The Political Lives of Saints

The Political Lives of Saints PDF Author: Angie Heo
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520297989
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Since the Arab Spring in 2011 and ISIS’s rise in 2014, Egypt’s Copts have attracted attention worldwide as the collateral damage of revolution and as victims of sectarian strife. Countering the din of persecution rhetoric and Islamophobia, The Political Lives of Saints journeys into the quieter corners of divine intercession to consider what martyrs, miracles, and mysteries have to do with the routine challenges faced by Christians and Muslims living together under the modern nation-state. Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork, Angie Heo argues for understanding popular saints as material media that organize social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt toward varying political ends. With an ethnographer’s eye for traces of antiquity, she deciphers how long-cherished imaginaries of holiness broker bonds of revolutionary sacrifice, reconfigure national sites of sacred territory, and pose sectarian threats to security and order. A study of tradition and nationhood at their limits, The Political Lives of Saints shows that Coptic Orthodoxy is a core domain of minoritarian regulation and authoritarian rule, powerfully reversing the recurrent thesis of its impending extinction in the Arab Muslim world.

Egyptian Saints

Egyptian Saints PDF Author: Dietrich Wildung
Publisher: New York : New York University Press
ISBN: 9780814791691
Category : Apotheosis
Languages : id
Pages : 110

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Book Description


The Political Lives of Saints

The Political Lives of Saints PDF Author: Angie Heo
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520297989
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the Arab Spring in 2011 and ISIS’s rise in 2014, Egypt’s Copts have attracted attention worldwide as the collateral damage of revolution and as victims of sectarian strife. Countering the din of persecution rhetoric and Islamophobia, The Political Lives of Saints journeys into the quieter corners of divine intercession to consider what martyrs, miracles, and mysteries have to do with the routine challenges faced by Christians and Muslims living together under the modern nation-state. Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork, Angie Heo argues for understanding popular saints as material media that organize social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt toward varying political ends. With an ethnographer’s eye for traces of antiquity, she deciphers how long-cherished imaginaries of holiness broker bonds of revolutionary sacrifice, reconfigure national sites of sacred territory, and pose sectarian threats to security and order. A study of tradition and nationhood at their limits, The Political Lives of Saints shows that Coptic Orthodoxy is a core domain of minoritarian regulation and authoritarian rule, powerfully reversing the recurrent thesis of its impending extinction in the Arab Muslim world.

Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt

Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt PDF Author: Valerie J. Hoffman
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643364200
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
For centuries Sufism—Islamic mysticism—held a major place in Islamic spirituality, intellectual life, and popular religion. While many scholars have commented on Sufism's decline, few have delved deeply into present-day Egyptian Sufism or considered it as a system in its own right. Drawing on her detailed fieldwork and a variety of little known literary sources, Valerie J. Hoffman presents Sufism as it exists in Egypt today, in the vivid experiences of its adherents. With an array of conclusions that overturn widely held beliefs about modern Sufis, Hoffman argues that the apparent assimilation of Egyptian Sufism masks a thriving movement hidden from the Western world. From her experiences as a quasi disciple of a Sufi master, she offers new insights into the movement's evolution, the vital role of women in Sufism, and Sufi perspectives on gender and sexuality.

The Moulids of Egypt

The Moulids of Egypt PDF Author: J.W. McPherson
Publisher: Gingko Library
ISBN: 1914983114
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
A fascinating and highly original contribution to the study of Egypt’s religious folklore. First published in Cairo during World War II, The Moulids of Egypt is a study of moulids, the popular Egyptian religious festivals celebrated by both Muslims and Christians in the first half of the twentieth century. The book talks in detail about the secular side of moulids, where sports, games, theatres, dancing, and laughter were as much part of the festivals as the religious processions and the whirling of dervishes. Some of the rites and customs analyzed here date from as far back as the Pharaonic period, but the moulids are gradually dying out; many of the 126 festivals described in Moulids of Egypt have since faded away, making the book of lasting interest.

