Academic literature on the topic 'Religious Traditions (excl. Structures and Rituals)'

This study discussed the religious attitude and work ethos of coastal communities in the Penggoli (studies on the clumps of Lawatu). The purpose of this study is to determine the pattern of religious behavior and its relationship with work ethic of Lawatu societies. The data were collected through observation, documentation, and structured-interviews. The interviews were conducted in semi-structures by selecting the informant utilizing a purposive sampling technique. The findings showed that: 1) Lawatu societies who live in Penggoli are devout religious believers, but they also still maintain ancestors’ cultures transformed into religious rituals. Many rituals that have become religious traditions are still often conducted by Lawatu societies, for examples: Mabbaca-baca, Massio-sio, and Mammaulu. 2) They have lives principles in running their activities, especially in civic lives and subsistences. The principles are in the forms of Mabbulo Sibatang, Pakkareso, Mapanre Lima, Sipakatongeng.

This study discussed the religious attitude and work ethos of coastal communities in the Penggoli (studies on the clumps of Lawatu). The purpose of this study is to determine the pattern of religious behavior and its relationship with work ethic of Lawatu societies. The data were collected through observation, documentation, and structured-interviews. The interviews were conducted in semi-structures by selecting the informant utilizing a purposive sampling technique. The findings showed that: 1) Lawatu societies who live in Penggoli are devout religious believers, but they also still maintain ancestors’ cultures transformed into religious rituals. Many rituals that have become religious traditions are still often conducted by Lawatu societies, for examples: Mabbaca-baca, Massio-sio, and Mammaulu. 2) They have lives principles in running their activities, especially in civic lives and subsistences. The principles are in the forms of Mabbulo Sibatang, Pakkareso, Mapanre Lima, Sipakatongeng.

Abstract Concerning the location of domestic cults a homogenous practice within the entire Roman empire is generally assumed. When the placement of domestic shrines and other cultic installations is discussed, it is usually in terms of conceptual differentiations like private or public spaces (atrium, peristyle vs. kitchen, cubicula). In so far, however, the problem arises, that ‘privateness’ as a modern concept is difficult to grasp in Roman houses. In contrast to that problem-laden approach the paper focuses on the physical setting of domestic shrines within the house. Based on methods of architectural sociology the location of these cultic installations, their accessibility and their integration into the domestic structure are analysed and measured. These quantifiable parameters enable interprovincial comparisons: Using the best-known structures in the Vesuvius area as a starting point and comparative basis the location and shape in different regions of the Roman Empire are examined with the result that the setting and design of domestic shrines and the ritual activities taking place there are characterized by the use of Italic models, the transmission of local traditions or even the development of new forms.

The directions of events in society or in some of its spheres depend to a large extent on the positions, desires, hopes, intentions of youth representatives, in general their life orientations and opportunities. Of course, these opportunities, and even more importantly, life orientations, are not unique to the rest of the community, as the younger generation is, for the most part, practically a "product" of its time. Each generation immediately carries information and indications (memories) of previous and "hints" about future generations. All these signs, information and "hints" are certainly collected within the information system of a society represented by at least a variety of different knowledge, rituals, traditions and the like. Religion is currently the most consistent "preservative" of information, except that it is still the most powerful mechanism for socializing individuals. Therefore, any processes that take place within the religious sphere, certainly in one way or another have an impact on the existence of any member of society, especially on social structures, groups, processes and events.

The article focuses on the reclaiming of militaristic ideas and the emergence of specific “militant piety” and “theology of war” in the Orthodox discourse of post-Soviet Russia. It scrutinizes the increasing prestige of soldiering in the Church and its convergence with the army. This convergence generates particular hybrid forms, in which Church rituals and symbols interact with military ones, leading to a “symbolic reception of war” in Orthodoxy. The authors show that militaristic ideas are getting influence not only in the post-Soviet but also in American Orthodoxy; they consider this parallel as evidence that the process is caused not only by the political context—the revival of neo-imperial ideas in Russia and the increasing role of power structures in public administration—but is conditioned by socio-cultural attitudes inherent in Orthodox tradition, forming a type of militant religiosity called “militant piety”. This piety is not a matter of fundamentalism only; it represents the essential layer of religious consciousness in Orthodoxy reflected in modern Church theology, rhetoric, and aesthetics. The authors analyze war rhetoric while applying approaches of Karen Armstrong, Mark Juergensmeyer, R. Scott Appleby, and other theoreticians of the relationship between religion and violence.

