Touching Mecca and Medina:
The Dalā’il al-Khayrāt and Devotional Practices
Sabiha Göloğlu
Synopsis:
This presentation explores a double-page painting of Mecca and Medina included in a late eighteenth-century Ottoman copy of the renowned prayer book entitled Dala’il al-Khayrat (Proofs of Good Deeds). This painting is important because it bears traces of devotional engagement with the images depicting the Kaʿba and the Burial Chamber of the Prophet Muhammad. Among other functions, such religious imagery could serve talismanic purposes by spiritually connecting its viewer to the holy cities, the Prophet, and God through both sight and touch.
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References:
Daub, Frederike-Wiebke. Formen und Funktionen des Layouts in arabischen Manuskripten anhand von Abschriften religiöser Texte: al-Būṣīrīs Burda, al-Gazūlīs Dalāʾil und die Šifāʾ von Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016. 
Eryavuz, Şebnem, Orhan Sakin, Sabiha Göloğlu, and Gülnur Duran. Kubbealtı Vakfı Yazma Eserler Kataloğu. İstanbul: Kubbealtı Akademisi Kültür ve Sanat Vakfı, 2020 (in print).
Flood, Finbarr Barry. “Bodies and Becoming: Mimesis, Mediation, and the Ingestion of the Sacred in Christianity and Islam.” In Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, edited by Sally M. Promey, 459–93. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
Gruber, Christiane. “‘Go Wherever You Wish, for Verily You are Well-Protected’: Seal Designs in Late Ottoman Amulet Scrolls and Prayer Books.” In Visions of Enchantment: Occultism, Spirituality, and Visual Culture, edited by Daniel Zamani, and Judith Nobel 22–35. London: Fulgur, 2019.
Witkam, Jan Just. Vroomheid en activisme in een islamitisch gebedenboek. De geschiedenis van de Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt van al-Ḡazulī. Leiden: Legatum Warnerianum, 2002.
Citation:
Sabiha Göloğlu, “Touching Mecca & Medina: The Dalā’il al-Khayrāt and Devotional Practices,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 28 August 2020.
Sabiha Göloğlu is a postdoctoral university assistant at the University of Vienna’s Department of Art History. Between 2021 and 2024, she held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Global Fellowship at the University of Hamburg and the University of Michigan. Among others, her publications include an article in Muqarnas about a late Ottoman canvas painting of Mecca and Medina and exchanges between photography, painting, and print media; she has written about the talismanic use of hand-executed and printed images of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem in prayer manuscripts; and she co-edited a special double issue of the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts on Sulayman al-Jazuli’s (d. 870/1465) Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt (Proofs of Good Deeds). Dr. Göloğlu is currently finalizing her monograph entitled The House of God and the Tomb of the Prophet: Images of Mecca and Medina in the Ottoman Empire (16th–19th Century).