In the book project that I'm working on, the broad argument is this: Thinking in terms of place provides a different way to understand the geographies of Islam. The book itself is organized in two sections that help draw attention to two different but complementary ways that that places are made: story-telling and building. The chapter I'm trying to draft right now focuses on one aspect of story-telling: The role that material things play in confirming the 'truth' of a given story.
This takes a number of different forms in Eyüp - one of the simplest formulations is one that runs this way: "Olmasaydı burası olmazdı." If he - meaning Halid bin Zeyd Ebu Eyüp el-Ensari - hadn't existed, this - meaning Eyüp and the density of religious life and observance that characterizes it today - wouldn't have been. The material experience of the present becomes a way to validate a story in the past.
As part of this chapter, I went back to a journal written in 1920 by Süheyl Ünver, who would later go on to become one of the key figures in the transmission of 'traditional' arts like ebru, calligraphy, illumination, and book-binding to later generations of students. Early on in the journal - indeed, the first formal entry in the journal - he begins with the
besmele and then copies out a prayer:
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| Süheyl Ünver's notebook, Süleymaniye Manuscripts Collection |
I was interested in the brief note he provides before beginning the prayer:
Menakib-i Halidiyye. [Menakib are a genre of story - usually biographical in nature - that describe the life of exceptional individuals.] I had come across reference to this book in a couple of different places but had never thought to look for this particular passage.
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| Screenshot of HathiTrust |
Luckily, HathiTrust has a digitized copy. Their version is published in 1896. Since Ünver was writing his journal in 1920, this may mean he encountered some version of the book circulating around Istanbul. The passage - indeed, it's a prayer, meant to be read while in the tomb of Halid bin Zeyd - comes from the very end of the book:
I don't know what exactly to make of this - indeed, that's one of the questions I'm trying to work through today! - but there was something so thrilling about being able to reconstruct Ünver's reading practices - to imagine the kinds of material objects that made up his life, to imagine his own youth (he'd recently graduated from the
Medresetül-hattatin) and the care with which he read and then trasncribed the prayer such that he might carry it with him into the tomb itself.
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