The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia.

• Author: Antrim, Zayde
• Position: Book review

The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia. By Harry Munt. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014. Pp. xvii + 226. $95.

Harry Munt's new book is a history of the gradual process by which Medina came to be regarded by Muslims as a sacred city and destination for pilgrimage over the first three centuries after the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. Of the previous sentence, the phrase "gradual process" is the most revealing of Munt's overarching argument. Indeed, not only was the process of Medina's sanctification gradual, but it was also contested, and thus the title of the book, The Holy City of Medina, refers neither to the end result of this process, nor the beginning; nor does it describe the positions taken by all the participants in the process. By carefully considering the changing efforts of and reasons for various Muslim scholars and leaders to promote (or not) the sanctity of Medina, this book contributes substantially to two fields of inquiry: the well-established but persistently challenging study of pre- and early Islamic Arabia and the emerging, at least among Islamicists, study of "place" as a category of historical analysis.

Munt is sure-footed with the extant source material on both the pre- and early Islamic period--which presents notorious problems for the historian and requires a painstaking, critical, and imaginative approach--and on the slightly more easily navigable literary sources from the third/ninth century and beyond. His ability to bring together a discussion of both periods is part of what makes the book's argument so persuasive, as any assessment of the origins of Medina's sanctity must consider the context into which Muhammad was born and within which he operated over the course of his career. Thus, the first part of the book considers the meaning of a haram, often translated as "sanctuary," though Munt avoids translating the term, and the related concept of hima, the two most common forms of sacred or protected spaces in pre-Islamic Arabia. Although in the Quran the term haram seemingly exclusively refers to Mecca, Munt shows why it is reasonable to assume that establishing a haram was a well-known and flexible method of asserting political power and regulating social and economic relations during Muhammad's lifetime. It therefore made sense for Muhammad to declare a haram in Medina, as attested by the "Constitution of Medina," and doing so...