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The promotion of holy land pilgrimage, which began in earnest in the fourth century CE, redefined Christian notions of the sacred. At a time when Christians were articulating a new relation to the material world in their theologies and practices, pilgrimage provided a means of g…
“All Dear Unto God: Saints, Pilgrimage and Textual Practice in Jewish Morocco,” is based on two years of ethnographic and archival research centered around annual pilgrimages to the shrines of deceased Jewish holy-men in Morocco. My approach to the these events combines: (1) a r…
The subject of this thesis is the relationship between hagiography and cult in the early medieval west taken through the example of the Passiones of St. Kilian of Würzburg († 689) in the period from circa 700 to circa 1000 AD. Through examining a cult which developed east of the…
This study includes texts by six women: Karaikkāl Ammayar (seventh century from Tamil Nadu), Antal (eighth century; Tamil Nadu), Mahadevi Akka (twelfth century, Karnataka), Lalla Ded (fourteenth century, Kashmir), Mirabai (sixteenth century, Rajasthan), and Bahinā Bai (seventeen…
The memories of medieval Sufi saints had an important influence on Turkish society and culture during the Ottoman Empire, but when the empire came to its demise in the early twentieth century and its central lands were taken over by the modernist, nationalist, secularist Republi…
The theological and historical issues surrounding Byzantine sanctity have never been thoroughly tied together by historians. However, the inner experience of theosis (union with God) and the external recognition of saints were in fact closely tied in the Byzantine mind. Once thi…
This dissertation offers new perspectives on al-Tirmidhī’s contribution to the Sūfī doctrine of sainthood and to the development of early Islamic mysticism. Included in this study is codicological work that presents al-Tirmidhī’s Kitāb al-Hikma for the first time in print. The f…
This dissertation is a case study in how the spiritual authority of Ahmad-i Jām (c. 1059-c. 1139), also known as Zhanda Pīl or “the Colossal Elephant,” has endured and manifested itself over space and time, from the eleventh century to the nineteenth century. Utilizing a wide va…
This dissertation identifies five tropes, or narratological motifs, in the hagiographic literature from Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, and Francia from the early-medieval period that treat of saints, their bodies, and their embodied miracles. These tropes include the motif of hol…
This thesis focuses on John Chrysostom’s discursive use of ancient medico-philosophical theories of optics in his homilies on the saints. In his homilies on Saints Meletius, Babylas, Julian, Drosis, Ignatius, and the Maccabean Martyrs, inter alia, Chrysostom uses technical optic…
Yusuf ibn Isma`il al-Nabhani (d. 1932) completed his Jami` karamat al-awliya' , a compilation of miracle tales (manakib ), in 1906 and first published it in 1911. A modern work, al-Nabhani's collection of miracle stories represents the culmination of a tradition that spans one t…
Islamic saint veneration is not generally known outside of the Islamic world, and is rarely discussed in textbooks on Islam. Practices of Islamic saint veneration can vary by region, and there is little English-language information on Islamic saint veneration as it is practiced …
Malerkotla is the only Muslim majority region remaining on the Indian side of Punjab. At the center of this town is the tomb of its founder, a Sufi saint popularly known as Haider Shaikh. At his tomb the simultaneous presence of Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims challenges received not…
How and why do individuals within a given society gain reputations as charismatic saints or as charlatans and heretics? Does the answer turn on whether the individual has an innate charisma that is recognized by those around him or her? Is the process, on the contrary, one in wh…