چکیده:
This article follows the transmutations of narratives, material structures
and rituals focused on Mashhad Ḥusayn. It begins with the alleged discovery of
the head of the martyred grandson of the Prophet by the Ismāʿīlī Fāṭimids at the
end of the eleventh century in Ascalon, spans the millennium and ends with the
recent revival of pilgrimage to the site, dominated by tourists affiliated with the
Bohra Dāʾūdiyya. It is based on medieval and modern historical, ethnographical
and geographical accounts, hagiography, epigraphy, archaeology, travelers’
and pilgrims’ itineraries, state and military archives, maps, photographs and oral
accounts. The establishment of the shrine in Ascalon, the transferal of the relic
to Cairo and the visitation of the site under the Sunni Ayyubids, Mamluks and
Ottomans are studied in their political and religious contexts. The final part of the
article explores the development of a Palestinian popular celebration (mawsim)
in the vicinity of the shrine in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the demolition
of the shrine by the IDF in 1950 and the establishment of a commemorative
prayer dais in 2000 ‒ the result of a joint initiative of the 52nd dāʿī muṭlaq of the
Dāʾūdī Bohras from India and an Israeli entrepreneur of tourism.
خلاصه ماشینی:
ʿAlī, shrine (mashhad), Fāṭimid, Ismāʿīlī, Bohra Dāʾūdiyya, Ascalon, Cairo, relic, saint, mawsim, Palestine, Israel Many thousands of Ismāʿīlī Shīʿīs, members of the Bohra Dāʾūdiyya sect, have traveled since 1980 from India and Pakistan to an obscure pilgrimage site located in the backyard of a hospital in the Israeli town of Ashqelon.
1515/islam-2016-0008 Downloaded from De Gruyter Online at 09/24/2016 08:00:13PM via Freie Universität Berlin A large shrine known as Mashhad Ḥusayn had marked the place until its dem olition by the Israeli army in 1950, in the aftermath of the War of 1948.
⁸ The location of the shrine inside the mosque, still known today as Mashhad Ḥusayn, coincides, according to the tenthcentury geographers alIṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal, with the place where Ḥusayn’s head was exhibited in 680, which is also the site of the murder of Yaḥyā b.
1515/islam-2016-0008 Downloaded from De Gruyter Online at 09/24/2016 08:00:13PM via Freie Universität Berlin The commemoration of Ḥusayn in Ascalon – the epigraphic and archaeological evidence An inscription that adorns a wooden minbar (pulpit) [Fig. 1] commissioned by the Fāṭimid Muslim Armenian general and vizier Badr alJamālī in 484/1091‒92, unambiguously connects Ḥusayn’s story with Ascalon.
1515/islam-2016-0008 Downloaded from De Gruyter Online at 09/24/2016 08:00:13PM via Freie Universität Berlin (View the image of this page) Fig. 4: Plan of the erstwhile mashhad and of the present-day prayer platform The site in Palestinian lore The photos, now deposited in the Library of Congress, allow us to observe in some detail also the festival that took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, 20‒21 April 1943.
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