is to the boy monks of Laos. Just like the Buddhist monasteries of Laos, the madrasas of Senegal provide kids who may not otherwise be able to afford much of an education with essentially free lodging and tuition, and the system of begging and almsgiving provides a way for the community (and generous tourists) to support their schooling. The kids beg, yes, because they are poor and have no other source of money, but the religiously-sanctioned nature of the begging is intended to give the process a dignity and meaning that keep from turning the kids into mere beggars.

Almsgiving, Laos

This comparison, however, reveals the strengths of the Laotian system over the West African one. While I recognize that giving alms is one of the five pillars of Islam, it is problematic that the talibes are begging in countries where extreme poverty and reliance on begging are all too common. In Laos, there is almost no begging, and so there is no mistaking the boy monks, clad in saffron robes, for homeless beggar children. In Senegal, talibes are poorly clothed and often dirty, indistinguishable from child beggars found in Senegal or other poor countries around the world. In Laos, almsgiving is ritualized to an extent (performed at certain times of the day, in a regular procession, with regular donors) that there is no mistaking it for “regular” begging. The citizens and tourists giving alms kneel to place themselves lower than the monks, showing that the almsgiving is not an indication of greater wealth or status on the part of the giver, but an offering recognizing the higher spiritual status of the receiver. In Senegal, there little of this ritual, and it is all too easy (especially to the casual tourist) to mistake the student children as mere homeless street urchins, and one wonders how the begging might affect their sense of dignity.

A further concern I have is the type of education that the West African talibes receive. While Laotian monasteries are extremely basic, with the teaching done largely by the older students, the curriculum consists of a wide range of subjects, from English to mathematics. Visiting Laos, it is hard not to be surprised by the apparent ambition of the monks, many of whom come from extremely poor rural families, and their hunger to learn English by practicing with tourists (some monasteries set up regular chatting hours to encourage such language practice) or to gain experience using computers by visiting the local internet cafes where owners give them discounts or even free usage. One particularly adorable little monk in Luang Prabang explained to us that he wanted to be a computer programmer, which seemed to us sadly unlikely given local resources, but epitomizes the drive and hope of secular success that these students have, and that they hope their monastery educations will make possible for them.

In Senegal? Admittedly we did not converse much with these children (who speak no English and little French), but the curriculum seems to consist mainly of Islamic studies and Arabic. What of their futures? For what jobs is such an education suitable? It is hard for me to say with the little background that I have, but we were told by a Peace Corps volunteer from West Africa that, in their village, young people study in madrasas to become imams, because imams make good money attending births, circumcisions and other life-cycle ceremonies, uninvited, and receiving honoraria for their religious guidance. According to the Peace Corp volunteer, the local youth saw it as a good career choice, a way to make a decent living in an impoverished African village. (Meanwhile, the villagers complain that there are too many imams, too many people to pay off come ceremony time.)

Waiting outside of the mosque at sunrise

A typical secular liberal viewpoint, and one that one may be skeptical of for its commonness, is that lack of education and economic opportunity drives people toward religion–this argument is tested true from our experience and learning about madrasas in West Africa. If the public school system were more effective or better financed, perhaps children would have more opportunities to get an education outside of the madrasa. If French- and English-learning opportunities were more readily available, perhaps Arabic would not be as appealing a second language (although I do acknowledge that, to Muslims, some knowledge of Arabic should be considered essential and that learning Arabic could open some opportunities in North Africa or the Middle East). If there were more jobs in the public or private sectors, more economic opportunity, young people might not be dreaming of becoming imams (nearly no-one in the west these days wishes to become a Christian cleric, as the churches’ recruiting problems show–indeed, first world countries now import Christian priests from Africa and Latin America, showing that the same phenomenon plays out with the Christian faith and seminaries as with Islam and madrasas).

Most West Africans certainly don’t look like fundamentalists, and I do not doubt that the brand of Islam being taught in these madrasas is quite moderate. And, no doubt, along with the Quran and Arabic come a valuable education in literature, philosophy, ethics and so forth, which would b
e valuable in any field. But religious education and the religious life, even if sometimes called a vocation, is a choice. In the west, particularly in Europe, it is a choice that fewer and fewer people are making, because there are so many other (more appealing) life choices. This in turn is making much of the western world less and less religious, and less driven by religion. In West Africa, it seems, the trend may be in the opposite direction.

