Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This chapter introduces the challenge that brought together the contributors to this collection of essays, describing the trajectory that heritage studies has had in the face of established discourses about Islam and heritage in order to suggest ways in which these perceptions can be disrupted. In this introductory chapter, I define the value of involving different disciplinary conversations and forms of expertise that entangle specific languages, boundaries, categories, and concerns in the shaping of “Islamic heritage” as a subject of study. I propose that a consideration of alternative modes of thinking and established biases may be an essential tool to rupture the current problematic trajectory in critical heritage work about Muslim communities and their construction of heritage value.

This chapter argues that Islamic history should be imagined as an ever-expanding web of overlapping and competing discourses about the past. Islam’s transhistorical presence is an illusion that is borne of the historiographical process. Clusters of evidence we can identify pertaining to Islam are traceable to moments with their own distinctive senses of past, present, and future. Consequently, what is to be regarded as Islamic heritage depends fundamentally on the frame within which it was produced. Moreover, scholarly appreciation of heritage is itself a value-laden enterprise that participates in the creation of Islamic meanings. I advocate that we pay utmost attention to the particularities of the Islamic evidence we encounter, while simultaneously avoiding reification and being mindful of our own interpretive commitments.

This chapter explores a diverse range of historic Muslim experiences with and appreciations of pre-Islamic cultural legacies. I offer an overview of Muslim interpretations of Qur’anic verses urging believers to reflect on the visible traces of pasts connected with traditions of pre-Islamic Arabia and biblical literature, followed by an examination of a series of historical vignettes relating medieval and early-modern encounters between Muslims and the material remains of past civilizations in Egypt, India, and Indonesia. These case studies clearly demonstrate that there is no single, normative “Islamic” approach to the cultural heritage of pre-Islamic civilizations. Rather, conversations about the meanings of the past for contemporary life and visions of the future are dynamic discourses incorporating an expansive body of ideas and experiences across diverse communities.

From the 1960s, Iran, like many other similar countries experienced a radical urban expansion and industrialization, chiefly as a result of the expanding oil industry. Internal migration fueled by industrialization created both a crisis of habitation and a cultural dissonance, in response to which various schemes were developed for model communities, intended to bridge the gap between Iranian culture, its heritage, and modern urbanism. We will examine one such “model community,” New Shushtar, a housing complex adjacent to the ancient heritage town of Shushtar, in which architectural motifs and images were used to evoke and perhaps invoke authentic traditional life. We will place this complex within the broader context in the Muslim world of attempts to defend regional culture from the effects of globalization.

This chapter addresses the concept of “Islamic Heritage” from the perspective of the theological questions on the primordial status of Islam, considering the interpretation of the concept of in Muslim scholarship, particularly those raised by Salafi scholars. I argue that it is atypical to frame any period of the past as Islamic within the setting of Muslim World, since Islam regards itself as the primordial faith. I refer to two case studies from Saudi Arabia where the Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab’s movement has had a significant impact on both an official historiography and the heritage management of the Kingdom: Saudi Arabian museums and the Hejaz Railway, which demonstrate the ways in which different epochs of the past in Saudi Arabia are made to conform to a specific Islamic timeline.

This chapter focuses on the work of conservation at the site of Qusayr ‘Amra, a bathhouse located 80 km east of Amman, in Jordan. The site was built by the Umayyad prince Walid b. Yazid during the caliphate of his uncle Hisham, probably between 730 and 743 AD (111–125 H.), and its interior walls are covered by mural paintings. I explore how archaeology and conservation have contributed or interfered with the understanding of the monument, and how authenticity can be defined in a site that has seen at least three major conservation interventions. It will also discuss whether the paintings can really be defined as “Islamic Art,” fitting a narrative of royal power that uses symbols and iconographies that are borrowed from the cultures that preceded the arrival of Islam in the region.

This chapter offers a perspective from ethnographic heritage research on the preservation of Buddhist artifacts in the Muslim community of Taxila, Pakistan. While this form of heritage preservation practice and art may be interpreted as paradoxical, we discuss social, institutional, and political factors that are responsible for the revival and continuation of these heritage practices. Through the examination of this case study, we discuss a unique mode of engaging with the negotiation of past and present spiritual identities that resists the assumption that this is a territory of heritage in conflict.