Events

Usman Hamid, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University

This talk traces the role of relics associated with the Prophet Muhammad in Muslim devotion and piety in early modern South Asia. It does so by examining the history of two footprint relics, or qadams, that arrives in India separately during the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries and were enshrined in Delhi and Ahmedabad, respectively. Specifically, it will focus on the historical circumstances that shaped the repertoire of ritual practices that developed around the two relics and the ways in which visiting these Prophetic traces indexed the experience of visiting Mecca and Medina.