Mazar (mausoleum)
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A mazār (Arabic: مَزَار), also transliterated as mazaar, also known as marqad (مَرْقَد) or in the Maghreb as ḍarīḥ (ضَرِيْح), or in Cape town as a kramat, is a mausoleum, tomb or shrine all around the world, typically that of a saint or notable religious leader. Medieval Arabic texts may also use the words mašhad (مَشْهَد) or maqām to denote the same concept.[1]
- Mazār, plural mazārāt (مَزَارَات), is related to the word ziyāra (زيارة, meaning "visitation").[2] It refers to a place and time of visiting.[3] Arabic in origin, the word has been borrowed by Persian, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Bengali.[4][5] It has also been rendered as mazaar in English.[6]
- Ḍarīḥ, plural aḍriḥa (أضرحة) or ḍarāiḥ (ضرائح), is related to the verb ḍaraḥa (ضَرَحَ meaning "to inter").[7] It is commonly used in the Maghreb.
- Kramat, plural kramats (كرامات), is a word commonly used among the people of Cape Town to refer to a holy shrine and burial site of a saint.
- Mašhad, plural mašāhid (مشاهد), is related to the word šahīd (شهيد, meaning "martyr").[1] It refers to the resting place of a martyr who gave their life for the cause of God.
Specific types of shrines
- Mashhad usually refers to a structure holding the tomb of a holy figure, or a place where a religious visitation occurred.[1][a] A mashhad often had a dome over the place of the burial within the building. Some had a minaret.[9]
- Maqām, plural maqāmāt, literally "station", referring to where one stays or resides, is often used for Ahl al-Bayt shrines.[10] According to Ibn Taymiyya, the maqāmāt are the places where the revered person lived, died or worshiped, and the mašāhidd are buildings over the maqāmāt or over relics of the person.[3]
Regional terms for equivalent structures
- Mazār is the Arabic word borrowed by Persian, Urdu-Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali.[4][5] It is thus largely used in Iran and other Islamic countries influenced by Persian culture, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
- Weli (plural awliya): in Palestine, weli is the common term both for a saint and his sanctuary. A prophet's weli is called a hadrah, a common saint's is a maqam and a famous saint has a mashhad.[11] 19th- to early 20th-century Western literature has adopted the word "wali", sometimes written "weli", "welli", etc., with the meaning of a "tomb or mausoleum of a holy man".[12]
- Qubba (lit. "dome", plural qubbat): in Sudan, the tomb of a holy man. Sudanese folk Islam holds that the holy man is sharing his baraka or blessings also after death through his grave, which is the repository for his baraka and thus becomes a place of ziyara ziyarat or visitation. A holy man worthy of such a shrine is called in Sudan a wali, faki, or shaykh.[13]
- In northwestern China, mazār is also translated phonetically as mázhā (麻扎). It is also often referred to as a gǒngběi (拱北), derived from the Persian word gunbad, meaning "dome". It is often a shrine complex centered on a grave of a Sufi master of the Hui people.
- In Iran and in the Indian subcontinent, a dargāh is a Sufi Islamic shrine built over the grave of a revered religious figure.
- In South Africa (especially the Western Cape), a kramat is the grave of a spiritual leader or auliya, sometimes inside a rectangular building that functions also as a shrine for the deceased (often a Cape Malay).[14][6]
- In Java, the terms makam and kuburan refer to graves of early missionaries, notably the Wali Sanga. In the Malay cultural regions of the Riau Archipelago, Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, keramat refers to an object or person believed to be sacred or blessed, for example the tomb of a Muslim saint (see also Datuk Keramat).[15]
Related terms
- Masjid, plural masājid, means a place of prostration or prayer, and is often used by Shi'a for shrines to which mosques have been attached.[3]
- Ḍarīḥ, plural aḍriḥa, is a trench in the middle of the grave, or the grave itself.[10]
Origins
Practices vary considerably in different countries. Syncretism is not unusual, where pre-Islamic practices and beliefs persist among Muslim communities.[16] A cult of saints developed within some Muslim communities at an early date, following deeply ingrained pre-Islamic practices in the Middle East. Mashhads, or sanctuaries, were established by certain people for figures mentioned from the Quran, such as Muhammad, Jesus, the prophets, and other main figures of the Jewish and Christian Bible, great rulers, military leaders and clerics.[17]
Opponents
The followers of Wahhabism consider that no person can mediate between man and God.[18] They consider that Muslims who believe that saints and their shrines have holy properties are polytheists and heretics. In 1802, Wahhabi forces partially destroyed the shrine of Imam Husayn.[19][20] In 1925, the commander and later-king of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, destroyed the manmade structures in Jannat al-Baqīʿ in Medina, the burial place of four of the Shia imams and of Muhammad's daughter.[19][21] The cemetery still exists, albeit in a much simpler form, and is used to bury the dead.
Design
There is no specific architectural type for mazārs, which vary greatly in size and elaboration. However, they all follow the conventional design of the turba, or tomb, and generally have a dome over a rectangular base.[17]
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