Pilgrimage in Islam is a religious act wherein Muslims leave their homes and spaces and travel to another place, the nature, geography, and dispositions of which they are unfamiliar. They carry their luggage and belongings and leave their own spaces to receive the blessings of the dead, commemorate past events and places, and venerate the elect. In Pilgrimage in Islam, Sophia Rose Arjana writes that “intimacy with Allah is achievable in certain spaces, which is an important story of Islamic pilgrimage”. The devotional life unfolds in a spatial idiom. The introductory part of the book reflects on how pilgrimage in Islam is far more complex than the annual pilgrimage (ḥajj), which is one of the basic rites and obligations of Islam beside the formal profession of faith (kalima); prayers (ṣalāt); fasting (ṣawm); and almsgiving (zakāt). More pilgrims throng to Karbala, Iraq, on the Arbaeen pilgrimage than to Mecca on the Hajj, for example, but the former has received far less academic attention. The author expands her analytic scope to consider sites like Konya, Samarkand, Fez, and Bosnia, where Muslims travel to visit countless holy sites (mazarāt), graves, tombs, complexes, mosques, shrines, mountaintops, springs, and gardens to receive the blessings (baraka) of saints buried there. She reflects on broader methodological and theoretical questions—how do we define religion?—through the diversity of Islamic traditions about pilgrimage. Arjana writes that in pilgrimage—something which creates spaces and dispositions—Muslim journeys cross sectarian boundaries, incorporate non-Muslim rituals, and involve numerous communities, languages, and traditions (the merging of Shia, Sunni, and Sufi categories) even to “engende[r] a syncretic tradition”. This approach stands against the simplistic scholarship on “pilgrimage in Islam”, which recourses back to the story of the Hajj. Instead, Arjana borrows a notion of ‘replacement hajjs’ from the German orientalist Annemarie Schimmel, to argue that ziyārat is neither a sectarian practice nor antithetical to Hajj. In the first chapter, Arjana presents “pilgrimage in Islam” as an open, demonstrative and communicative category. The extensive nature of the ‘pilgrimage’ genre is presented through documenting spaces and sites, geographies, and imaginations, and is visualized through architectural designs and structures related to ziyārat, like those named qubba, mazār (shrine), qabr (tomb), darih (cenotaph), mashhad (site of martyrdom), and maqām (place of a holy person). In the second chapter, the author continues the theme of visiting sacred pilgrimage sites like “nascent Jerusalem”, Mecca, and Medina. Jerusalem offers dozens of cases of the ‘veneration of the dead’ (historically and archaeologically) which, according to Arjana, characterizes much of Islamic pilgrimage. The third chapter explains rituals, beliefs, and miracles associated with the venerated bodies of the dead, including Karbala (commemorating the death of Hussein in 680 CE), ‘Alawi pilgrimage, and pilgrimage to Hadrat Khidr, which blur sectarian lines of affiliation. Such Islamic pilgrimage is marked by inclusiveness and cohabitation. The fourth chapter engages dreams, miracles, magical occurrences, folk stories, and experiences of clairvoyance (firāsat) and the blessings attached to a particular saint or walī (“friend of God”). This makes the theme of pilgrimage “fluid, dynamic and multi-dimensional,” as shown in Javanese (Indonesian) pilgrimage where tradition is associated with Islam but involves Hindu, Buddhist and animistic elements. This chapter cites numerous sites that offer fluid spaces for the expression of different identities, the practice of distinct rituals, and cohabitation of different religious communities through the idea of “shared pilgrimage”. The fifth and final chapter shows how technologies and economies inflect pilgrimage. Arjana discusses the commodification of “religious personalities, traditions and places” and the mass production of transnational pilgrimage souvenirs, in order to focus on the changing nature of Islamic pilgrimage in the modern world through “capitalism, mobility and tech nology”. The massive changes wrought by technological developments are evident even from the profusion of representations of Hajj, as through pilgrims’ photos, blogs, and other efforts at self documentation. The symbolic representation of the dead through souvenirs makes the theme of pilgrimage more complex. Interestingly, she then notes how “virtual pilgrimage” or “cyber-pilgrimage” forms a part of Islamic pilgrimage in our times, amplifying how pilgrimage itself is a wide range of “active, ongoing, dynamic rituals, traditions and performances that involve material religions and imaginative formations and spaces.” Analyzing religious texts alone will not yield an adequate picture of pilgrimage in Islam, Arjana concludes. Rather one must consider texts alongside beliefs, rituals, bodies, objects, relationships, maps, personalities, and emotions. The book takes no normative position on whether the ziyāratvisitation is in fact a bid‘ah (heretical innovation), as certain Muslim orthodoxies have argued. The author invokes Shahab Ahmad’s account of how aspects of Muslim culture and history are seen as lying outside Islam, even though “not everything Muslims do is Islam, but every Muslim expression of meaning must be constituting in Islam in some way”. The book is a solid contribution to the field of pilgrimage and Islamic studies, and the author’s own travels and visits to the pilgrimage sites make it a practicalcontribution to religious studies. Nazar Ul Islam Wani, PhDAssistant Professor, Department of Higher EducationJammu and Kashmir, India

