While devotional practices are usually viewed as mechanisms for reinforcing religious boundaries, in the multicultural, multiconfessional world of the Eastern Mediterranean, shared shrines sustain intercommunal and interreligious contact among groups. Heterodox, marginal, and largely ignored by central authorities, these practices persist despite aggressive, homogenizing nationalist movements. This volume challenges much of the received wisdom concerning the three major monotheistic religions and the "clash of civilizations." Contributors examine intertwined religious traditions along the shores of the Near East from North Africa to the Balkans.

Crossing religious frontiers at shared holy places

About the Author

Dionigi Albera is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Director of the Institut d'Ethnologie Mediterraneenne et Comparative.

Maria Couroucli is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et Sociologie Comparative.

Reviews

Primarily anthropological in approach and methodology, this book will . . . be engaging and stimulating for geographers of religion. It shows the need for a diachronic perspective in the study of the tensions between sacred and secular spheres, for a wider geographical coverage of case studies, and for the further study of the neglected geographies of the sacred.

* Journal of Historical Geography *

Overall, the chapters take a diversity of approaches, and at the same time portray the diversity and also complexity involved in the sharing of sacred spaces in this region.

* Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *

[T]his volume is an extremely timely and welcome arrival, addressing as it does a yawning gap in the literature. . . . In gathering an array of methodological perspectives and a range of different experiences, it brings to light a diversity of both commonalities and points of divergence in shared practices and spaces. . . . Sharing Sacred Spaces will spark debate, perhaps controversy, and hopefully further research into points of contact between the monotheistic religions, and others.

* Levantine Review *

[P]rovides a collection of essays describing 'shared spaces' used by Muslims, Christians and Jews, generally located around the Mediterranean Sea and dated to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but with some attention to other locations and periods as well. Overall, these essays shun architectural formalism and instead focus on narratives of space and place, as informed by function, tradition, gesture, paths of movement and personal interviews.4.2 Oct. 2015

* International Journal of Islamic Architecture *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253223173
Author Dionigi Albera
Format Paperback
Page Count 290
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 431g