Adam Bursi’s Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam examines the early Muslim view of relics, specifically those connected to the bodies, burials, and sites associated with the Prophet Muḥammad and other prophets and holy individuals in the late antique and early medieval Near East. The book contains five chapters with an introduction and epilogue. The overall argument of the work is that the early Muslim community had complicated and often conflicting views regarding the permissibility of venerating the physical and spatial relics associated with holy persons. As such, Muslims took their place among Jews and Christians of the time who also struggled to develop a single, unified view regarding such practices.
Throughout the work, Bursi sets up and refutes those arguments by modern scholars who have claimed that the early Islamic community was largely iconoclastic, or that differing viewpoints regarding the veneration of relics among Muslims fell along sectarian, regional, or elite/popular lines. Due to the destruction of many material relics and sites of veneration over the centuries, Bursi examines mostly written works to determine both the textual and material ways in which early Muslims and others chose to venerate prophets and holy persons. He includes archeological evidence where possible, but the bulk of his evidence, by necessity, is textual.
Bursi acknowledges the relatively late date of Muslim sources for early Islam, as well as the sources’ rhetorical, narrative, and polemical purposes. Yet, he still accepts the isnāds (chains of authorities) connected to such sources as mostly genuine reflections of who narrated or passed along reports about the early Muslim community. Bursi utilizes the isnāds to refute the arguments of modern scholars who cite iconoclastic, sectarian, geographic, or socio-economic reasons for early Muslim views regarding relic veneration. Unfortunately, he does not take the next step to argue how the often-conflicting Muslim views should be categorized. Based on the evidence he presents, this is likely due to the uncertainty found in the source material itself. This uncertainty is also mirrored in Jewish and Christian texts of the period, revealing that all three of the major monotheistic faith traditions struggled with the increasing popularity of material, and specifically embodied, sites and objects.
In the first two chapters, Bursi effectively differentiates textual and material/archeological evidence that relate the ways in which early Muslims wrote about and acted upon their beliefs regarding whether or not tomb visitation and relic usage were appropriate for believers. He does this by using the examples of Muḥammad’s tomb, his hair and its perceived miraculous properties, and the Maqām Ibrāhīm–the stone near the Kaʿba on which the Prophet Abraham’s footprints could be seen and venerated.
Bursi broadens the scope of his examination in chapter 3, wherein he relates the disinterment of a variety of prophets’ bodies across the Muslim Near East in connection to the Arab conquests of the 7th century CE. The bodies of prophets are dug up, their identities are confirmed (usually via a plaque or book located near the corpse), and they are then re-interred with efforts being made to obfuscate their locations. Although Bursi refutes the idea that these actions reflect early Islamic iconoclasm, his hypothesis that they could be an attempt at showing Muslim superiority is not well-supported by the evidence he presents. Works of Arabic popular literature, such as the stories about Dhāt al-Himma, also include tales of mysterious bodies being discovered accompanied by some written indication of their identity and importance, yet these are not necessarily connected to notions of Muslim superiority, as Melanie Magidow observes in The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman: The Arabic Epic of Dhat al-Himma (Penguin Books, 2021). Bursi also examines in this chapter the politically charged inclusion of the burial site of the Prophet Ismāʿīl into the Kaʿba by the Zubayrids during their contested control of Mecca. In this case, a prophet’s grave is not hidden, but is instead incorporated into Islam’s holiest site. Bursi does a good job of reminding the reader that the historical context of this event likely affected the ways in which stories about it were interpreted and shared.
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on Muḥammad’s tomb and the question of whether he is bodily interred or whether he was taken up to heaven to engage in his role as intercessor for his community. Bursi also examines the ways in which other sites associated with the Prophet were remembered and venerated or were forgotten or purposely destroyed, such as the Caliph ʿUmar’s destruction of the tree at al-Ḥudaybiyya. While Bursi’s sources all tie this action to ʿUmar’s fears of possible idolatry, the story of the tree as told in al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīkh reveals that it was also the site of ʿUmar’s most egregious disagreement with Muḥammad’s commands, one for which he claims to have fasted and prayed for years in repentance (Michael Fishbein, tr., The History of al-Ṭabarī, an Annotated Translation: Volume 8: The Victory of Islam, State University of New York Press, 1997). While not a story about the site’s later veneration, it could have been used to examine an alternative explanation for the caliph’s actions. In these final two chapters as a whole, however, Bursi again skillfully balances those sources that support veneration of such sites against those that condemn or in some way mitigate it.
Overall, this is an excellent book that reveals the complexities of early Islamic beliefs regarding relics and their veneration. At times, the work seems to focus more on what it is trying to disprove than on what it is trying to prove, and the inclusion of new material in chapter conclusions and the book’s epilogue tends to muddy the author’s overall point in those sections. This certainly does not detract from the overarching value of the work, whichis an important study of an aspect of early Islamic society that has too often been treated by assumptions rather than by a careful examination of what the sources actually have to say, something that Bursi has done admirably. This work will be useful for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars alike.
Rebecca R. Williams is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of South Alabama.
Rebecca Williams
Date Of Review:
November 14, 2024
