COLUMNS OF SCENT

Perfumed Signs of the Prophet

in Early Islamic Spaces

Abstract / Examining ritual uses of scent in early Islamic sacred spaces,

this article highlights the olfactory aspects of a set of columns and stones
in Mecca and Medina that commemorated places where the Prophet
Muḥammad was said to have performed ritual prayer. Several such
locations of the Prophet’s prayers became memorialized sites of visitation
and ritualization over the course of the seventh to ninth centuries ce.
At a number of these sites, perfume was applied to parts of the build-
ings, apparently to mark them as spaces associated with the memory
of the Prophet’s presence and, thereby, to highlight them as worthy of
veneration. At the same time, contestation also emerged regarding the
application of scent to these spaces, perhaps resulting from the complex
and contradictory valences of perfume in the early Islamic sensorium.
Keywords / al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik, early Islam, Kaʿba, perfume,
Prophet’s Mosque, ʿUmar ii
Adam Bursi
Independent scholar
[email protected]

ADAM BURSI
Until quite recently, the field of Islamic Studies has these locations as associated with the memory of the
given little contemplative attention to the role of Prophet’s presence there, and thereby to highlight
smell within Islam.¹ When the presence of incense these spaces as worthy of special veneration. Relying
and perfumes in Islamic spaces and practices is not on scattered mentions of these now often lost places
being denied entirely, such scents are often mini- and practices recorded in medieval Islamic historical
mized as performing only or primarily utilitarian and hadith texts, I suggest that the usage of perfume
functions, without religious meaning for Muslim acted as a form of memorialization of the Prophet
participants. This tendency continues, despite indi- Mu)ammad at sites associated with his performance
cations of important religious functions associated of prayer.,
with the smells of sacred places and practices in the
early and medieval Islamic centuries. * I thank Eyad Abuali, Flavia Xi Fang, Elina Gertsman, Arash Gha-
jarjazi, Christian Lange, Simon Leese, Heba Mostafa, Katelynn
To provide a particularly evocative example of Robinson, Will Tullett, and the anonymous reviewers for their
the role of smell in Islamic sacred spaces: the Dome generous comments on earlier versions of this article. All errors
of the Rock in Jerusalem was, for some time, the remain my own.
1 For recent work on the senses in medieval Islamic history, see
site of a highly olfactory venerational program that
Histoire et anthropologie des odeurs en terre d’Islam à l’époque
associated this pilgrimage destination with Para- médiévale, Julie Bonnéric ed., Damascus/Beirut 2016 (= Bulletin
dise.² According to descriptions of the rituals per- d’études orientales, 64 [2015]); Sensory History of the Islamic World,
formed there, servants twice weekly coated the en- Christian Lange ed., New York 2022 (= The Senses and Society, 1(/1
[2022]); Islamic Sensory History, Volume 2: 600–1500, Christian
tire Ṣakhra (or “Rock,” often called the “Foundation Lange, Adam Bursi eds, Leiden 2024.
Stone”) housed under the Dome with a saffron-based 2 Heba Mostafa, Architecture of Anxiety: Body Politics and the For-
perfume paste called khalūq and burned incense mation of Islamic Architecture, Leiden 2024, pp. 10)–11*. Initially pa-
tronized by members of the Umayyad dynasty of the late seventh
throughout the building [fig. 1]. The building’s
and early eighth centuries, aspects of this ritual program seem to
screens would be opened and “this scent drifts out have continued into the ninth century at least. See discussion in
until it fills the entire city,” and visitors could even Adam Bursi, “Scents of Space: Early Islamic Pilgrimage, Perfume,
be identified afterwards from their smelling like the and Paradise”, Arabica, 6( (2020), pp. 200–2*4, sp. p. 2*4.
* Amikam Elad, “Why Did ʿAbd al-Malik Build the Dome of the Rock?
building’s strong scent.³ Islamic texts as early as the A Re-Examination of the Muslim Sources”, in Bayt al-Maqdis: ʿAbd
Qurʾān directly associated these sorts of luxurious al-Malik’s Jerusalem, Julian Raby, Jeremy Johns eds, Oxford 1))2,
scents with Paradise; as such, the Dome’s olfactory pp. **–58, sp. p. *6. Modern scholars have argued that visitors
collected perfume from the Rock – where it pooled in a gutter on
environment – combined with the visual and hap-
the stone’s sides – using ampullae produced for pilgrims, who took
tic heaven of the building’s mosaics and marbles – the scented material away as a form of pilgrimage souvenir. Julian
would likely have been redolent of the paradisical Raby, “In Vitro Veritas: Glass Pilgrim Vessels from (th-Century
afterlife for its Muslim visitors. Scent was thus a key Jerusalem”, in Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and Early Islam, Jeremy
Johns ed., Oxford 1))), pp. 11*–1)0, sp. pp. 1(5–1(6; Finbarr B. Flood,
component of early Muslims’ experiences of the “Bodies and Becoming: Mimesis, Mediation, and the Ingestion of
Dome of the Rock and (as I have argued elsewhere) the Sacred in Christianity and Islam”, in Sensational Religion:
of other holy places, including the Kaʿba in Mecca, Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, Sally M. Promey ed., New
Haven 2014, pp. 45)–4)*, sp. p. 466.
which likewise received extravagant aromatization.(
4 Bursi, “Scents of Space” (n. 2).
Contributing to the study of the ritual usages 5 I consider these examples of “stage relics” as discussed in Richard
of scent in early Islamic sacred spaces, this article J. A. McGregor, Islam and the Devotional Object: Seeing Religion
highlights the olfactory dimensions of a set of col- in Egypt and Syria, Cambridge 2020, pp. 122–12*, 145–14(.
6 Miklos Muranyi, “The Emergence of Holy Places in Early Islam:
umns and stones that commemorated particular On the Prophet’s Track”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam,
sites where the Prophet Mu)ammad was said to have *) (2012), pp. 165–1(1; Idem, “Visited Places on the Prophet’s Track
performed ritual prayer (ṣalāt) throughout the cities in Mecca and Medina”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam,
4),(2020), pp. 21(–2*0; Adam Bursi, Traces of the Prophets: Relics
of Mecca and Medina.⁵ Recorded in early texts and
and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam, Edinburgh 2024, pp. 166–21(.
monumentalized by the ruling powers, the locations ( Almost all Umayyad-era and earlier versions of these buildings
of the Prophet’s prayers became memorialized sites are no longer extant, forcing us to rely largely on textual evidence
for analyzing them. See Alain George, “A Builder of Mosques: The
of visitation and ritualization over the seventh to
Projects of al-Walid -, from Sanaa to Homs”, in Fruit of Knowledge,
ninth centuries.⁶ In this period, perfume was ap- Wheel of Learning: Essays in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand, vol. 2,
plied to parts of some buildings in order to mark Melanie Gibson ed., London 2022, pp. 16–4).

