Spiritual Anthropology of the Border in the First Ascetics of Islam

Kabira Masotta
(2019) Communities, Clashes, and Cohabitations : Group Perceptions from North Africa to Central Asia — Location: Ludwig-Maximilians - Universität München Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten (28.June.2019)

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  • Kabira MasottaUCLouvain
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Abstract
In early hagiography, the encounter between the Christian hermit (al-rāhib) and the Muslim ascetic (al-zāhid) is in many ways a living tradition in the teachings of ascetic and mystical knowledge and its transmission. This tradition has been built mainly in the particular context of the border (ṯuġūr). Indeed, the process of going to the Christian hermit is as much that of mystical as it is of traditionalist ascetics. They lived and roamed the steps of the empire, settling in border places (ribāt) or taking refuge in the desert or the mountains. It would seem that it is indeed possible to identify a spiritual anthropology linked to the very notion of frontier: an orientation, a movement of body and heart, an attraction towards an ultimate point in the encounter with the other. However, a shift can be observed during the 3rd (AH)/ 9th century: indeed, while the ascetics of the first two centuries do not hesitate to testify of their relationship with Christian ascetics, from the third century onwards, they transmit their embarrassment, even rejection, in the re-appropriation and incarnation of their words in a model of superior holiness. The vision of the Christian ascetic evolves at the same time as the identity of the one who now wears the amāna (the moral responsibility of fulfilling one's obligations due to God): the monk as a figure of piety and as a believer is part of the confessional flexibility of the beginnings of Islam to which Fred Donner refers ; thus the community of believers is defined as adhering to the essential basis of monotheism and to the belief in the Day of Judgment. However, this figure no longer resembles the vision of the Christian monk with whom the new form of ascetical piety of Islam competes. My contribution will therefore address two issues : - The figure of the Christian hermit as a spiritual frontier, which would capture and reveal the geographical frontier. - The questioning of the Christian eremitical model and the imposition of the Sunna of the Prophet Muḥammad as the only way to holiness.
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Kabira Masotta. (2019). Spiritual Anthropology of the Border in the First Ascetics of Islam. Communities, Clashes, and Cohabitations : Group Perceptions from North Africa to Central Asia, Ludwig-Maximilians - Universität München Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/60138