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The vast project to reconstruct a history and geography of the spread of the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt necessarily involves looking into the beginnings of the prayerbook’s manuscript transmission. Composed in Morocco before 869/1465, the prayerbook was already known in the Eastern Maghreb from the mid-11th/17th century. It then reached Turkey and the rest of the Mashriq. After that it found its way to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Returning to the core of the book’s diffusion, this article questions the existence of an autograph copy of Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt. How was the manuscript tradition of one of the most copied religious books in pre-modern times established? This article also poses essential questions about the work of the actors (copyists, illuminators) responsible for the diffusion of the book in its early days.

In this article first appeared in 1997, Jean-Louis Chrétien examines the meaning of prayer in Kierkegaard’s writings and existence. By focusing on the difficulties of this task and with meticulous attention to the vast work of the Danish philosopher, Chrétien describes prayer as a tense and agonistic experience, akin to the evangelical struggle between Jacob and the angel. Just like in his well-known phenomenological analysis, “The Wounded Word: Phenomenology of Prayer”, the author identifies in prayer a paradoxical articulation of struggle and peace, gift and endeavour, speaking and listening, through which the human being is profoundly transformed and finally learns to truly say “thank you”.

This article presents a unique trilingual (Hebrew, Turkic, and Slavic) religious literary work from the personal archive of Avraham Firkowicz (National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg). The text, containing 129 lines (verses) in Hebrew characters, is written in Firkowicz’s own hand. Its author has not been reliably identified, but it is assumed that he could be a Karaite Jew from Łuck / Lutsk (Wolhynia, present-day Ukraine) with a good speaking-level knowledge of Slavic and Turkish (e.g., Joseph-Solomon Lutski or Mordechai Sultanski). The language of the Turkic version is a variety of Crimean Judeo-Turkic with many Turkish (Oğuz) features; the language of the Slavic version is based on standard Russian of the early 19th century with Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, and Polish elements.

In the twelfth chapter of the Book of Judith, the eponymous heroine departs from the Assyrian camp in order to bathe and pray over three successive nights. Judith’s bath has been interpreted as a ritual bath which achieves purification. Scholars have offered various reasons for Judith’s purificatory wash, but none fully account for all the details of this episode. This paper discusses the proposed solutions and offers a new suggestion to account for Judith’s bath; Judith bathes to prepare herself for the assassination of Holofernes.

In his recent book Petitionary Prayer, Scott Davison presents an epistemological challenge to petitionary prayer. He asks: If S prays for God to bring about event E, and E in fact occurs, how could one be justified in believing that E was an answer to S’s prayer? Apart from direct revelation in which God explicitly provides reasons for believing that E was an answer to prayer, Davison argues, S could not know that S’s prayer had been answered by God. Thus, the person praying should remain agnostic about answered prayers. I argue that in failing to attend to two theological resources available in the Christian tradition—the concept of spiritual senses and teachings about the relational nature of prayer—Davison’s conclusion is premature. Drawing upon recent literature on the epistemology of perception and the theology of prayer, I argue that one can be confident that God has answered one’s prayers.

Since 1988 a group of Jewish women in Israel, who later organized as the “Women of the Wall,” have been battling to realize what they see as their right to hold a public prayer service, while wearing prayer shawls and phylacteries and reading from a Torah scroll, in the women’s section of the Western Wall Plaza. Some of the Orthodox are fiercely opposed to the WoW and its project. This issue has reached the Israeli courts several times and has repeatedly engaged the political system. This article examines whether one of the two positions can draw on constitutional arguments that would justify a ruling in its favor.

In an article from 2017, I introduced the study of the anthropological framework of Nag Hammadi texts and established the existence in this corpus of two anthropological patterns, the bipartite and tripartite. The present study continues the analysis by means of an exhaustive investigation of the evidence provided by the three Hermetic treatises included in Nag Hammadi Codex VI, namely, the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, the Prayer of Thanksgiving, and the fragment of Asclepius. It concludes that, far from presenting a tripartite anthropological framework, “die für die Gnosis typische trichotomische Anthropologie,” in the words of Karl-Wolfgang Tröger, these three Hermetic treatises only include a bipartite of view of the human being.