Inside a madrasa in Dakar

NOTE: I have left out of this post the fact that many of the talibes are in fact receiving little to no education at all, but simply being used by their so-called marabouts as a source of income–a troop of semi-enslaved children to go begging for them, with beatings for children who do not bring home specified amounts. This is of course appalling, but I have left it out of my discussion above to focus on more general thoughts.

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Bosnia faces photo religion Serbia

Faces of Muslim Balkans

Just a few pictures from our few days among Muslims in the Balkans. The first picture below is of the Albanian-ethnic attendant of a mosque in Belgrade, Serbia; the rest are of Bosnians in Sarajevo. At an “ethnic” level, the story of Bosnia and Hercegovina is remarkably similar to the story of Cyprus (see posts of 10.27 and 10.28). Before the recent conflict, we were told, Muslim and Christian Bosnians thought of each other as people of the same “nationality” but merely different religions. Since the disintegration of the Yugoslav Republic and the subsequent conflicts, Christian Bosnians have been restyled as Serbs or Croats, with the “Serbian” Bosnians in particular identifying themselves with the Serbs of Serbia (even flying the Serbian flag within their semi-autonomous breakaway Republika Srpska) rather than the Muslim Bosnians, or Bosniaks, with whom they had lived together for hundreds of years. We were told that it is not possible to tell Christian and Muslim Bosnians apart, just as with Christian and Muslim Cypriots, but as all of the pictures of Bosnians below were taken within the city of Sarajevo, the subjects are most likely Muslim. As you can see, Muslims Bosnians look typically Slavic–they are genetically no different from their Christian neighbors. Few Bosnian women wear headscarves and few Bosnian men beards.





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Bosnia Bulgaria photo religion Serbia Slovenia Turkey

Islam in the Balkans

We didn’t really set out to travel at all in the Balkans. Outside of southern Spain, for its historical importance as a major outpost of Islamic culture, Europe was not to play a big role in our trip. But as it turned out, the cheapest flight from Europe to Dakar departed from Milan, and we figured, what better way to get from Istanbul to Milan than by train? And so, through Sofia (Bulgaria), Belgrade (Serbia), Sarajevo (Bosnia and Hercegovina), Zagreb (Croatia), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Venice (Italy) we traveled to Milan, mostly on overnight trains.

In keeping with the theme of our year’s travels, we thought that we would use this opportunity to seek out historical and current Islam and Islamic culture in the Balkans. I knew that some of the countries in the Balkans had substantial Muslim populations (and detoured to Sarajevo to visit Bosnia in particular, post to come), but did not know how much Islamic influence we would see generally in the region. Given how extremely brief and superficial our travels in the region were, I was surprised to so easily find substantial remnants of Islam in the Balkans.

Islam came to the Balkans through the Ottoman Empire’s advances in the 15th century. From then until the 19th century, much of the Balkan peninsula was a part of that Turkish Muslim empire, and therefore subject to Turkish cultural and religious influence, as well as Turkish migration. We first saw evidence of the Ottoman and Turkish presence in the Balkans before we even left Turkey, at the Balkan Turks Foundation on Istanbul’s Divan Yolu (the sort of “main street” of the historical part of Istanbul), a cultural foundation similar to the East Turkistan Foundation for western China (see post of 11.05). It is unclear to me how many Turkish speakers remain in the Balkan countries now–given that some seem to have moved to Turkey–but in the period of Turkish advance before and during Ottoman rule, Turks must have moved into the Balkan peninsula just as they moved into Cyprus (see post of 10.27). Ataturk himself (see post of 11.02) was born in now Greece.

But Islam in the Balkans was not just a matter of Turkish-speaking Muslim migrants into the region, which seems to have been the primary phenomenon in Cyprus, but also of the gradual conversion of local populations. Just as there may not be any “Mughals” left in South Asia, but hundreds of millions of Muslims, there are far more Muslims in the Balkans than people of Turkish descent. As in other regions controlled by Islamic rulers, there was to some extent conversion in the local, originally non-Muslim population. There is one question, I have, however, about the spread of Islam in the Balkans, and that is why the Muslim populations seem so geographically concentrated today, in the more heavily Muslim republics of the Western Balkans (further from Turkey than the overwhelmingly Christian Eastern Balkans). I know that some of this has been exaggerated by recent conflicts, but it seems that the penetration of Islam was in fact greater in the west, perhaps due to greater/more direct/longer imperial presence/control in those regions. I would certainly appreciate clarification on this point from my readers!

Some photos and thoughts tracing Islam in the Balkans, from Bulgaria to Slovenia.

