Islamic artifacts dating back hundreds of years, including the cloth used to cover the Kaaba in Mecca, were showcased at Bradford City Hall in a special exhibition on February 22, 2025.

Riyaz Maniar, the organizer from Dewsbury, described the event as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“These artifacts and relics hold immense significance for the Muslim world. Even in Mecca and Medina, you can’t get this close to such items,” he said.

“Some of the pieces are from inside the Kaaba, which is extremely rare. Others are from inside the tomb of Prophet Muhammad, which is typically inaccessible unless you’re a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family,” he added.

Among the highlights of the exhibition is the Kiswa, a 29-foot-long (9-meter) cloth that drapes the Kaaba, the sacred structure at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca. The Kaaba is considered the spiritual heart of Islam.

Crafted from pure silk and adorned with 22-carat gold and silver threads, the Kiswa is embroidered with Quranic verses. It is replaced annually on the ninth day of the Islamic month of Dhul-Hijjah.

The exhibition also featured artifacts from the Ottoman Empire, some over 270 years old, as well as the lock and key from the Kaaba—which is replaced every few years—and a draping from the inner wall of Prophet Muhammad’s tomb.

According to Mr. Maniar, all the pieces on display were generously donated by the Saudi Arabian authorities.

“In Medina, you can only view the external tomb from behind a grill. This exhibition offers a rare chance to see these treasures up close,” he explained.

“Many of the artifacts are made of gold, with intricate calligraphy crafted from gold threads that take a full year to complete.”

The exhibition has previously toured the UK, with stops in Birmingham and Dewsbury, and will be displayed at Batley Town Hall in April.

The event was supported by the Council of Mosques, Bradford City Council, and the restaurant Mr. T’s.

Source: BBC

Shiʿi Materiality Beyond Karbala: Religion That Matters

Volume Editors: Fouad Gehad Marei, Yafa Shanneik, and Christian Funke

Series: Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East (Vol. 179)

Publisher: Brill

Publication Date: May 23, 2024

Pages: 424

ISBN: 9789004691339

This book examines material and multi-sensorial expressions of Shiʿi Islam in diverse, and understudied demographic and geographic contexts. It engages with conceptual debates and makes several propositions that push the frontiers of scholarship on Islamic and Religious Studies, Material Religion, Heritage Studies, and Anthropology and Sociology of Religion. The contributions presented in this volume demonstrate how material things and less thing-like materialities make the praesentia and potentia of the Sacred tangible, how they cultivate intimate relations between human and more-than-human beings, and how they act as links and gateways to the Elsewhere and Otherworldly. The volume posits that materialities of religion are integral to processes of heritagization shaped by competing social and political actors involved in the construction and canonization of religious–in this case, Shiʿi–heritage.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  Religion That Matters: Shiʿi Materiality Beyond Karbala, by Fouad Gehad Marei and Yafa Shanneik
• Part 1: The Visuality and Aurality of Shiʿi Materiality
  • Ch 1. The Literal and the Hidden:
    Some Bektashi Religious Materialities, by Sara Kuehn
  • Ch 2. Mediated Devotion
    Sound and Media in Transnational Azeri-Turkish Twelver Shiʿism, by Stefan Williamson Fa
  • Ch 3. Sonic Messages
    Hizbullah’s Mawlid an-Nabi Celebrations in Lebanon, by Ines Weinrich
  • Ch 4. Materializing Cultural Memory
    From Wartime Eulogies to Panegyric Pop in Contemporary Iran, by Maryam Aras
• Part 2: Gendered Perspectives on Shiʿi Materiality
  • Ch 5. Affective Consanguinity
    Blood, Mothers and Martyrs on the Battlefields of theIran-Iraq War, by Sana Chavoshian
  • Ch 6. Zur-khane
    A Material Approach to the Embodiment of Twelver Shiʿi Male Virtue Ethics, by Ingvild Flaskerud
  • Ch 7. Khidma: In the Service of Ahl al-Bayt
    Gender, Agency and Social Capital in Shiʿi Religious Statue Art in Kuwait, by Nada Al-Hudaid
  • Ch 8. A Price for a Wife or a Token of Love?
    Negotiating the Materiality of Mahr in Diasporic Shiʿi Marriage, by Marianne Hafnor Bøe
• Part 3: Sacred Objects and the Materiality of Shiʿi Life-Worlds
  • Ch 9. Turbat al-Husayn
    Development of a Tabarruk Ritual in Early Shiʿi Community, by S. M. Hadi Gerami and Ali Imran Syed
  • Ch 10. The Place of Material Objects in the Alawi Ziyāra
    by Amelia Gallagher
  • Ch 11. Festive Illumination, Prayers, and Grave Visitation
    Jashn-i Nisf Shaʿban in Kashmir, by Hakim Sameer Hamdani
  • Ch 12. Wishing Trees and Whirling Rocks
    Eco-material Rituals at the Alevi Shrine of Abdal Musa, by Christiane Gruber

About the Editors

• Fouad Gehad Marei is a Research Fellow at Lund University in Sweden. He is specialized in Middle East politics, Muslim societies and cultures, Material Religion, Digital Religion, and conflict stabilization and transformation. He has published in the journals of Religion and Society, Political Geography, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, and Leadership and Developing Societies.
• Yafa Shanneik is Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at Lund University in Sweden. Her book The Art of Resistance in Islam: The Performance of Politics among Shi‘i Women in the Middle East and Beyond was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.
• Christian Funke is an independent scholar of religious studies, with a focus on Iran and Islamic societies. His research spans Ritual Studies, Material Religion, and Islam and politics in contemporary societies.

To download this book (PDF) click HERE.

Source: Brill