Religious authorities in many Muslim-majority countries have argued that the suspension of communal prayers during an epidemic does not contravene Islamic law. In Pakistan, such measures have proven difficult to enforce, in part because many religious leaders in the country have opposed the closure of places of worship and the limits placed on public religious gatherings. The question is why? This paper suggests that the distrust of the state in matters of religion in Pakistan can be traced back to the colonial era, and that the political developments following independence have amplified frustration and mistrust between political and religious authorities in the country. Significant sources of contention in matters of religion and state remain unresolved under the prime ministership of Imran Khan. At the same time, the pandemic has thrust earlier conflicts into the spotlight and exposed contests over opinion, expertise, and authority in matters of religion and public health.

Within theological action research the language of discernment has become increasingly important and resonances with spiritual practices such as Lectio Divina have been recognised. This led to practices of corporate prayer being introduced in to the research process. This paper reflects on this experience and identifies key resonances between prayer and theological action research. Through engagement with theological accounts of prayer these resonances are explored turning the question of the place of prayer within theological research on its head. It is not simply that prayer practices add an important dimension to theological action research, but that they actually disclose the ways it is already a practice of prayer. After engaging with potential challenges to such a position through notions of true prayer, control and rigour the paper ends by suggesting that this proposal is not as radical as it first appears, and may instead be an orthodox account of theology.

George Saunders, who was raised in the Catholic Church and became a Tibetan Buddhist as an adult, incorporates prayer into many of his short stories. Using Catholic and Buddhist definitions and conceptions of prayer, this essay examines prayers in three short stories—“Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz,” “My Flamboyant Grandson,” and “Tenth of December”—and argues that, though Saunders incorporates prayer that formally and content-wise appears Christian, the instances ultimately reflect a Buddhist idea of prayer as a means of self-change and as a practice that affirms the enlightenment of the person praying.

In the note, the author focuses on the additional drawing made by an unknown reader on the miniature of the Old Rus’ illuminated manuscript of the Tale of the Route of Mamai. The drawing depicts the image of the Mandylion over one of the key scenes of the Tale: Dmitry Donskoy receiving the blessing and prosphoron from St Sergius of Radonezh. The author examines both, the text, that is illustrated, which cites the monastic rite of Panagia, and the symbolism of the image of the Holy Saviour Not Made by Hands, to conclude whether the addition was accidental or not.

Kyoto is home to a number of unique year-end festivals. This article focuses on traditions that occur during Shimotsuki and Shiwasu (the eleventh and twelfth months of the old Japanese lunisolar calendar), including the fire festivals of O-hitaki, Niinamesai, and Daikondaki; events that celebrate visiting deities, such as Daishikō; and purification rites of Shintō, Buddhist, and folk tradition, such as Kakure nenbutsu, Butsumyōe, and Sekizoro. Analysis and comparison of these rituals reveals a common motivation for their origin. As the power of the sun wanes with the winter solstice, the people of Kyoto in the past felt a need to reflect on the previous year, cleanse themselves of accumulated sin and misfortune, and pray that the coming year would bring peace, fortune, and a fertile harvest.

Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Our Father are the second explanation of this central prayer of Christian worship in Greek Antiquity. Composed at the end of the 4th century, these five homilies offer a spiritual and pastoral commentary of the Pater Noster. The present volume, edited by Matthieu Cassin (Paris), Helene Grelier-Deneux (Paris) and Francoise Vinel (Strasbourg), offers introductory materials, a new English translation, the first edition of the 15th century Latin translation by Athanasios Chalkeopoulos, together with five studies that form a commentary for the different homilies, and nineteen shorter contributions on various aspects of the text. The contributors envisage the text according to exegesis and theology, but also to philosophy, rhetoric and history of Christian communities.

Scholarship on the Muslim Brotherhood has often commented on its initial connection with Sufism. However, the question of how and why Sufism matters in the fully established Muslim Brotherhood movement has so far gone unanswered. This article gives a detailed account of the Sufi elements adopted into Muslim Brotherhood activism by its founder, Ḥasan al-Bannā (1906-1949). It analyses their function, especially their important role in the education of recruits as they become members of a hierarchical organisation based on the ‘family system’. Among the Sufi practices and ideas relevant in the Muslim Brotherhood tradition are the heart-bond (rābiṭah) prayer and self-examination, as well as concepts such as the spiritual path and ‘friendship of God’. Their incorporation into an Islamic project focused on activism and politics radically altered the meaning of these Sufi elements. Beyond al-Bannā and Egypt, the article follows this development within the Muslim Brotherhood movement across the Arab world from the 1950s until the present day.

