A Photographic Survey of Shared Holy Places

EDITED BY Karen Barkey Dionigi Albera Manoël Pénicaud A Photographic Survey of Shared Holy Places Manoël Pénicaud Manoël Pénicaud, Muslim Women in the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, 2014 (detail, see p. 180) At first view the practice of sharing the sacred is not easy to concretely depict in an exhibition. In the field of art history, very few artists have illustrated holy places shared by the faithful of different religions. In fact, painters and sculptors have rarely presented interfaith sites or rituals in their work. Most religious art has been historically monoconfessional and non-interreligious. Exceptions, however, concern the drawings and writings of pilgrims and travelers, which testify to religious crossings such as in the Holy Land. Accounts of their journeys often describe lively interactions in sanctuaries dedicated to Abraham, Elijah, Mary, Saint George, and other shared holy figures. 173 Nevertheless this general lack of artistic representation is not an end in itself. While searching for recent works focused on interreligious aspects, I decided to privilege photography and film to make the act of sharing visible and understandable. Photography is both an art form and a pillar of visual anthropology. After the discipline emerged in the second part of the nineteenth century, former anthropologists began using photography as a tool to capture their fieldwork. The same phenomenon occurred later with the emergence of film. For example, French ethnologists used film cameras during their famous Dakar-Djibouti mission from 1931 to 1933. Then in the 1940s, another French ethnologist André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–1986) considered the camera as a very useful notepad for the researcher during his fieldwork.1 In other words, serving as more than just a notebook on a filmstrip, photography and film became efficient ways to write and to practice anthropology. Aware of this methodological principle, I have used a camera on many ethnographic fieldwork projects since 2000. This practice became systematic while studying a Muslim pilgrimage in Morocco. My research was not yet directly linked to shared holy places, but was focused on the Sufi brotherhood of Regragas. According to tradition, Regragas would have converted from Christianity to Islam in the seventh century. Each year they participate in a forty-day pilgrimage, visiting the holy tombs of their ancestors.2 In the following years, I decided to always employ a camera as a tool for my research on shared holy places. The challenge was to include this tool in the participant observation method, in which the anthropologist aims to live in close familiarity with the observed group. The phenomena of sharing sacred spaces are quite frequent in the Mediterranean world but also very discreet. Worshippers temporarily cross religious boundaries without claiming their religious affiliation. Participant observation combined with a photographic approach has become the best way to capture this “inter-religiosity” in action. Manoël Pénicaud, Muslim Procession along the Jewish and Christian Cemeteries, Essaouira, Morocco, 2004 Manoël Pénicaud, The Seven Sleepers Dolmen-Crypt of the Christian-Muslim Pilgrimage in Brittany, Les Sept-Saints, France, 2009 On April 1, 2004, I was strategically posted above the northern gate of the city of Essaouira to photograph the Sufi procession. It was an exceptional view with explicit references to the three monotheisms: the Muslim brotherhood passing along Jewish and Christian cemeteries. This picture shows the interreligious crossings and overlapping in Essaouira, famous for its tolerance and religious coexistence. After Morocco, I studied the Christian-Muslim pilgrimage in the French region of Brittany for seven years. In 1954 the French Orientalist Louis Massignon (1883–1962) created an unexpected Christian-Muslim pilgrimage in Brittany. This interreligious pilgrimage was dedicated to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, because these saints are venerated both in Christianity and Islam. This gathering, which is one of the oldest interreligious initiatives in France, is still active and takes place every year in July. The boat seen on the first plan is an ex-voto offered by Louis Massignon in reference to the Islamic interpretation of the Seven Sleepers.3 After researching this pilgrimage in Brittany, I traveled across the Mediterranean to visit and photograph many Christian and Muslim sites that are also dedicated to the Seven Sleepers. This approach to a photographic survey became essential in the preparation of the first iteration of Shared Sacred Sites (or Lieux saints partagés in French) at the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, France, in 2015. Over three years, I traveled with my colleague Dionigi Albera from one site to another in Israel, Italy, Macedonia, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, West Bank, and so on. We wanted to bring contemporary and visual elements back to Marseille to materialize the tradition of sharing in our international exhibition. 1 See André Leroi-Gourhan, “Cinéma et sciences humaines: le film ethnologique existe-t-il?” Revue de géographie humaine et d’ethnographie 3 (1948), pp. 42–51. 