Egyptian Women in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt

Egyptian Women in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt PDF Author: Aida Beshara
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781644926130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Both Egyptian and foreign historians have testified to the high status of women in all spheres of life during the ancient Egyptian period. Women were queens in their own right; once, the chief physician was a woman. In the spiritual life, there were priestesses and female musicians and dancers serving in temples. This book deals with the role of women in the Christian Coptic Orthodox Church, which was established in the first century AD. The Coptic church has been blessed with thousands of female martyrs and saints, some of whom are of worldwide fame. There are fourteen female saints after whom Coptic churches in Egypt are named. The Virgin St. Mary is the most prominent of them. The two Egyptian saints Demianah and Refqah are also popular. Sts. Verena and Regula are Egyptian saints who were martyred and buried in Switzerland. St. Verena evangelized in Switzerland and taught Swiss maidens hygiene practices. There are more than eighty monuments consecrated to St. Verena in Switzerland. The Egyptian St. Sophia has a world-famous church in her name in Istanbul, Turkey. Unfortunately, after the Arab invasion of Egypt in the seventh century, the role of women in the church diminished considerably. However, since the middle of the twentieth century, a great revival of the role of women has occurred; more women have entered religious life as nuns and deaconesses, serving as Sunday school teachers, writing books about the church, and even teaching in Coptic seminaries. My goal is for this book to reach English language readers all over the world and enlighten them about the contribution of women in the service of Christianity through the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt.

The Saints of Egypt

The Saints of Egypt PDF Author: De Lacy O'Leary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christian martyrs
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The following pages aim at providing a compendium of information about the martyrs and other saints honoured in the Coptic church, for the most part following the biographies given in the Jacobite (Egyptian) Synaxarium.

Christianizing Egypt

Christianizing Egypt PDF Author: David Frankfurter
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691216789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
How does a culture become Christian, especially one that is heir to such ancient traditions and spectacular monuments as Egypt? This book offers a new model for envisioning the process of Christianization by looking at the construction of Christianity in the various social and creative worlds active in Egyptian culture during late antiquity. As David Frankfurter shows, members of these different social and creative worlds came to create different forms of Christianity according to their specific interests, their traditional idioms, and their sense of what the religion could offer. Reintroducing the term “syncretism” for the inevitable and continuous process by which a religion is acculturated, the book addresses the various formations of Egyptian Christianity that developed in the domestic sphere, the worlds of holy men and saints’ shrines, the work of craftsmen and artisans, the culture of monastic scribes, and the reimagination of the landscape itself, through processions, architecture, and the potent remains of the past. Drawing on sermons and magical texts, saints’ lives and figurines, letters and amulets, and comparisons with Christianization elsewhere in the Roman empire and beyond, Christianizing Egypt reconceives religious change—from the “conversion” of hearts and minds to the selective incorporation and application of strategies for protection, authority, and efficacy, and for imagining the environment.

In the Vicinity of the Righteous

In the Vicinity of the Righteous PDF Author: Taylor
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004492720
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This first in-depth scholarly study of the institution of ziyāra (visiting tombs), and its central role in the cult of Muslim saints in late medieval Egypt (1200-1500 A.D.), makes an original contribution to the social history of religion. It explores the range of meanings that saints held for the contemporary imagination through richly textured descriptions and analysis of the great cemetery of al-Qarāfa, the rituals of the ziyāra, and the entertaining stories told to pious visitors about the saints. It thus provides a vivid sense of this vital expression of Muslim spirituality. Through an examination of legal debates surrounding ziyāra, the dichotomous view of 'high' versus 'popular' religion is effectively challenged in favor of a more fluid model of cultural discourse.

Coptic Saints and Pilgrimages

Coptic Saints and Pilgrimages PDF Author: Otto F. A. Meinardus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Examines the popular traditions and beliefs of the people in the Coptic Church

Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt

Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt PDF Author: Febe Armanios
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019974484X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Chiefly interested in the early modern period, 1517-1798.