In 2016 a massive rain storm flooded over 75,000 structures throughout Louisiana, contributing to the deaths of thirteen people and transforming the lives of thousands of victims. A representative of the Red Cross described the event as “the worst [natural disaster] to hit the United States since Superstorm Sandy.” Prayer during times of disaster is something to be expected. By listening to Catholics talk about praying and flooding in Louisiana, one can witness the breakdown of the Catholic Church’s theological and devotional prescriptions for prayer. The multivalence and diversity of prayer is on display in the lives and memories of those who flooded, challenging the notion that there is some kind of distinctly Catholic imagination that equips Catholics with the wherewithal to navigate the natural and supernatural tumult of something like a flood.

Contains fulltext : 205938.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Like other Western countries, in the Netherlands women continue to demonstrate higher levels of religiosity than men. In this article, we set out to explain this Dutch religious gender gap regarding belief in God, prayer and church attendance. Using high quality survey data (LISS 2015), a comprehensive model is built combining social and psychological differences between Dutch men and women. These gender differences are operationalized where they are most strongly experienced, i.e. within personal relationships. We find that the gender gaps within Dutch relationships regarding belief in God and prayer can be explained by gendered religious socialization and gendered mental health dependency - and for belief in God additionally by the gendered level of agreeableness. For the gender gap regarding church attendance, gendered religious socialization explains the religious gender gap. 35 p.

This article presents the Turkic Garshuni prayers found in the 18th century Chaldean manuscript Uppsala O Hebr. 47. Out of a total of eight prayers, five have previously been described in the scholarly literature and three are here presented for the first time. The previously described prayers are compared to other (manuscript) witnesses with respect to orthography and textual tradition, and the new prayers are also briefly introduced. Then the orthography used for writing Turkic Garshuni in Uppsala O Hebr. 47 is discussed in more general terms. It is suggested that two different orthographic traditions are represented in the manuscript: one where ʿayn is used as a mater lectionis and ḥēṯ is used as a homophone of kāf with rukkāḵā, and one in which these features are absent. Different ways of writing /ŋ/ are also commented on.

The last few decades have seen the appearance of a number of mosques that do not constitute buildings; they are mosques without bricks. This article therefore defines a new concept, the pop-up mosque, as an analytical term for the temporary conversion of an other-purposed space into a mosque, which is used for Islamic rituals such as Friday prayer and marriages. The pop-up mosque can produce religious leaders such as female imams and it thereby becomes the stage on which nonconformist discourses such as Islamic feminism are embodied and enacted. The article also investigates the relation between social media and the pop-up mosque and defines the concept of ‘social media adhan’ as a prayer call that goes out through various channels on the internet. The article is based on field work and interviews conducted primarily in Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

Most churches intercede every Sunday in their public worship for the needs of the world and for their fellow members. However, it seems that some topics are consistently left out from the prayers, such as prayers for mental health. This article addresses the question whether some topics are taboo, by investigating what churches pray for or not. Empirical research in this area is largely absent. Through the gathering and analysis of prayers, and interviews and focus groups with prayer leaders in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium this article shows reasons why certain topics, such as mental health, are indeed absent from public intercession. A significant finding is that the prayer leaders explain this in terms of pastoral sensitivity rather than taboo. This article suggests that the pastoral sensitivity does indicate a taboo, or stigma, on these topics.

Mīr Dāmād (d. 1041/1631), philosopher and mujtahid. Spiritual authority and legal authority in Shīʿi Safavid Iran. Studies on Twelver Shīʿism, particularly in the context of Safavid Iran (907-1134 / 1501-1722), are characterized by a dichotomy between the emphasis on law and that on philosophy, reflecting the duality between both the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of this religion. Based on this observation, this article presents a corpus of known and lesser known texts of Mīr Dāmād (d. 1041/1631), a philosophy master and super- mujtahid at the court of the Shāhs in Esfahan, in order to analyse the link between these two facets of his personality and shed some light on the relationship between legal and spiritual authorities in modern Shīʾism. The first part of this paper studies Mīr Dāmād’s portrait in the Shīʿi prosopographical sources. The second part deals with his legal works, notably his fatwās on Friday prayer and defensive jihād. The third part analyses the doxographic notice devoted to Mīr Dāmād by his former student Quṭb al-Dīn Ashkevarī (d. between 1088 and 1095 /1677 and 1684), which weaves legal, philosophical and mystical texts authored by his teacher. This study will show that in the view of Mīr Dāmād and his disciples, the temporal authority of the jurisconsult, during the period of Great Occultation, remained inseparable from the spiritual authority of the Gnostic (ʿārif), whose metaphysical knowledge was both rationally proven and mystically experienced.

