The Birth of The Prophet Muhammad Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam

The Muslim World Book Review:

Wadham College, Oxford, Ahmed Weir

The Birth of The Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam. By Marion Holmes Katz. ISBN: 9780415771276.

In this work on devotional Sunni piety, Marion Jolmes Katz immerses herself, as a participant and observer, into the world of the mawlid, displaying an empathetic understanding of how the mawlid can touch the believer's heart. It is a work of historical theology tracing the mawlid from its birth at some point in the eleventh century to its dead-hearted critics of the twentieth century.] [ Within her chapters on the historical development of the mawlid, Katz devotes considerable energy to the discussion of qiyam, or 'standing'. In this she uncovers some gems. She traces the first recorded instance of standing to the Egyptian scholar Taj al-Din al-Subki. This happened in the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus in the fourteenth century during a public recitation of Al-Sarsari's ode, 'Writing in gold is but little for the praise of Mustafa'.