Muhammad's Body: Prophetic Assemblages and the Baraka Network
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 19, 2019
- Creator
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Knight, Michael
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religious Studies
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines representations of Muhammad in early Sunnī biographical (sira) literature and hadith collections, focusing on the ways in which these sources describe Muhammad’s body. A significant gap persists between Islamic studies and contemporary theories of the body. Additionally, within Islamic studies engagements of gender and explorations of Muslim masculinities remain critically underdeveloped. This dissertation begins to address those gaps, employing contemporary theories of the body as a framework for exploring representations of Muhammad, thus contributing to studies of the hadith and biographical literature beyond the question of their historical authenticity. With attention to the Deleuzo- Guattarian question, “What can a body do?” it tracks change in the sources’ representation of Muhammad’s bodily boundaries, powers, and limits, exploring the ways in which his body enables connections to other bodies toward the achievement of a greater body with expanded powers, a prophetic assemblage. Charting treatments of Muhammad across the development of hadith and biographical sources from approximately the 9th to 11th centuries CE, this dissertation demonstrates that the sources reflect a growing investment in Muhammad’s power to achieve intercorporeal linkage with other bodies, through which the prophetic body extends beyond its expected boundaries. Muhammad’s Companions, transformed by these connections, become authorized in the literature not only as eyewitness reporters of Muhammad’s sayings and actions, but also as intensely embodied traces of Muhammad’s corporeality. This dissertation also demonstrates that while Muhammad’s body grows in its capacity for extending its power through other bodies, this movement does not reflect an absolute transformation or sweeping erasure of past narratives. Across the hadith and sira corpus, the prophetic body and its powers remain significantly in flux, reflecting the multiplicity and heterogeneity of reporters and networks contributing to these literatures.
- Date of publication
- August 2016
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Ernst, Carl
- Hammer, Juliane
- Boon, Jessica
- Safi, Omid
- Lucas, Scott
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2016
- Language
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