Manuela Ceballos: "Conversion and Purity in the Hagiographies of Sidi Ridwan al-Januwi"

The MSU Muslim Studies Program presents The 3rd Biannual Lecture of the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS)
"Conversion and Purity in the Hagiographies of Sidi Ridwan al-Januwi," a special webinar featuring Dr. Manuela Ceballos, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee.

Nov. 17 at 1 p.m. Register to attend via Zoom.

The convergence of diverse religious communities in the early modern Western Mediterranean often caused anxieties about pollution, both material and symbolic. Ideas about purity and pollution also influenced discourses about conversion, lineage, and religious authority both north and south of the Strait of Gibraltar during the same period (albeit in different ways). This talk will focus on the role that various forms of purity play in the memorialization of Moroccan Sufi Sīdī Riḍwān al-Januwī. The son of a Castilian Jewish refugee who converted to Islam and a Genoese Christian merchant who was also a Muslim convert, Sīdī Riḍwān al-Januwī (d. 1583) purportedly described himself as emerging “from between dung and blood” in reference to his origins. This major sixteenth-century Sufi saint and hadith scholar is also portrayed by his hagiographers as concerned with quotidian aspects of material purity, spiritual purity, and lineage in ways that echo and respond to broader Mediterranean discourses on the same subjects. This talk will explore how, against a background of interreligious and politic al conflict (especially between Portugal and Morocco), al-Januwī’s story, as told by his hagiographers, offers a model in which purification (genealogical, material, and material) is possible through proper ritual observance, scrupulousness, and humility.

Organized by NAAIMS and the MSU Muslim Studies Program and cosponsored by the African Studies Center, Center for European and Eurasian Studies, Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities, and James Madison College.