3 Manoël Pénicaud, “The Seven Sleepers Pilgrimage in Brittany: Ambiguity of a Christian-Muslim Heterotopia,” in Pilgrimage and Ambiguity: Sharing 2 See Manoël Pénicaud, Dans la peau d’un autre: Pèlerinage insolite au Maroc avec les mages Regraga (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2007). 174 175 the Sacred, ed. Angela Hobart and Thierry Zarcone (London: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017), pp. 183–99. See Qur’an 18. I have since continued to work systematically with a camera, presenting my results in new versions of the exhibition in Tunis, Thessaloniki, Paris, Marrakesh, and New York. When examining a photographic survey of interfaith sites, one could prioritize pictures that present people, practices, and ritual performance central to the pilgrimage process. The following photographs depict shared religiosity and rituality. Manoël Pénicaud, Votive Sugar Cubes in the Monastery of Saint George, Büyükada, Turkey, 2014 On Saint George Day, thousands of visitors, mainly Muslims, attend the Greek Orthodox monastery located at the top of the island of Büyükada near the coast of Istanbul. Most of them come to make wishes believing on the power of the Christian sacred space. Among numerous rituals, Muslim pilgrims silently place sugar cubes on the walls of the monastery.4 Each sugar cube materializes an anonymous wish. Each year in Ephesus, Turkey, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit the Catholic shrine that is believed to be the last house of the Virgin Mary, and a possible place of her Assumption. But most of these pilgrims are not Christians.5 The Muslim woman illustrated here is a member of the Mevlevi Sufi order known as Whirling Dervishes. Every Christmas Day, she goes in pilgrimage to the House of Mary. Here she is reading the surah of Mary and she often religiously nibbles on a piece of communion host, which is seen in her Qur’an. Even though the host is not consecrated, it is still quite powerful for her. Manoël Pénicaud, Muslim Woman Praying with a Host inside her Qur’an, Ephesus, Turkey, 2010 Manoël Pénicaud, Wishing Wall at the House of Mary, Ephesus, Turkey, 2010 Most of the visitors at the House of the Virgin Mary tie wishes onto a wall. Worshipers, both Christians and Muslims, but also tourists knot a piece of fabric, paper, or plastic to another piece. This practice forms “chains” of anonymous yearnings. This wishing wall is a powerful metaphor of the crisscrossing connections of so many desires coming from all over the world. 4 See Karen Barkey, “The Greek Orthodox Churches of Istanbul,” in this volume, pp. 161–69. 5 See Manoël Pénicaud, “Muslim Pilgrims at the House of Mary in Ephesus: Considerations on ‘Open Sanctuaries’ in the Mediterranean,” in The Idea of the Mediterranean, ed. Mario Mignone (Stony Brooks: Forum Italicum Publishing, 2017), pp. 166–83. 176 177 Manoël Pénicaud, Muslim Visitors to Our Lady of Lebanon, Harissa, Lebanon, 2016 Manoël Pénicaud, Our Lady of Zeitoun, Place of Mary’s Apparitions, Cairo, 2009 178 Manoël Pénicaud, Barefoot Pilgrim at the Tomb of Mary, Jerusalem, 2015 Mary is a pivotal figure in Islam. Many Marian churches across the Mediterranean are visited by Muslims, primarily women, since Mary embodies and represents a model of motherhood. For example, Sunnis as well as Shiites attend the shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa on a daily basis. This image shows the great veneration of Mary in the Coptic church of Our Lady of Zeitoun in Cairo. In 1968 the Virgin supposedly appeared on the roof of the church, a miracle witnessed by some Muslims working in the vicinity. It is quite common that the faithful of another religion witness such a miracle. This implication makes the miracle stronger and often legitimates the sharing of such a sacred site. The most famous place linked to the tradition of Mary’s Assumption is located in Jerusalem. Every year at the end of August— according to the Julian calendar—hundreds of pilgrims attend the holy site located close to the Garden of Gethsemane, between the Lion Gate and the Mount of Olives. The subterranean church is visited by several Christian denominations: Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Ethiopians, Syriacs, and Catholics. For centuries, the church even included a mihrab (a niche that marks the direction toward Mecca for Islamic prayer). Nowadays some Muslims women continue to discreetly worship there. In this picture, a Greek Orthodox woman lights a candle in the stairs of the holy church. 179 Manoël Pénicaud, Muslim Women in the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, 2014 As the place of veneration of Christ’s resurrection, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is undoubtedly the holiest place in Christianity. However, it is also possible to observe Muslims entering and lighting candles around the aedicule of the tomb. They do so silently and discreetly without being disturbed by Greeks, Armenians, or Catholics who are in charge of the basilica. Another significant aspect is that one Muslim family keeps the key to the sanctuary, and another Muslim family is responsible for opening and closing the door every day and night. Inherited from the rules for coexistence enforced during the Ottoman era, this procedure was established as a means to avoid conflict between the Christian denominations vying for control of this holy place. The Cave of the Patriarchs is another prime example of a holy place for the three religions. According to tradition, Abraham, Sarah, Manoël Pénicaud, Saint Nicholas Church and