The Concept of Territory in Islamic Law and Thought

A Comparative Study

Yanagihashi Hiroyuki, Hiroyuki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780710307255
• eBook ISBN: 9781136184604
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is Volume II of a planned six on Islamic Area Studies. Originally published in 2000. The Islamic Area Studies Project plans to do multidisciplinary research on Muslim societies in both the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds, by reflecting the fact that areas with close ties to Islam now encompass the world. This series presents the important new knowledge and debate achieved through international joint research about Islam as a religion and civilization, particularly emphasizing comparative and historical analysis. The series will hopefully provide multifaceted, useful information to deepen the reader's understanding of the Islamic world.

Part One

Classical Concepts of Territory

From Dār al-Hijra to Dār al-Islām: The Islamic Utopia

Brannon M. Wheeler

In his history, Abu Jaʿfar Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari (224–310 A.H.) preserves an unusual report concerning the dying instructions of the first Umayyad Caliph Muʿawiya b. Abi Sufyan. The report is given on the authority of ʿAbd al-Aʿla b. Maymun, on the authority of his father.

When he became sick with the illness from which he died, Muʿawiya said: “The Apostle of God clothed me with a shirt (qamīṣ) and I put it away. He pared his nails one day and I took the parings and put them in a bottle. When I die, clothe me in that shirt, cut up and grind the parings and scatter them on my eyes and mouth so that perhaps God might be merciful to me on account of the blessings (baraka) of these things.”¹

A similar account is mentioned by Nasim al-Riyad in his commentary on the Shifāʾ of al-Qadi ʿIyad, but in this account Muʿawiya is buried in two of the Prophet’s cloaks (izār and ridāʾ) and both the hair and the fingernails of the Prophet were stuffed in Muʿawiya’s mouth and nose by his bequest.²

Other reports indicate that the Prophet distributed his hair after shaving for the iḥlāl subsequent to the hajj, suggesting that the nails belonging to Muʿawiya might also be connected to the Prophet leaving his state of iḥrām. Both al-Bukhari and Muslim cite a report in which the Prophet cuts his hair upon completing the hajj and instructs Abu Talha to distribute one share each to the male Companions (ṣaḥāba), and Abu Talha’s wife, Umm Sulaym, to distribute two shares to the women.³ According to Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, it was this distribution which established the tradition of blessings (baraka) being associated with the hair of the Prophet.⁴ Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Qastallani also comments that the Prophet made this distribution at the completion of the hajj so that his followers could keep it as relics.⁵ Ahmad b. Hanbal records a report that there was no hair that fell from the Prophet’s head that was not collected by his followers.⁶

The link between these relics and the hajj is highlighted further by the context of the other prohibitions for pilgrims entering the Haram in a state of iḥrām. Pilgrims are not allowed to wear sewn garments, dyed clothes, shoes with an enclosed heel, cloaks, or hats, nor are they allowed to apply perfume and oils.⁷ These items appear to represent both social status and products of civilization. Kissing, lustful touching, sexual intercourse and marriage are prohibited, also seeming to separate the Haram from the space of everyday life and the bases for the continuity of human society. The area of the Haram itself is a preserve of wilderness in which people are restricted from hunting for food and harvesting trees, grass or rocks. On the basis of a saying of the Prophet recorded in Ibn Maja and al-Tirmidhi, legal scholars stress that these various prohibitions, and especially the restrictions on cutting hair and nails, keep the pilgrim in a wild, animal-like state for the duration of the stay in the territory of the Haram.⁸

The following pages examine the contrast between the restrictions relative to the Haram and the treatment of the physical and artificial remains of the Prophet. Part one focuses on the dispersal and collection of prophetic remains associated with the model of territory represented by the dār al-hijra, including hair, hadith, footprints and artifacts. Part two centers on the exegetical understanding of the relics of Moses and Aaron in the Ark of the Covenant, with special attention to their link to the establishment of the Haram and the hajj. The juxtaposition of these concepts is not meant to reify any analytical categories but to suggest a fresh perspective on some of the ways Muslim scholarship demarcates and signifies territory.

Dār al-Hijra

According to Muslim scholarship, the dār al-hijra is the realm of cities and the law.⁹ It is the territory established and maintained by the example of the Prophet, conceived in terms of the dispersal and collection of his sunna and physical remains. In addition to the accounts mentioned before, there are a number of other traditions regarding the distribution of the Prophet’s hair. Abu Zamʿa al-Balawi, also known as ʿUbayd b. Arqam and ʿUbayd b. Adam, is reported to have been one of the Companions present when the Prophet distributed his hair from iḥlāl on the day of Mina.¹⁰ Al-Balawi is reported to have settled in Egypt but later traveled to Ifriqiya on a raid with Muʿawiya b. Hudayj during which he was martyred and buried in Qayrawan at a place later identified as al-Balawiya. In his history of Qayrawan, Abu Zayd ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Muhammad al-Dabbagh describes how al-Balawi was buried with the hairs of the Prophet.

