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Mawlīd as Text and Ritual: Prophetic Love and Devotion in Colonial Malabar

Presenter:

· Muhammed Niyas Ashraf Freie University Berlin (Berlin, Germany)

Timeslot:

07/26 | 18:10-18:30 UTC+2/CEST

Abstract

The genre of poetical panegyrics on the prophet Muhammad emerged through mawlīds composed for veneration and generally recited at his nativity celebration' (mawlid/milād), nerchas (celebration of endowments) and domestic religious private spaces. Invocation of blessings and greetings on the prophet became an independent ritual activity, and its supposed spiritual power for healing contagious diseases transformed the Mawlīd text into a sacred one with curative and talismanic qualities. This paper delineates how the Mawlīd as a text and ritual celebration impacted the moral dispositions of Malabari Muslim mindscapes and why its recitation and performance received massive acceptance during anti-colonial struggle. This study offers how the ritualistic performance of mawlīd texts and mawlīd gatherings created a ‘sacred space’ in Malabar and attributed a tremendous array of the literary, thaumaturgical, liturgical, and practical application of religious percept in everyday life. How the belief in barakā (blessings) of these poems constructed the recitation as a ‘ritual and virtuous act’ and an ethic mode of comportment in the social and religious practice of Muslims. This paper will analyze how the emotion of Islamic piousness reflected in celebrating the mawlid and ritually reading texts, believing in the positive power of acquiring blessing according to Islamic norms and values? By looking through the lens of prophetic piety, this study concentrates on why invoking the prophet as an object of veneration and source of barakā became independent ritual activity and how these texts transformed into ‘sacred biographies’ with curative and talismanic qualities.