SISLA: Hiba Abid, (Silsila/NYU) "Illuminating the History of Private Devotion in the Muslim West"
In many parts of the Islamic world, prayer books dedicated to the Prophet Muhammad are privileged objects, which mediate a relationship to the Prophet in his role as intercessor to God’s presence. In North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the production of such manuscript copies increased substantially between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, reflecting an intensification of devotion to the Prophet. To respond to an increasing demand, copyists and specialized workshops produced large quantities of prayer books that encompass a range of formats and shapes. Their output included miniature books and large-scale manuscripts, lavishly illuminated or simply decorated, and often illustrated books.
The history of these manuscripts and the ways in which they were used shed light on aspects of personal or private piety not well documented in standard textual sources. Through the very act of reading, readers appropriated, readapted and reshaped these books by adding notes in the margins or personal prayers in the final pages, inserting bookmarks and intercalating illustrated leaves. In this lecture, I will demonstrate how a methodology that lies at the intersection of art history, codicology, textual analysis and anthropology of the book can bring to light otherwise undocumented reading practices in which gesture and word combined in remembrance and the summoning of mental representations of the Prophet. I will raise fundamental questions about the context and practices of reading associated with such devotional literature in the premodern Muslim West. I will suggest that, through analysis of the manuscripts and their functions, we can uncover the intimacy of a private practice that lies at the heart of Muslim piety.
Hiba Abid (PhD, EPHE, Paris, 2017) is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Silsila: Center for Material Histories (NYU) and teaches courses on Art History of the Muslim West and Codicology of North African manuscripts. Her research interests lie in the material culture, art history and historical anthropology of early modern North Africa, focusing specifically on devotional books dedicated to the Prophet Muhammad – topics on which she published several articles and book chapters. Abid’s research has been supported by fellowships from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, the Barakat Trust, the National Library of Berlin, and the Collège de France. She also worked as a scientific contributor for exhibitions held in North African and European museums, including the Musée Mohammed VI d'art moderne et contemporain in Rabat and the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Prior to joining Silsila: Center for Material Histories, Abid was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris), where she conducted research on the codicological, aesthetical and sensorial dimensions of devotional manuscripts in the Maghreb.
Date: Wednesday, February 2nd
Time: 12:30-2:30pm
Location: Online
This event will take place as a live Webinar at 12:30pm EST (New York time). To register as an attendee, please use the following link:
https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iyJwNlNXTKOL0OWlak0LDQ
Only registered attendees will be able to access this event.
Silsila: Center for Material Histories is an NYU center dedicated to material histories of the Islamicate world. Each semester we hold a thematic series of lectures and workshops, which are open to the public. Details of the Center can be found at:
http://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/research-centers/silsila.html