Conceptualising Urbanity, Reinterpreting Coexistence: A ḥisba Manuscript of the Late Ottoman Era in Tunis

Lafi, Nora

doi:10.1515/urbrel.11276311

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Urban development played a significant role in the fixation and extra-regional dissemination of religious imaginaries derived from rural Vedic and non-Vedic context. In Brahmanism, Hinduism and other the religious movements stemming from Vedism, waterscapes are charged with an abundance of narratives, imaginaries and popular stories (Coomaraswamy 1971, Kumar 1983, Joshi forthcoming, Keller forthcoming-c). In the spiritual, cultural and religious context of early South Asia, water spaces are connected both with narratives of fertility, wealth and purity, but also with concerns over dangerous and untamable forces of nature.…”

Section: Changing Religious Imaginairesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, the worship of water spirits such as yakṣa-s (female spirits of rain and water), nāga-s (snake-like entities) and apsarā-s (nature-spirits connected with water, fertility, trees, and wilderness) are some of the oldest religious practices in South Asia. They appear in epics and folk tales, as well as references in religious canons and in the classical Sanskrit literature (Coomaraswamy 1971, Kumar 1983.…”

Section: Changing Religious Imaginairesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology

Christ,

Fuchs,

Iori

et al. 2023

Archiv Für Religionsgeschichte

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Religion and urbanity are successful and momentous inventions of humankind. Since the late Upper Palaeolithic, groups of people have been observed to seasonally or permanently settle down (Graeber and Wengrow 2021). From the early Neolithic, in many places around the world, they started forming settlements that gradually not only grew in size but also increasingly sought to distinguish themselves from their surrounding communities through spatial and social arrangements. Thanks to architectural features, their size, a specific political (self-)governance, their sociability and way of life as well as religious practices, these social formations were ascribed an urbanity by contemporaries that transformed them into what is generally called cities in the first place. Cities have fundamentally changed in many respects in the course of 6,000 years (Smith 2019); in the early 21st century, more than half of humanity lives in them.Evidence from as early as the Paleolithic already supports understanding religion as relevant communication with special beings. Like urbanity, it is equally subject to historical change. Our understanding of the historicity of religious practices, ideas and institutions includes a view of their space-producing effects, from lived to imagined spaces, and their interplay and repercussions. In such a perspective, one can ask how people come together in religious practices, what mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion they develop along the way, and how they form and shape places and spaces. The products and conditions of this coexistence also include the material and immaterial constellations, the architectures, practices and discourses that constitute urbanity.Both religion and urbanity are subjects of research in many different disciplinary fields. The disciplinary divides have been detrimental in conceptual terms as well as for historical understanding. This article brings together a range of scholars from a variety of disciplinesincluding history, archaeology, religious studies, sociology and anthropology -currently part of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. Of course, the disciplinary background of each author influences their take on the reciprocal formation of religion and urbanity. At the same time, and as this article shows, paying close attention to the reciprocally formative relationship of religion and urbanity is beneficial to all these fields of research.

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Section: Changing Religious Imaginairesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Changing Religious Imaginairesmentioning

confidence: 99%