Ottoman-era mosque, Sofia, Bulgaria. The Banya Bashi Mosque, located a couple blocks away from the Sofia Synagogue, was built by none other than Sinan, the Ottoman Empire’s greatest architect, in the 16th century. Bulgaria is one of two European countries bordering Turkey, but it is, as is Greece (and, to the north, Romania), overwhelmingly Christian, despite nearly five centuries under Ottoman rule. The mosque seemed primarily for use by the Turkish minority (around 10% of the total population of Bulgaria) and perhaps Turks in transit, as it had Turkish language signs and prayer timetables in Turkish.

Bayrakli Mosque, Belgrade, Serbia. The Serbs, who have pride of place as a nation that engaged in a horrific ethnic cleansing campaign in such recent history (though some of the glory should be shared with Greek volunteers who took part in some of the worst atrocities), destroyed most of Belgrade’s at one time many mosques during the 1990s conflicts. Perhaps the current authorities believe that there is still a possibility of anti-Muslim mob violence, as this mosque had its own police box. The only other conspicuously Ottoman building we saw in Belgrade was a tomb of a pasha inside Kalemegdan Citadel. Much more so, modern Serbia identifies itself as a part of the Slavic world, with two of downtown’s most prominent landmarks being the Moscow Hotel and the Russian Tsar Restaurant (see Derek’s post of 11.12).

Bosnia and Hercegovina, despite very significant Christian populations (particularly in the semi-autonomous breakaway Republika Srpska), is very much a part of the Islamic world, and the most significant and northwesternmost bastion of Islam (if one does not count the large Muslim minorities within Western Europe). I will cover our visit to Sarajevo in a separate post to come.

Slovenia. Once you head into Croatia and Slovenia you leave the former Ottoman Empire for the former Austro-Hungarian, and traces of Islam disappear quickly. One small and depressing anecdote, however. Slovenia is by far the most financially successful of the former Yugoslav republics, now not only a member of the European Union but within the Eurozone as well. Slovenes are wealthy enough to be members of the international backpacker fraternity (we’ve run into them in Ethiopia and Kenya), and Ljubljana has a first world sheen that, say, Sarajevo does not. I asked a Slovene in Ljubljana what accounted for his nation’s success, and was told that the area that is now Slovenia has always been economically more developed than the rest of the former Yugoslavia, and as a sovereign state Slovenia was able to take better advantage of this lead. Another factor, I was told, was that the “southern people” of the other Yugoslav republics had a different mentality, in part because there were “many Muslims” and they “think differently” and were lazy and didn’t want to work. I had thought that Slovenes deserved credit for somehow staying out of the fray of the wars that entangled the other former Yugoslav republics, that Slovenes were perhaps less likely to think the sort of dangerous ethnic nationalism that their neighbors to the south seemed enamored with. Perhaps I was wrong.

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Cyprus photo religion Syria Turkey

Reuse of Religious Sites

Another nice thing about traveling to so many places, especially within a reasonably condensed timeframe, is that you can easily recognize phenomena that recur in diverse settings and compare their manifestations. One such common phenomenon is the co-opting of places of worship for one religion by another (usually newer) religion, or, more simply put, the reuse of religious sites.

Examples are legion. Among the most famous that you may be aware of is the Pantheon in Rome, a Roman pagan temple that was turned into a Christian church in the 7th century, one of several such conversions in Rome. One of the single most contentious pieces of real estate in the world is Jerusalem’s Haram ash-Sharif or Temple Mount, the site of the Muslim Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque and formerly the site of the First and Second Temples of the Jewish faith. The most holy site of Islamic worship, the Kaaba in Mecca, used to be an ancient pagan shrine (and is believed to be built around a meteorite rock). An example familiar to the New Yorkers among you may be the Christian use of the Temple of Dendur, a Roman-era Egyptian temple which found its way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when its home on the Nile was to be flooded by a new dam. An Asian example would be the temples of Angkor, which were alternatively Buddhist and Hindu depending on the religion of the reigning power.

