Event Details
You are invited!
A talk by Religious Studies professor and Macalester alum Brittany Landorf
Tuesday 11/21 Lecture - 12p - 1p (lunch available at 11:45am) - MAIN 111
“And then the rains came”: Water Miracles, Qur'anic Narratives, and Muslim Environmentalism in Morocco
In Morocco, stewardship of the environment is carried out within a Qur'anic worldview shaped by God’s providence (rizq), bestowing of blessings (baraka), and delivering of punishment (ḥudūd). Water miracles attributed to Islamic saints in written and oral narratives link the care of the physical environment to saintly authority. In this presentation, I examine the ways in which water miracles root Islamic sainthood and saints within the Moroccan landscape. By drawing on written and oral hagiographic narratives as well as fieldwork among rural religious institutions in southern Morocco, I consider how water narratives are used to signify not only spiritual power but also work to increase social and political capital. Water circulates as a blessing within the immaterial and material traces of sainthood, yet it also carries a worldly reward, investing local religious institutions with the power to manage water distribution and act as political and societal brokers in land disputes.
Brittany will be teaching the course The Qur'an and the Prophet this Spring 2024.
