The incarnated icon of Ṣaydnāyā: light and shade
The shrine of the Virgin Mary in the Syrian town of Ṣaydnāyā is an important Levantine Christian centre and one of the principal Christian pilgrimage sites in the Middle East, second only to the holy city of Jerusalem during the Middle Ages. This study's intent is to examine in detail, and to p...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
[2015]
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| In: |
Islam and Christian-Muslim relations
Year: 2015, Volume: 26, Issue: 3, Pages: 339-358 |
| RelBib Classification: | BJ Islam CB Christian life; spirituality CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations KAC Church history 500-1500; Middle Ages KBL Near East and North Africa NBJ Mariology |
| Further subjects: | B
relic trade
B Incarnation B Pilgrimage B Ṣaydnāyā B Heresy B Knights Templar B icon of the Virgin B Muslim-Christian encounters |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | The shrine of the Virgin Mary in the Syrian town of Ṣaydnāyā is an important Levantine Christian centre and one of the principal Christian pilgrimage sites in the Middle East, second only to the holy city of Jerusalem during the Middle Ages. This study's intent is to examine in detail, and to provide a key for interpreting, the major incongruity emerging through a comparison of the two main textual traditions regarding the shrine: the Christian-Arabic and the Latin-Western. The dissimilarity is constituted by the significant divergences concerning the representation of the miracle of the incarnation traditionally ascribed to the icon of the Virgin venerated in Ṣaydnāyā, which is essentially omitted in the Christian-Arabic sources. I argue that a key to the understanding of this reticence can be provided by an analysis of the heretical character ascribed to this particular miracle in Islamic theological thought and of the consequent threat it posed to the survival of the shrine itself. That being the primary focus of the investigation, the article also explores some aspects of the cultural and historical vicissitudes and crises of the cult of the shrine in the West from the fourteenth century onwards which, despite the great number of academic works dedicated to this subject, have remained unclear to this day. More specifically, I argue that apparently aporematic elements on the textual level can be interpreted logically by examining the central role played by the Knights Templar in the cult's material and cultural diffusion and by taking into account the connection of the shrine's decay with the order's downfall. The present analysis focuses almost exclusively on the medieval period as being the most significant for the formation and development of the cult of the shrine. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-9311 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Islam and Christian-Muslim relations
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2015.1041247 |