Why were all of these sites and buildings, and so many others, reused? Well, the sites were probably reused because places of worship are often built at meaningful or strategic locations, such as city centers and hilltops. After a conquest or upon conversion of a population, the powers that be of the ascendant religion probably felt that the location occupied by the older faith was too prime, and that to establish the prestige of the newer faith it must take up that particular space. Or, even if location was not a consideration, perhaps the new religion reused the site because it wanted to reuse the building. Why adopt an existing building instead of building something new? I suppose there are two main reasons for this. The first is simply pragmatic. Places of worship are often built with heavy stones at enormous cost. To destroy an existing edifice and to rebuild in even a shade of its former self (certainly it would not do to have the new structure, presumably for a religion that is coming into greater favor, pale in comparison to the old) may be beyond the financial or technological means of those of the newer faith. Second, and perhaps a more generous reading, is that the newer religion views the old site and structure as having some sort of special, mystical quality to it. In some cases, as with the transition from Judaism to Christianity or either to Islam, sites retain their significance because the newer religion incorporates, to a certain extent, existing stories and beliefs. But even in other cases, such as the leap from the Roman pagan religion to Christianity, there is superstitious value, credibility and prestige attached to existing places of worship. Even if the talismanic value is simply limited to the reminder that the new religion defeated the old, the purported reason that an obelisk stands in the middle of St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, the reuse has purpose and value.

Whatever the reasons, reused religious sites are incredibly helpful to an understanding of the history of a place because they establish, visually, the pattern of conquest of a given location, or the adoption of faith and conversion of a given population. The reused religious sites become tangible markers of some of the greatest conflicts or social transformations in history, whether, in the case of the Pantheon, the adoption of the Christian faith by the Roman Empire or, in the case of the Haram ash-Sharif or Temple Mount, the many changes of hands of the city of Jerusalem.

Our trip this year could be said to be a celebration or study of a single historical movement, the spread of Islam from the time of Mohammed to the present. Traveling through so much of the Islamic world has given us an experience mirroring in some ways the journey of the religion itself, from the Arabian desert outward. One common observation on the expansion of Islam is that it happened incredibly rapidly. Compared to, say, Christianity, which had to survive in secret for hundreds of years after the death of Christ before official recognition by the Roman Empire, the military conquests of the just-enlightened Arabs came extremely quickly, streaming out of Mecca and Medina in the seventh century to spread from Andalusia to Afghanistan by the eighth century. As quick as the Arab conquests were, however, the actual spread of Arab culture among and adoption of the Islamic faith by the peoples living in those territories, as well as the spread of the religion beyond those lands, has been a gradual process that is ongoing today. The religion’s expansion is still very much active, the Islamic faith having traveled deeper west into Europe, further south in West and East Africa, and outward east in Indonesia, since the travels of ibn Battuta in the 14th century.

Islam’s expansion has not come at no cost to other religions, given that currently Islamic societies previously had other beliefs, just as the Roman empire was pagan before it was Christian. In the Middle East, the arrival of Islam has largely meant a transformation from Christian into Muslim. The Levant, Jesus’s home and a homeland for the Christian church itself (see posts of 4.21 and 4.23), is now largely Muslim, save certain enclaves (see, e.g., post of 5.22). Coptic Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism, has faded to a small minority in an increasingly Islamic population, though in the case of Nubia Christianity was dominant as recently as the 14th century (see post of 10.01). The capital of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire itself, Constantinople, was conquered by the Turks in 1453 to become an Islamic city and for centuries served as the great capital of the Ottoman Empire, which reached even further into Christian southeastern Europe before its collapse in the early twentieth century.

As with other religions before it, Islam too has reused existing religious sites, and, for the Middle East portion of our trip, the three most memorable reused religious sites are churches-turned-mosques, reflecting the religious history of the region: the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, the Ayasofya of Istanbul and the Selimiye Mosque of Cyprus.

Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

During the expansion of the Christian faith, it was of course the Christians who were adopting existing (pagan) religious sites for their own use. The list of such reused buildings and sites are too numerous to list, but include the Pantheon in Rome, and temples at Baalbek and Palmyra among the sites we have visited this year. In some cases, such as at Baalbek, the Christians used the existing pagan structures as a sort of quarry and foundation, rebuilding on the site using the pre-fabricated masonry at hand; in others, such as the Pantheon, things were pretty much left in place, a new altar and cross to designate the new faith.

Damascus was always a great city, going back far earlier than the life of St. Paul, and when the Christian faith came into power, the Christians converted the principal religious site of the city, the Temple of Jupiter, into their own house of worship. The Church of St. John the Baptist in the heart of the Old City of Damascus was probably among the greatest of these “new” churches of the Byzantine Empire.

The Roman colonnade leading to the old temple, still very much in place

The Christians reused not only the site itself, but many of the stones and columns of the old temple.

