Full Description
Inter-religious Practices and Saint Veneration in the Muslim World studies the immortal saint Khidr/Khizr, a mysterious prophet and popular multi-religious figure and Sufi master venerated across the Muslim world.
Focusing on the religious figure of Khidr/Khizr and the practice of religion from Middle East to South Asia, the chapters offer a multi-disciplinary analysis. The book addresses the plurality in the interpretation of Khizr and underlines the unique character of the figure, whose main characteristics are kept by Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs. Chapters examine vernacular Islamic piety and intercommunal religious practices and highlight the multiples ways through which Khidr/Khizr allows a conversation between different religious cultures. Furthermore, Khidr/Khizr is a most significant case study for deciphering the complex dialectic between the universal and the local. The contributors also argue that Khidr/Khizr played a leading role in the process of translating a religious tradition into the other, in incorporating him through an association with other sacred characters.
Bringing together the different worship practices in countries with a very different cultural and religious background, the study includes research from the Balkans to the Punjabs in Pakistan and in India. It will be of interest to researchers in History, Anthropology, Sociology, Comparative Religious Studies, History of Religion, Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, South Asian Studies and Southeast European Studies.
Contents
I. Excerpt of Surat al Kahf (XVIII); II. Introduction to the "Green One" / Khidr / Khizr: A Figure of Shared Legacy in a World of Religious Boundaries; III. Mapping Cults of Khidr-Khizr from Middle East to South Asia Part 1. Representations in literature and iconography Ch. 1: The Sage of Inner Knowledge: al-Khidr in Qur'an, Hadith, and Tafsir; Ch. 2: An enigmatic figure in Turkish Literature: Hızır (Khidr) and his identities; Ch. 3: Mediator of Heaven and Earth: al-Khidr in the South Asian Environment; Ch. 4: Khwajah Khizr in iconographic translation: the changing visual idiom of a complex figure from South-Asia; Ch. 5: Khwajah Khizr in Sindhi devotional literature: A Preliminary Survey Part 2: Places, beliefs and rituals Ch. 6: When Research Turns into a Quest: Ethics in the Narratives of Khidr-Seekers in Contemporary Turkey; Ch. 7: Al-Khidhr: a multi-faceted and ambiguous figure in the Mediterranean; Ch. 8: Cyclical Time, Nature Spirits, and Translation Activities: The Transreligious Role of the Meeting of Khiḍr and Ilyās in the Balkans; Ch. 9: Sharing St. George al-Khader: Choreographies and Inter-religious Dialogue in Palestine; Ch. 10: The al-Khidr conflict: Shared Holy sites as observatories of the social fabric during the Mandate period (Emirate of Transjordan); Ch. 11: The Prophet Xerzr-Elias in Iranian Popular Belief. With some Slavic parallels; Ch. 12: Lord of the River: An outline of Khwaja Khizr's worship in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent with a focus on Sindh; Ch. 13: Spatializing Khwaja Khizr (Jhule Lal) in Punjab; Index