Minaret, Chania, Greece, 2016 and their descendants are thought to be buried here in the heart of the city of Hebron, also called “Al-Khalil” in Arabic after the appellation of Abraham in the Qur’an (“the Friend of God”). Controlled in turn by Jews, Byzantines, Umayyads, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottomans, the space is known for its many shifts of control and superimpositions of belief. Since 1967 this site has been physically subdivided into two parts, one for Muslims, another for Jews. Despite the fact that the place has become a focal point for the deepest tensions in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, Muslims in one side and Jews in the other maintain their devotions under the control of the Israeli army. Christians can visit the two spaces of the shrine, but Palestinians cannot enter the Jewish part. A photographic survey also illustrates the contiguity or superimposition of religious elements into the architecture of holy places. Visible examples are numerous in the Balkans, which was dominated by the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Since antiquity, the island of Crete in Greece has known many occupants—Romans, Arabs, Venetians, Crusaders, Ottomans— that have made it a crossroads of cultures and religions. After the island was conquered by the Ottomans in the middle of the seventeenth century, most of the churches were converted into mosques. Then at the end of the nineteenth century, when the Ottomans left the island, mosques were converted back into churches. Minarets are still present in some of these buildings, like the church of Saint Nicholas in the city of Chania. Manoël Pénicaud, Muslim Woman Praying in the Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron, West Bank, 2014 180 181 In many areas of the Ottoman Empire, as well as in northern Greece, a number of Jews publicly converted to Islam in the seventeenth century, following the messianic figure of Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676). Some of these converts, called dönmeh (meaning turncoats—a pejorative term in Turkish) secretly kept their beliefs. In Thessaloniki, Greece, a famous mosque was expressly built for them in the nineteenth century. The Yeni Cami Mosque includes many Stars of David, discreetly embedded into the interior architecture as an implicit reminder of their Jewish ancestry. In the Republic of Macedonia, a small Orthodox church dedicated to Saint Nicholas is frequented by Muslims, mainly Bektashis and Alevis, who believe that the place is the türbe (“tomb”) of Hıdr Baba, also known as “Khıdr” or “the Green One.” Every sixth of May on the feast day of Saint George, Christians celebrate mass in the morning while Muslims pray in the afternoon. For the latter, this is the feast of Hıdrellez, a sacred day linked to the Islamic holy figures Hıdr and Elijah (Ilyas). Despite its general reprobation of images of humans and animals, Islam is not fully absent of icons. Representations are practiced in Shiite and Sufi orders like Bektashism. Present in the Balkans, the Bektashis follow a spiritual path that is characterized by a religious fluidity, which can accommodate Christian teachings and cross borders. In Thessaly in central Greece, an old monastery formally dedicated 182 Manoël Pénicaud, Star of David and Mihrab in the Yeni Cami Mosque, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2016 Opposite: Manoël Pénicaud, Christian Chapel and Muslim Türbe (Tomb), Makedonski Brod, Republic of Macedonia, 2014 183 Manoël Pénicaud, Mother and Child at the Entrance of Durbalı Sultan Baba, Thessaly region, Greece, 2016 to Mary was converted centuries ago into a Bektashi center (tekke). Albanian Muslims who immigrated to the area in the 1990s or 2000s began taking care of the old building, which is also attended by Greek Orthodox Christians. Behind the mother and child, one can see a mix of Muslim and Christian at the entrance of the shrine. This last picture shows a singular bas-relief carved by a Catholic Cistercian friar on the facade of the church of Aiguebelle Abbey in Montjoyer, South of France. This message of interreligious coexistence is also a tribute to the seven monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, who tragically disappeared in May 1996. Nevertheless, these friars lived in harmony with their Algerian Muslim neighbors and hosts. Nowadays Muslims piously visit the Tibhirine site in Algeria and the seven tombs of the monks. The seven monks were beatified in January 2018. This photographic survey of shared holy places aims to depict and testify to the various contexts of interfaith practices. Photography is certainly one of the most obvious ways to make these phenomena visible and understandable. The ethnographical methodology of participant observation converges concretely with the documentary approach of photography, emphasizing patience and discretion in the field. Moreover, one has to be perfectly positioned within time and place to “capture” the scene with a camera. Anthropologists and photographers often share this aptitude of constant observation—when the focal moment has passed, it is too late. Photography provides a human impression of the interreligious shared practices. It gives a concrete sense of the people, their practices, and the holy places, much more than texts or artifacts can. 184 Manoël Pénicaud, Bas-Relief of the Church of the Aiguebelle Abbey, Montjoyer, France, 2016 185