Pilgrimage in Islam is a religious act wherein Muslims leave their homes and spaces and travel to another place, the nature, geography, and dispositions of which they are unfamiliar. They carry their luggage and belongings and leave their own spaces to receive the blessings of the dead, commemorate past events and places, and venerate the elect. In Pilgrimage in Islam, Sophia Rose Arjana writes that “intimacy with Allah is achievable in certain spaces, which is an important story of Islamic pilgrimage”. The devotional life unfolds in a spatial idiom. The introductory part of the book reflects on how pilgrimage in Islam is far more complex than the annual pilgrimage (ḥajj), which is one of the basic rites and obligations of Islam beside the formal profession of faith (kalima); prayers (ṣalāt); fasting (ṣawm); and almsgiving (zakāt). More pilgrims throng to Karbala, Iraq, on the Arbaeen pilgrimage than to Mecca on the Hajj, for example, but the former has received far less academic attention. The author expands her analytic scope to consider sites like Konya, Samarkand, Fez, and Bosnia, where Muslims travel to visit countless holy sites (mazarāt), graves, tombs, complexes, mosques, shrines, mountaintops, springs, and gardens to receive the blessings (baraka) of saints buried there. She reflects on broader methodological and theoretical questions—how do we define religion?—through the diversity of Islamic traditions about pilgrimage. Arjana writes that in pilgrimage—something which creates spaces and dispositions—Muslim journeys cross sectarian boundaries, incorporate non-Muslim rituals, and involve numerous communities, languages, and traditions (the merging of Shia, Sunni, and Sufi categories) even to “engende[r] a syncretic tradition”. This approach stands against the simplistic scholarship on “pilgrimage in Islam”, which recourses back to the story of the Hajj. Instead, Arjana borrows a notion of ‘replacement hajjs’ from the German orientalist Annemarie Schimmel, to argue that ziyārat is neither a sectarian practice nor antithetical to Hajj. In the first chapter, Arjana presents “pilgrimage in Islam” as an open, demonstrative and communicative category. The extensive nature of the ‘pilgrimage’ genre is presented through documenting spaces and sites, geographies, and imaginations, and is visualized through architectural designs and structures related to ziyārat, like those named qubba, mazār (shrine), qabr (tomb), darih (cenotaph), mashhad (site of martyrdom), and maqām (place of a holy person). In the second chapter, the author continues the theme of visiting sacred pilgrimage sites like “nascent Jerusalem”, Mecca, and Medina. Jerusalem offers dozens of cases of the ‘veneration of the dead’ (historically and archaeologically) which, according to Arjana, characterizes much of Islamic pilgrimage. The third chapter explains rituals, beliefs, and miracles associated with the venerated bodies of the dead, including Karbala (commemorating the death of Hussein in 680 CE), ‘Alawi pilgrimage, and pilgrimage to Hadrat Khidr, which blur sectarian lines of affiliation. Such Islamic pilgrimage is marked by inclusiveness and cohabitation. The fourth chapter engages dreams, miracles, magical occurrences, folk stories, and experiences of clairvoyance (firāsat) and the blessings attached to a particular saint or walī (“friend of God”). This makes the theme of pilgrimage “fluid, dynamic and multi-dimensional,” as shown in Javanese (Indonesian) pilgrimage where tradition is associated with Islam but involves Hindu, Buddhist and animistic elements. This chapter cites numerous sites that offer fluid spaces for the expression of different identities, the practice of distinct rituals, and cohabitation of different religious communities through the idea of “shared pilgrimage”. The fifth and final chapter shows how technologies and economies inflect pilgrimage. Arjana discusses the commodification of “religious personalities, traditions and places” and the mass production of transnational pilgrimage souvenirs, in order to focus on the changing nature of Islamic pilgrimage in the modern world through “capitalism, mobility and tech nology”. The massive changes wrought by technological developments are evident even from the profusion of representations of Hajj, as through pilgrims’ photos, blogs, and other efforts at self documentation. The symbolic representation of the dead through souvenirs makes the theme of pilgrimage more complex. Interestingly, she then notes how “virtual pilgrimage” or “cyber-pilgrimage” forms a part of Islamic pilgrimage in our times, amplifying how pilgrimage itself is a wide range of “active, ongoing, dynamic rituals, traditions and performances that involve material religions and imaginative formations and spaces.” Analyzing religious texts alone will not yield an adequate picture of pilgrimage in Islam, Arjana concludes. Rather one must consider texts alongside beliefs, rituals, bodies, objects, relationships, maps, personalities, and emotions. The book takes no normative position on whether the ziyāratvisitation is in fact a bid‘ah (heretical innovation), as certain Muslim orthodoxies have argued. The author invokes Shahab Ahmad’s account of how aspects of Muslim culture and history are seen as lying outside Islam, even though “not everything Muslims do is Islam, but every Muslim expression of meaning must be constituting in Islam in some way”. The book is a solid contribution to the field of pilgrimage and Islamic studies, and the author’s own travels and visits to the pilgrimage sites make it a practicalcontribution to religious studies. Nazar Ul Islam Wani, PhDAssistant Professor, Department of Higher EducationJammu and Kashmir, India

