The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam Book

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction     1
The emergence of mawlid narratives     6
An archaeology of mawlid narratives     6
Formal mawlid texts     50
Conclusion     61
Gifts and reciprocity in the celebration of the mawlid     63
Mawlid banquets     67
Pious utterances and the generation of merit     75
The exchange of merit and the economy of salvation     87
Conclusion     96
Emotion, law, and the celebration of the mawlid     104
Joy     104
Love     117
The salvific value of personal relationships     125
Standing as an expression of emotion     128
Conclusion     139
Time and merit in the celebration of the mawlid     143
The night of the mawlid and laylat al-qadr     146
Special times and their uses     147
Homogeneous and non-homogeneous time     153
Conclusion     164
Mawlids under attack     169
Wahhabi opposition     170
Modernist critiques     174
New rationales for the celebration of the mawlid     182
The marginalization of the mawlid in the late-twentiethcentury     184
The eclipse of the devotionalist model     188
Conclusion     206
Conclusion     208
Appendix     216
Notes     220
Bibliography     258
Index     271