Embodiments of Love: The Prophet and his Family as Ritual Symbols in Pre-War Syrian Sufism
Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques May 1, 2026 DOI: 10.1515/asia-2025-0037 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Sufi community (Zāwiya al-Bādinjkiyya) in Bāb al-Nayrab, Aleppo, Syria |
| Key findings | Argues that the Prophet and his family functioned as ritual symbols whose meanings were configured through metaphoric and metonymic associations, connecting them to Sufi mystical states and doctrinal concepts, thereby shaping emotional and experiential dimensions of collective rituals. |
Abstract
Abstract This article analyzes the ritual mobilization of the Prophet and his family as concrete symbols in the collective rituals of the Sufi communities in pre-war Aleppo, Syria. The members of the family of the Prophet did not stand simply as holy figures who derived their sacred character their role in the sacred history of Islam, but they were also connected to mystical states and doctrinal concepts of the Sufi tradition through a series of metaphoric and metonymic associations that infused them with emotional and experiential meanings. Metaphor and metonymy are central elements in the functioning of symbols, which get their meanings through these forms of imagining and apprehending things, persons, categories and concepts. Therefore, through the analysis of the evocation of the Prophet and his family as ritual symbols we can have a better understanding of the role of metaphors and metonyms in the configuration of mystical experiences in Sufi communities in pre-war Syria. The ethnographic data analyzed here were gathered during several periods of fieldwork in the Zāwiya al-Bādinjkiyya, a Sufi community located in Bāb al-Nayrab, Aleppo, from 1999 to 2010.