But the Christians were not to have the last word. After the Arab conquest swept through Damascus in the seventh century, and the new Umayyad caliphs wanted to make their architectural statement on their new capital of the Arab empire, they chose the most obvious site in the city, the site of the old Temple of Jupiter and the Church of St. John the Baptist, for their great mosque. It is said that the rights to the site were negotiated with the Christians of the city; no doubt the parties’ relative positions of power factored heavily into the balance. It is disputed to what extent the Umayyads kept the structure of the Christian church and to what extent the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus was itself largely a new construction on the same site. However, all concede that the new mosque, if not a strict conversion of an existing building, was built with a great deal of influence from Byzantine Christian religious architecture, and certainly reused some of the very pieces of the old church. The Umayyad Mosque was one of the first great architectural statements of the Islamic faith, and so it might be said that through this building Islamic architecture as a whole owes quite a debt to Christian religious architecture (which in turn owes a debt to pagan religious architecture).

Main prayer hall, which resembles the nave of a church. The shrine in the middle is said to house the head of John the Baptist, the namesake of the old church. Muslims, who accept to an extent the stories and teachings of the New Testament, believe in the holiness of both John the Baptist and Jesus (for whom a minaret at the Umayyad Mosque is named).

In Greek, the language of the eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, an inscription of Psalm 145 reads, ironically, “Your Kingdom, Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.” This doorway is on the south side of the mosque, the side on which the Umayyads built their (non-extant) palace.

Byzantine statuary incorporated into the outside wall of the mosque. One Damascus resident whom we met suggested that this was a statue of Christ–likely not, but it was certainly part of the former Christian church (and in turn possibly lifted from its pagan predecessor).

Ayasofya, Istanbul

Although the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus may be the earliest great example of a Christian church to Islamic mosque conversion, it is by no means the most famous: that title certainly goes to the Haghia Sophia or Ayasofya in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Church of Holy Wisdom or Haghia Sophia was built in the 6th c. AD by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who remarked at its completion that he had in fact constructed the greatest building ever built. And even today, his statement seems a plausible boast–in the sheer scale of its massive dome, not to mention the art that remains on its walls even today, the Ayasofya is with few equals, anywhere in the world, for houses of worship or for buildings of any kind.

Justinian presents the Haghia Sophia to the Virgin Mary, left.

The Haghia Sophia suffered much damage over the years, including in the Fourth Crusade, a savage looting of Constantinople by Western Europeans, but finally met its greatest transformation after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century, after which Sultan Mehmet the Conquerer ordered the conversion of the Haghia Sophia into a mosque, making modifications such as the addition of minarets and a mihrab.

Quranic script medallions inside the great dome

But the conversion was far from a stripping of the building’s Christian history. The new inhabitants generally covered up rather than destroyed much of the great Christian art within the church, and even left some of it in plain sight. Twentieth century restorations have brought some of the covered art back into light.

Crosses are still very much visible, erased but not all that effectively or wholeheartedly.

Virgin Mary with Christ on upper left, Arabic script on lower right.

Just as the pagan Roman basilica became a model for Christian churches to come, the Ayasofya became a model for Turkish mosques, with many Istanbul structures mimicking the Ayasofya. Given the centrality of Istanbul and Turkey to Islamic architecture generally, and the construction of Turkish-style mosques in other parts of the world, the Ayasofya, like the Umayyad Mosque, can be said to have acted as a conduit for bringing Byzantine Christian architectural traditions into the Islamic world.

The Blue Mosque, completed in 1616, on right, Ayasofya on left

The Ayasofya, converted into a museum by Ataturk, still draws Christian pilgrims.

Selimiye Mosque, Cyprus

As significant as the Haghia Sophia/Ayasofya is in the history of the Byzantine Empire and Istanbul, and its status as perhaps the most historically monumental reuse of a religious building, it is not the most striking mosque-to-church conversion that we ran across on our trip. For sheer transparency of conversion, the Selimiye Mosque in Nicosia, North Cyprus, is hard to beat–no other place of worship I have ever seen looks so much like the very form of a place of worship of another faith.

The building now known as the Selimiye Mosque started its life, as is quite obviously apparent, as a Christian church, more specifically a Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral during the 13th-15th century Lusignan reign of Cyprus. After the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in the 16th century, the cathedral was turned into a mosque. But, as you can see, apparently little other than construction of minarets, a paint job and the addition of a mihrab were effected–the building is very much a Gothic cathedral in form.




At the lower left, note the “re-orienting” of the church toward Mecca, effected by the construction of somewhat odd raised, offset platforms. While the nave still stubbornly points east, worshippers face south-southeast, the direction of Mecca, or qibla, from Cyprus.