Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and

Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine

In this study of everyday religious culture in early modern Syria and Palestine, James Grehan offers a social history
that looks beyond conventional ways of thinking about religion in the Middle East. The most common narratives about the region introduce us to the separate traditions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, highlighting how each one has created its own distinctive traditions and communities. Twilight of the Saints offers a reinterpretation of religious and cultural history in a region which is today associated with division and violence. Exploring the religious habits of ordinary people, from the late seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century, when the region was part of the Ottoman Empire, Grehan shows that members of different religious groups participated in a common, overarching religious culture that was still visible at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Most evident in the countryside, though present everywhere, this religious mainstream thrived in a society in which few people had access to formal religious teachings. This older, folk religious culture was steeped in notions and rituals that the modern world, with its mainly theological conception of religion, has utterly repudiated. Indeed, the people of Syria and Palestine today would hardly recognize religion as it was experienced in the not-so-distant past. Only by uncovering this lost lived religion, argues Grehan, can we appreciate the largely unacknowledged revolution in religion that has taken place in the region over the last century.

Country	USA
Author	James Grehan
Binding	Paperback
EAN	9780190619145
Edition	Reprint
ISBN	0190619147
Label	Oxford University Press
Manufacturer	Oxford University Press
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	360
PublicationDate	2016-07-01
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Studio	Oxford University Press
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine

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