The Impact of Material Culture on Medieval Muslim Views of Martyrdom

In this paper I argue that the changing definition of martyrdom in medieval Islam was both reflected in and engendered by the construction of shrines dedicated to Companions of Muḥammad. I will discuss two clusters of shrines in modern-day Jordan. One group is comprised of tombs associated with victims of a 7th-century episode of plague, and the second of the tombs of a number of jihadis who died during the Battle of Mu‘ta in 7 AH/629 CE. Grouped together, the situation of these shrines in proximity to one another facilitated practices of local pilgrimage in the period after the Islamic conquests.  Considering these shrines together sheds light on the conceptual link between martyrdom and jihad that medieval Muslim theologians, historians and jurists elaborated. Linked to but not synonymous with jihad, martyrdom is a major theme in medieval Arabic historiography of the early Islamic conquests (8^th-10^th C. CE). In the High Middle Ages, the concept “martyrdom” expanded to encompass both those who had died in battle for the glory of God as well as a new category of non-battlefield martyrs, who succumbed to a variety of circumstances, including natural disasters or certain types of infectious disease, especially plague. The reasons for this increase in signification are several. Firstly, fighters on the frontier were more susceptible to contracting infectious diseases in foreign lands, thereby establishing a link between martyrdom-by-jihad and martyrdom-by-disease. Secondly, jihad for the acquisition of territory had ceased to be a central issue once the boundaries of the Islamicate world had been defined and the conquests were over. Third, Islamic asceticism, practiced by Sufis, incorporated the vocabulary of symbolic death to the world in a manner similar to that in which early Christian asceticism had adopted the symbolism of martyrdom after the end of persecution in the fourth century CE.