COLUMNS OF SCENT 33
 Such aromatic efforts were likely carried out in
dialogue with other commemorative projects pur-
sued by members of the ruling Umayyad and Abbasid
dynasties, including their architectural embellish-
ments of sites associated with the Prophet’s life. At
the same time, contestation apparently emerged re-
garding the application of scent to these spaces, with
at least one important Umayyad figure reportedly
ordering the removal of perfume from a prominent
mosque in the early eighth century. As we will see,
it appears that scenting places associated with the
Prophet Mu)ammad was not universally agreed
upon as a sign of proper Muslim piety in the early
Islamic centuries, perhaps due to the complicated
and contradictory valences of perfume in the early
Islamic sensorium.

PERFUMING THE PROPHET’S

PLACES OF PRAYER
A variety of early Islamic historical and hadith texts
include extensive lists of “places where the Prophet
prayed.”- These writings document not only an aware-
ness of such places among early Muslim authors and
scholars, but also efforts by political authorities to
commemorate the locations as sites for veneration
and visitation. According to these texts, the Umayyad
caliph al-Wal.d b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. /6–96/705–715)
and his governor over the Ḥijāz region, ʿUmar b. ʿAbd
al-ʿAz.z (r. ca /7–93/706–712), were particularly prom-
inent patrons. In addition to carrying out the grand
refurbishment of the monumental Prophet’s Mosque
in Medina between ///706 and 91/710, al-Wal.d and
ʿUmar are said to have built or refurbished mosques
at several locations that were remembered as plac-
es where the Prophet had prayed at different times
throughout his life.⁹ The Medinan historian Ab:
Ghassān al-Kinān. (d. ca 210//25–/26) offers testi-
mony to local memory of this Umayyad-era building
project:

“Many of the region’s knowledgeable people told me

that all the mosques in Medina and its environs that
are constructed of ornamented, fitted stones were plac-
es where the Prophet had prayed. This was thanks
[fi g. 1] Interior of the Dome of the Rock with the Foundation
Stone in the foreground, Jerusalem, photographed ca 1890 8 Muranyi, “Visited Places” (n. 6), pp. 226–22(.
) Harry Munt, The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic
[fi g. 2] Black stone in the miḥrāb in the Well of Souls beneath Arabia, New York 2014, pp. 111–115; George, “A Builder of Mosques”
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, photographed ca 2018 (n. (), pp. 22–28.

34 ADAM BURSI