The article argues that the concluding sentence of the popular prayer of St. Ignatius Loyola (d.1556), “Take, Lord, Receive,” was interpreted by the Saint himself and his translator and contemporary, André des Freux, as a petition for the gift of the love of God in the sense of our love for God rather than God’s love for us. It argues further that this sense was rendered fully explicit by the twentieth-century commentator Édouard Gueydan. Finally, recognizing the achievement of these two theologians, it recommends the general adoption of their version of the prayer.

This synthesis addresses the issue of devotional practices, traditions of worship and forms of prayer – especially in private devotion – in Greek-speaking Italy of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods. In general, even from this point of view the Italo-Greek world displays a remarkable uniformity with the other areas of the Byzantine oecumene, if one disregards some small local peculiarities or emphases on particular aspects. The specific features are few in number and seem on the one hand to be a matter of close contacts, from the early Middle Ages on, with regions of the Eastern Mediterranean (Syria and Palestine) – contacts that leave important and lasting traces particularly in the liturgy – and on the other hand seem to be due to the influence of the traditions of liturgy, devotion and worship of the Latin West.

This study explores the connections between churchgoing and two fields of Christian moral values (sex-related and substance-related) among 23,714 13- to 15-year-old students in England and Wales who self-identified as either Christian or as of no religion. Bivariate crosstabulation identifies clear patterns of association. Multiple regression analyses confirm that the associations persist after controlling for personal factors (sex and age) and for psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism). Multiple regression analyses also suggest that additional variance is explained when two aspects of intrinsic religiosity are added to the model (personal prayer and belief in God) and that much of the variance accounted for by churchgoing is mediated through these aspects of intrinsic religiosity. These findings illuminate the connection between the Christian community and communities of moral values.

This article, for the first time, analyses one of Augustine’s sermons in order to find out to what extent he was acquainted with Mani and his teachings. Once again, it turns out that the former Manichaean auditor was very well acquainted with Manichaean belief and practice. One piece of data in sermo 182, namely that Manicheans could make polemical use of the expression Libera nos a malo in the Lord’s Prayer, even seems to be unique.

This book chapter reinterprets the opening two chapters of Book III of Bede's Ecclesiastical History to show that Bede's account of Caedwalla's victory over the Northumbrians and subsequent defeat at the hands of Oswald after the latter's prayer with his forces at Heavenfield is underpinned by exegesis on passages in the gospels of Matthew and Luke about how Satan can only be defeated by one stronger than himself.

This article addresses the role of migrant congregations as civil society players through the practice of prayer. By combining the notion of political activism and the theory of subjectivation, it offers a new perspective on Pentecostal practice and migrant congregations in Europe as a way of addressing uncertainty linked to migration policies and mobility regimes. In Switzerland, where conditions for migrants have become increasingly restrictive, political and social forms of exclusion are challenged by African Pentecostal migrants who engage in prayer that contests restrictions on mobility, assignation to subaltern positions, as well as other forms of discrimination. Yet, this ritual resistance rarely takes the form of a political action; neither does it formulate concrete claims towards immigration procedures and policies. Rather, it is expressed through prayer in the protective space of a religious community, allowing the migrants to reassess subjectivations and to imagine new subjectivities.

Drawing on apophatic theology, this essay argues that some twentieth-century texts invite an apophatic approach by revealing the limits of language and hinting at some understanding of God, without doing so directly. First, Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River shows a divine encounter but, in the process, underscores the limits of language to describe this experience. Second, in a sort of parallel to negative theology, Walker Percy’s Lancelot points readers toward God by having Lancelot descend into sin and evil, an affirmation of God through negation. Finally, in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a novel without explicit Christian interests, characters parody prayer, rail against the world’s unfairness, and deny God, but in these interactions they actually reveal something about belief and God. These texts reveal that an apophatic understanding can enrich our reading of twentieth-century novels.

The book of Judith employs the narrative of Genesis 34 in order to depict Judith’s actions as an imitation of the violent slaughter of the Shechemites. Through his skillful retelling of the story in her prayer (Judith 9) and then his repeated allusions to this story throughout the narrative, the author portrays Judith’s trust in God to protect both her body and her nation’s temple from the impurity, profanation, and disgrace of foreign aggression. Her deceitful words and actions are based on her belief that God would strengthen her hand, just as he had previously strengthened the hand of Simeon, to bring down vengeance upon Israel’s adversaries.

