The Little Meccas conference examined other key historical regional Muslim centres of the Old World that played outsized roles as trans-regional spaces, yet only gained relatively meagre attention. Many historical places in Asia were referred to by monikers such as “Little Mecca, “Second Mecca or Ka`ba”, “Portico of Mecca”. To cite a few: Touba in Senegal, Ponnani in Malabar, Aceh in Indonesia, Linxia in China, Tuyoq near Turpan in Altishahr and Osh in Kyrgyzstan are examples. As sites where oral and literary narrations, pilgrimages, trade and transport routes, scholarly networks and doctrinal movements coalesced and dispersed in different combinations, they became famous destinations that emanated a certain aura. Such religious centres have been relatively neglected in scholarship over the past three decades of globalization mania where global Mecca of true Islam was projected with purification questions about other places and practices. Globalization’s massification of logistics, celebration of global cities and social media posts seem to have exacerbated a profound cultural trend of the past two industrial centuries, which is the retreat of figural understandings of the world, and their supplantation by literal ones. Or has globalization’s effect been the opposite, in the case of some rejuvenated Little Meccas?
This two-day workshop (1-2 December) attempted to understand diverse aspects of Muslim mobility in the Little Meccas and the dynamics of concatenation such meeting points host. The topical focus of the conference was driven by two prepositions: 1) that over-literal understandings of religious centres are anachronisms that put blinders on interpreting historical materials, which are replete with figural descriptions; 2) and that such blinders prevent researchers from understanding how various dimensions of Muslim mobility were interwoven or concatenated in the Little Meccas that stand at their nexus. The international conference accommodated a total of seventeen papers and works in progress on diverse aspects of trans-regional Muslim centres in China, India, Indonesia, Senegal, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Saudi Arabia. The key note address on “A Place Out of Place: The Rise of Mecca as a Global City and Its Butterfly Effects” was delivered by historian Mahmood Kooria, Leiden University.
The papers were presented by both young and established scholars based in Singapore and abroad (Princeton University, University of London, Freie Universität, Gottingen University, University of Manchester, Darul Huda Islamic University, India, CNRS Paris, UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency, International Islamic University of Indonesia, Jamia Madeenathunnoor India, Fajar University Indonesia, The International University of Logistics and Transportation in Wrocław, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, University of Plymouth and University of Oxford).
DELIVERABLES:
The workshop aims to select and prepare articles for an edited volume or a special issue journal volume that discusses the complexities and dynamics of figural and literal understanding of the trans-regional Muslim centres. The presenters have agreed to contribute the working papers as brief articles to ARIscope, the official blog of the ARI, NUS by the end of February. The conveners would also like to compile selected full paper submissions at a later stage for a special issue journal.
