February 2019
Michele Petrone
In this lecture aims to show the mutual relation between the development of devotional practices focused on the Prophet and the evolution of a genre like the ḫaṣā’iṣ nabawiya (“Prophet’s exclusive characters”). The latter started as a discussion (mainly in šāfiʻī texts) of legal issues that concerned only Muḥammad (marriage, alms). In late Mamluk period, as a consequence of the diffusion of Sufi doctrines also among jurists, ḫaṣā’iṣ texts became a receptacle of all sort of traditions about the exceptionality of the Prophet, from miracles to his beauty. Starting from al-Suyūṭī’s Ḫaṣā’iṣ al-kubrā a series of commentaries, abridgements, imitations and versifications sprung in Egypt and Syria, in parallel with the diffusion of mawlid texts and collections of prayers on the Prophet. Formal and content similarities between these genres show a shared trend in the diffusion of Sufi ideas in late Mamluk society.