The paper deals with an anonymous Hymn to God, which is attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus by some authors, but was most probably composed by a Christian Neoplatonist such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The paper explores the hymn’s relation to Neoplatonic theories of prayer and shows that these affinities are broader in scope than has previously been recognised. Some Pagan and Christian Neoplatonists, including the author of the Hymn to God, seem to have shared the idea of a cosmic prayer by which all beings tend towards God, a prayer founded on the knowledge of the ‘signatures’ (synthemata) that God rooted in our souls.

On Mondays and Thursdays many supplications are added to the standard Tachanun prayer. These additions are not noted in the Talmud, and first appear in Geonic literature. This article traces the development of the Monday/Thursday Tachanun, from its beginnings as a short prayer with multiple options, to its later form as a long prayer with no room for personal choices. The current traditional Monday/Thursday Tachanun is seen to be a collection of many smaller earlier Tachanun prayers.

From the thirteenth century through the nineteenth, the Court Beguinages, large semi-monastic communities for women called Beguines, were integral to urban life in the Catholic Low Countries. In the wake of the Dutch Revolt and reestablishment of Spanish rule in the Southern provinces from the mid-1580s, the Beguinages became increasingly aligned with the ideology of female monasticism, and particularly with the tradition of Mary and Martha: the mix of contemplative prayer and humble work that had traditionally been at the heart of tertiary convents and other active female congregations. While many Beguines did indeed make their livings from manual labor, the Beguinages also offered women of ambition unparalleled opportunities to take on leadership roles of great responsibility and authority. This essay examines the labor of Beguinage administration in the early modern period and situates the careers of Beguine leaders in their social and gendered contexts.

To date there have only been a few examinations of the psalms in terms of communication analysis. This article will illustrate the fruitfulness of such an approach by analysing Ps 12 according to it. First it will be demonstrated that the psalm consists of a series of speeches that occur in a liturgical sequence. It opens and closes with intercessory prayer, which forms a frame around a divine oracle in the centre. This oracle is itself further embedded in two instances of human address speech. The speaker functions as a “mediator” on behalf of a persecuted group. He presents their concerns to God in prayer, communicates God’s response back to them, and also communicates messages to them. The closest parallel to such a sequence can be found in the prophets (Habakkuk); as such Ps 12 is reminiscent of “cult prophecy.”

This article discusses how prayer functions as a missional strategy for Pentecostal migrant churches in Norway today. Taking its starting point in fieldwork among a cross-section of migrant churches, the article draws in particular on examples from African-led churches and their understanding and practice of prayer. From this empirical perspective, the author argues that prayer represents an ecclesial nexus for missional spirituality, undergirding and spearheading missional strategies among these churches. Prayer thus provides a powerful locus for understanding core dimensions of these churches’ ecclesial identity and missional outlooks. By interacting with perspectives from discourse analysis, semiotics, and practice theory, it is shown that essential facets of prayer inexorably permeate these churches’ missional thinking and practices to a degree that these churches’ mission can hardly be understood apart from prayer. In conclusion, the article asks how this may challenge scholars and others in terms of understandings and practices of mission today.本文讨论祷告是如何作为今天在挪威的五旬宗移民教会的宣教策略的。以在移民教会实地考察为切入点,这篇文章特别引用了非洲人带领的教会为例子和他们对祷告的理解和实践。从这个经验透视,作者认为祷告代表教会的钮带,以推动宣教精神,在教会里是内在的和领先的宣教策略。祷告因此提供了一个强有力地理解这些教会身份和宣教观念的核心地带。通过从与话语分析,符号学和实践理论的互动来看,祈祷的重要方面必然渗透到这些教会的宣教思想和实践,以致在某种程度上这些教会的使命很难与祈祷分开来理解。最后,文章提出了就今天对宣教的理解和实践而言,这可能会如何挑战学者和其他人。Este articulo trata sobre como la oracion se utiliza como estrategia misional en Noruega entre las iglesias pentecostales de trasplante. Toma como punto de partida un trabajo de campo realizado en un sector representativo de iglesias de trasplante; en particular, el articulo se basa en ejemplos de iglesias lideradas por africanos y en su practica y comprension de la oracion. Desde esta perspectiva empirica, el autor argumenta que la oracion representa un nexo eclesial para una espiritualidad misional que apuntala e impulsa estrategias misionales entre estas iglesias. La oracion proporciona asi un espacio poderoso para comprender las dimensiones centrales de su identidad eclesiastica y de sus posturas misionales. A traves de un analisis de discurso, de la semiotica y de la teoria ligada a la practica se muestra que los aspectos esenciales de la oracion impregnan inexorablemente la practica y el pensamiento misional de estas iglesias; tanto es asi que la mision de estas iglesias casi no se puede comprender fuera de la oracion.En conclusion, el articulo se pregunta como esto puede desafiar tanto a los academicos como a otros en terminos de la inteleccion y practicas de la mision hoy en dia.This article is in English.