This paper evaluates the dramatic aesthetics of the Ikenge and Ifejioku festivals of Ossissa people of Ndokwa-East Local Government Area of Delta State, Nigeria. The study, which is a survey of the performance tradition, critically analyses the controversy surrounding the views of African dramatic scholars (the evolutionists and the relativists) on the question of what constitutes drama in the context of Nigerian traditional performances. This controversy arose as a result of Aristotle’s concept of drama with its emphasis on imitation, plot, dialogue, conflict, etc. Based on this concept, Ruth Finnegan describes the indigenous festival traditions in Africa as “quasi-dramatic phenomena” that lack the Western dramatic structures. While the evolutionist school of thought argues that the traditional festivals are not drama but rituals, the relativist school claims that the traditional festivals in Africa can be considered as dramatic performances since most of the features of drama such as music and dance, audience participation, costumes, stage, etc., are present in the festival traditions. The study employs a field work-oriented methodology, involving participatory observation of the festivals, interviews, documentary analysis, audio records, and photographs of scenes and events. The findings of the study confirm that traditional African festivals are indeed dramatic performances. The study concludes that the African traditional performance mode is indigenous to African people and must not necessarily mirror the Western model. The paper, therefore, submits that the Ikenge and Ifejioku festivals of Ossissa can be seen as complete drama just like any other Western dramatic forms.

Abstract. The Orthodox Church in a number of other Christian denominations is characterized by the stability of dogma and rituals, which in turn determines the symbolic significance of the subject environment of the church, the canonization of church paraphernalia and iconography. Thus, the canon, created on the requirements of the liturgy — the main action in the church, determines the structure of the church and the purpose of its premises. The article considers the creation of modern Orthodox churches based on the use of traditions and the formation of temple action in them as a synthesis of arts. Gaining Independence of Ukraine, the growth of self-awareness and the restoration of religious life put forward a number of major architectural tasks of building new, reconstruction of destroyed and restoration of temples adapted to other functions in the period of "militant atheism". Serious typo­logical problems are faced by architects who design modern sacred buildings and structures, as well as by urban planners, as this process has a significant impact on the urban situation in cities and villages, changes the public microclimate and infrastructure in the vicinity of temples areas. Despite the fact that the construction "boom" of the 90s of the twentieth century-calmed down a bit, the issues of typology and imagery of modern temple building remain relevant. The new urban policy on the development of spirituality and meeting the needs of religious orga­nizations is carried out in accordance with the Law of Ukraine "On Freedom of Conscience and Principles of Democracy" of April 23, 1991. № 988 (as amended in 1992–2019). Temple construction, as a special, but at the same time once significant part of the architectural activity of architects of Ukraine (pre-October period), is being restored. But this is a very complex process, based on the still insufficient practice of designing and building modern Orthodox churches, which requires the improvement of their typological and figurative solutions. On the basis of the author's research, practice of design and construction of sacred buildings and structures will be prepared the third edition of the design manual "Cult houses and buildings of different denominations", the provisions and requirements of which will contribute to the development of modern Ukrainian church building.