He died in Qayrawan and was buried in a location known still today and called al-Balawiya. He ordered them to cover over his grave and bury with him his tall hat (qalamūwa) in which was a hair from the Prophet.¹¹

Al-Dabbagh goes on to mention another report that al-Balawi had three hairs of the Prophet, and stated in his will that one be placed on his tongue and one on each of his eyes.¹²

The mention of a special location being marked as the burial site of al-Balawi is also known from other traditions regarding the hairs of the Prophet. For example, Abu Shaʿra, who acquired some hairs of the Prophet, is said to have been buried in al-Zillaj in a spot marked with a dome around which were planted olive trees.¹³ Ibn Hajar reports that the burial site of ʿAil b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Khalati (d. 708 A.H.), sometimes called al-Rikabi, was also known because of his possession of a stirrup (rikāb) and hair of the Prophet.¹⁴ In other cases, the hairs are used at the foundation of a public building such as the madrasa of Ibn al-Zaman which was named for Shams al-Din Muhammad b. ʿUmar b. Muhammad b. ʿUmar al-Zaman (824–897 A.H.) who was in possession of the Prophet’s hair.¹⁵ In his work on the history of madrasas, ʿAbd al-Qadir b. Muhammad al-Nuʿaymi mentions that the Nasirid Amir Sayf al-Din Manjak al-Yusufi (d. 776 A.H.) established the Madrasat al-Manjakiya in Damascus with a hair from the Prophet.¹⁶

This use of the remains of the Prophet to establish pious endowments is consistent with the reports preserved by al-Nasaʾi and Ahmad b. Hanbal that the left-over water from the Prophet’s ablution and mouth rinsing was used to establish a mosque.

He [Prophet] called for water. He performed his ablution, rinsed his mouth and then poured it in a bucket. He instructed us saying: “Take this and when you come to your land, break your agreement, sprinkle this water in the place and take it as a mosque.” We said: “The city is far away and it is very hot. The water will dry up.” He said: “Extend it with the water for only the scent is necessary.” So we went out until we reached our city. We broke the agreement, then sprinkled in its place, and took it as a mosque.¹⁷

In this case, the spit of the Prophet, like his hairs, is transported to a distant location as an extension of his authority for the foundation of Islam. Many other mosques, such as the Masjid al-Husayni in Cairo and the Masjid al-Jazzar Pasha in Acre, are said to be endowed with and founded upon hairs of the Prophet, as are other institutions such as the Ribat al-Naqshbandiyya in Cairo, the al-Mashhad al-Husayni in Damascus, and the Bahubal in India.¹⁸

Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad b. Abi Bakr al-Murshidi (762–829 A.H.), bom in Mecca and died in Medina, is reported to have had twenty-six hairs of the Prophet which he acquired from an upright man on one of his three visits to Jerusalem. The account is given in al-Sakhawi’s biography of al-Murshidi.

He [al-Murshidi] was pious and staid among people. He visited the sites that the Prophet visited for more than fifty years walking on his own feet. He also visited Jerusalem three times where he met an upright man who had with him twenty-six hairs from the Prophet. He distributed them upon his death to six people in equal portions, and this one [al-Murshidi] was one of them.¹⁹

In the biography of al-Murshidi’s son, ʿUmar b. Muhammad (d. 862 A.H.), al-Sakhawi states that the hair was divided equally among three people, and that the hair had brought blessings upon ʿUmar for fifty-six years.²⁰ Further in his work, al-Sakhawi also explains that the hairs were transferred from ʿUmar to his son, al-Murshidi’s grandson, Abu Hamid.²¹ Despite the difficulty inherent in the equal division of twenty-six hairs among six or three people, these reports point to the importance of the transmission of the prophetic relics, not unlike the transmission of hadith, among the pious and from father to son.

Note here that the hairs were acquired only through travel away from Mecca, travel by al-Murshidi which was in imitation of the Prophet’s journey to Jerusalem. In this case, the travel serves to collect and return the relics to the place from which they were originally dispatched by the Prophet himself. The transfer of the hair to Mecca by al-Murshidi and his heirs is a return of the Prophet’s remains from their dispersal with his Companions. During his visit to Mecca in 897 A.H., al-Qastallani reports having seen the hair, then associated with al-Murshidi’s grandson, Abu Hamid.²² The visits of al-Murshidi to the Prophet in Medina parallel later visits to the Prophet in Mecca by others via the hairs transferred from Jerusalem. Not unlike the use of hair to establish places of worship and centers of learning, the al-Murshidi hair of Mecca provides a physical manifestation of the otherwise intangible link between the Prophet and later generations of followers.

This dispatch of the Companions with pieces of the Prophet, and their association with the establishment of civilizational centers in new territories, is also reflected in the distribution and collection of the Prophet’s remains as text. The basic model of temporal succession and geographical distance is emphasized by the expansion of the Companions and Islam to the amṣār, and by the necessity of travel among these amṣār in the search for knowledge of the Prophet. In his work of hadi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Part One: Classical Concepts of Territory
• Part Two: Muslims in the Face of Dar al-Harb
• Part Three: Transformation of the Concept of Territory
• Index