This article examines the connections between the Holy Spirit and the book of Psalms in terms of the Holy Spirit with, behind, and in the Psalms. The Spirit with the Psalms explores the Spirit’s work as the Psalms are utilized in worship and prayer. The Holy Spirit behind the Psalms considers the role of the Spirit in the composition of the Psalms. The Holy Spirit in the Psalms speaks to the way the Psalms themselves talk about the Holy Spirit. The article concludes with a concise description of the Spirit’s work in the Old Testament.

Miʿrāj al-duʿāʾ wa-mirʾāt al-dawāʾ (“The Ascent of Prayer and the Mirror of Medication”) by Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Qazwīnī, a Shiʿite presumably working in eastern Iraq in the eighteenth century, gathers information on methods for rejuvenation and longevity from different traditions: traditional Islamic (mainly Shiʿite), Greek, and Indian. The last of these are a set of recipes for rasayanas, herbal and chemical recipes drawn from Indian sources. Though some rasayanas are mentioned in earlier Arabic treatises, the collection displayed in Miʿrāj al-duʿāʾ is by far the most extensive. Hardly any are mentioned in earlier Arabic texts. Miʿrāj al-duʿāʾ, then, contributes an important chapter to the ongoing interchange between India and the eastern Islamic world. Unlike the majority of treatises which deal with India, it is written in Arabic rather than Persian, though not a few loan words are employed. I present here an edition, translation, and analysis of the relevant chapter.

Provision of spaces for personal prayer and reflection has become a common phenomenon within historic churches and cathedrals in England and Wales, offering an example of devotional activity that operates largely outside that of traditional gathered congregations, but also in relationship with them. Over the past decade, the apSAFIP (the ap Siôn Analytic Framework for Intercessory Prayer) has been employed to examine the content of personal prayer requests left in various church-related locations, mapping similarities and differences in pray-ers’ concerns. Building on this research tradition, the present study examines whether changes to physical environment in an Anglican cathedral in Wales has an effect on the personal prayer activity occurring within it, with a particular focus on intercessory prayer requests.

This article is a programmatic statement advocating a materialist reading of early modern Ottoman science. I argue that a history of science that is sensitive to the material life of Ottoman subjects will help scholars cut through the unwarranted vocabulary of “Islamic science,” “Westernization” or “Ottoman civilization.” Two mini studies substantiate the programmatic claims. The first study presents a preliminary reinterpretation of the earliest mention of Copernican astronomy in Turkish, dated 1662. The second study reveals the maritime and mercantile genealogy of the eighteenth-century Ottoman prayer compass.

This article contributes to Islamicist scholarship on the relationship between modern technology and Muslim thought and practice by closely reading and historicizing a twentieth-century South Asian Ḥanafī treatise on the use of the loudspeaker in ritual prayers. In this treatise, the Ḥanafī jurist Muḥammad Shafīʿ discusses the reasons for changing his legal opinion. The jurist first argued that the use of the loudspeaker invalidates the ritual prayer of the congregant (muqtadī). In his revised position, however, he held that the loudspeaker should be avoided in ritual prayers, but that its use does not invalidate the prayer. While Muḥammad Shafīʿ appears to have revised his position in response to newfound scientific knowledge about the ontological status of the loudspeaker’s sound or for the sake of public benefit (maṣlaḥah), I suggest that his revised fatwā was based on distinctive Ḥanafī modes of legal reasoning. By grounding his revised position in casuistry, the muftī renewed his commitment to his law school’s methodologies in a social context in which scientific knowledge and legal pluralism were weakening Ḥanafī modes of reasoning.