Introduction. The article examines the subjectivity in the representation of Turkic clans in ibn Fadlan’s famous memoirs devoted to the Arab mission trip undertaken from Baghdad to the Volga Bulgaria in early 10th c. Informed by the latest linguistic theories, the authors aim to analyze how the modus of his text, i.e. the meaning of the entire historical document, is influenced by the memoirist’s personality as a bearer of certain cultural characteristics and of specific religious beliefs, as well as by historical and everyday circumstances at the time the travelogue was written. Data and methods. Both the reconstructed Arabic original and available Russian translations and commentaries were used in a comparative mode. In addition, the authors considered the recent works of Arab scholars discussing the issue of discourse types of ibn Fadlan’s heritage in the context of the medieval Arab history and thinking. The article focuses on the prevailing themes and motifs in the text of the Arab traveler, when describing the social structures, traditions, and rituals of the Turkic ethnic groups he encountered (chiefly Oguzes), to identify the moduses (of condemnation, fear, surprise, admiration, etc.) through which these were realized, as well as the linguistic means of their expression that disturbed the neutral style of the story. The results of the analysis allow to draw a conclusion that the modus of the work was largely shaped by the medieval way of thinking and the world picture characteristic of the Arab-Muslim traveler, as well as by the official status of ibn Fadlan’s work at the court of the Abbasid Caliphate in its heyday. Also, the authors point out that there is a passage in the text that may be fictional, its morphology being largely of a fabulous character. Notably, attention should be drawn to ibn Fadlan’s attempts to find some possible commonalities between the civilizations, especially in the heavenly realm, and to promote an understanding between the peoples, even if neither cultural nor trade interaction between them existed at the time.

This chapter examines strategies where individual Jews employ digital technology to sustain and transmit musical traditions of Torah and haftarah trope, a core element of contemporary Jewish worship. While these examples focus more on personal agency than institutional sustainability, they underscore new approaches to integrating meaningful ritual into the lives of these liberal Jews. Even as certain contemporary Jews have moved away from traditional structures of learning and authority–synagogues, religious schools, rabbis, and cantors–they have developed and supported innovative means to transmit the music performance of biblical chant used in bar/bat mitzvah celebrations in a way that sustains traditional rituals while empowering their personal style of Jewish expression and identity.

The architectural transformations of the seventh and early sixth centuries, often described as the change from huts to houses, generated a range of building types that some scholars have associated with particular types of religious activities. Some small buildings with one or two rooms have been interpreted as oikos shrines; some buildings with multiple adjacent rooms are thought to have been venues for ritual banquets; and some courtyard complexes have been cast as political sanctuaries or residences where the inhabitants observed familial cults. The archaeological evidence for religious activities associated with any of these building types, however, is not straightforward. The first part of this chapter examines whether it is possible to identify any preferred plan for structures that sheltered and complemented religious rituals during the seventh and early sixth centuries BC. The second part then contrasts this inquiry with the relatively straightforward identification of religious buildings during and after the sixth century BC permitted by the introduction of a distinctive, religious architectural marker, namely podia. As such this chapter explores the emergence of a formal architectural vocabulary for Etrusco-Italic religious buildings and identifies when and where cult buildings became architecturally differentiated from other structures within settlements. Although the architectural changes of the seventh and early sixth centuries BC in Latium and Etruria are not linear or uniform, it is clear that round, oval, and rectangular huts with wattle-and-daub walls and thatched coverings were gradually replaced by rectangular structures with stone foundations and tiled roofs. From the middle of the seventh century plans of the new buildings were regularized to the point where it is possible to identify three main types. The names of these types, however, vary both within and between different scholarly traditions, with the result that a rectangular, tile-roofed building thought to have a religious function can be variously labelled an oikos shrine, a proto-temple, or a temple, and a more elaborate building may be described as a Breithaus, a casa a vani affiancati, a courtyard building, a palazzo, a regia, or an elite residence.