It was a warm November night in 2003 when I first heard about the Book of Visions. Shaykh al-Qusi and his followers were holding a Ramadan gathering on a large parking lot in one of Cairo's more ...affluent neighborhoods. Next to me at the gathering sat a middle-aged, wealthy Sudanese woman who was wearing an elegant green silk veil and many golden bracelets. She was visiting from Australia to spend the month of fasting in Cairo, close to her spiritual teacher. The woman had been among Shaykh al-Qusi's followers for many years. I, in contrast, had met him only recently but was already intrigued by his charismatic aura, his cosmopolitan demeanor, his habit of smoking Marlboros while talking casually about the saints as if they were his next-door neighbors, and, finally, his own saintlike status.
Dreams that Matter explores the social and material life of dreams in contemporary Cairo. Amira Mittermaier guides the reader through landscapes of the imagination that feature Muslim dream ...interpreters who draw on Freud, reformists who dismiss all forms of divination as superstition, a Sufi devotional group that keeps a diary of dreams related to its shaykh, and ordinary believers who speak of moving encounters with the Prophet Muhammad. In close dialogue with her Egyptian interlocutors, Islamic textual traditions, and Western theorists, Mittermaier teases out the dream's ethical, political, and religious implications. Her book is a provocative examination of how present-day Muslims encounter and engage the Divine that offers a different perspective on the Islamic Revival. Dreams That Matter opens up new spaces for an anthropology of the imagination, inviting us to rethink both the imagined and the real.
L'Angélus in the mailbox Christian, Jr., William A.; Mittermaier, Amira
Terrain (Paris, 1983),
09/2015, Letnik:
65
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The popularity in France of postcards of Jean-François Millet's L'Angélus coincides with the controversy surrounding the Loi Combes of 1905. Using the hundreds of examples on the auction website ...Delcampe, we examine the messages on the cards, consider the gender of senders and receivers (largely women), and compare the various images that play off the familiar painting of a couple praying in a field. We then contrast these aspects with those of iconic postcards of Algerians in outdoor prayer, sent to France mostly by male soldiers and civil servants in North Africa, and consider what both sets of postcards reveal about attitudes toward 'types' and the inflection of public space by religion. //ABSTRACT IN FRENCH: En France, la popularité des cartes postales inspirées de L'Angélus de Jean-François Millet coïncide avec les débats publics qui ont accompagné la promulgation de la loi Combes de 1905. À partir des centaines de cartes accessibles sur le site internet de vente aux enchères Delcampe, les auteurs étudient les messages portés par les cartes, recensent le sexe des correspondants (majoritairement des femmes), et comparent les nombreuses images qui rejouent le couple en prière dans un champ. Aux diverses caractéristiques de cette production, les auteurs confrontent celles d'une autre série de cartes postales développée à la même époque, cartes représentant des Algériens priant en extérieur, expédiées en France par des militaires et des fonctionnaires civils installés en Afrique du Nord. Les auteurs mettent en évidence ce que ces deux séries de cartes postales révèlent des attitudes de l'opinion envers les « types » représentés, et l'inflexion de l'espace public par la religion. Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po
Shaykh al-Qusi is a charismatic spiritual leader in Cairo whose followers have been recording
their dream visions and waking visions in a handwritten collection since 1997. Drawing on the
shaykh's ...dream-inspired poetry and his followers' vision narratives, I describe the ways in which
this community of believers understands the relationship between authorship and authority, as well
as between imagination (al-khayamacr;l) and tradition. Dreams and visions do not circumvent idioms
of the textual tradition, but in their narrative form they often mirror and reinscribe its genres. Some
of the group's vision narratives emulate the face-to-face encounters of the hadith whereas others
signify eruptions of a timeless truth from elsewhere, similar to the Quran. Through mirroring
the sacred genres, dreams and visions bring believers closer to these texts. Just as dreams are
understood through the tradition, the tradition is understood by some through dreams.
En France, la popularité des cartes postales inspirées de L’Angélus de Jean-François Millet coïncide avec les débats publics qui ont accompagné la promulgation de la loi Combes de 1905. À partir des ...centaines de cartes accessibles sur le site internet de vente aux enchères Delcampe, les auteurs étudient les messages portés par les cartes, recensent le sexe des correspondants (majoritairement des femmes), et comparent les nombreuses images qui rejouent le couple en prière dans un champ. Aux diverses caractéristiques de cette production, les auteurs confrontent celles d’une autre série de cartes postales développée à la même époque, cartes représentant des Algériens priant en extérieur, expédiées en France par des militaires et des fonctionnaires civils installés en Afrique du Nord. Les auteurs mettent en évidence ce que ces deux séries de cartes postales révèlent des attitudes de l’opinion envers les « types » représentés, et l’inflexion de l’espace public par la religion.
Poetry and Prophecy Mittermaier, Amira
Dreams That Matter,
11/2010
Book Chapter
It is 16 July 2004, the opening night of themawlidof al-Sayyida Nafīsa, who was born 1,180 years ago. Located in Cairo’s City of the Dead, al-Sayyida Nafīsa’s mosque today is full of life, as are the ...square adjoined to it and the streets and alleys spreading out from it. It is about 10:30 p.m., and the night is just beginning. Maha is sitting on a sidewalk outside the mosque, drinking tea and declining offers from vendors who sell chickpeas, cotton candy, and plastic toys. She is watching streams of visitors who pass underneath the chains of colored lightbulbs
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