The five daily prayers must be conducted on a clean surface, and so the prayer mat serves that purpose and must be always kept clean itself. Appearing early in Islamic history, the most common and basic design almost looks like a door to heaven.
Muslims pray in the direction of the qibla. Today, it is easy and affordable to buy a prayer mat. Sizes differ, averaging 70 centimetres by cm for the individual rug, and most are long enough to allow someone to kneel above the fringe on one end and bend down and place the head on the other.
But the more effort put into a rug, the more expensive it can be. By looking at their patterns, the older prayer mats can tell you their origin, which tribe or village they were woven by, what message they tried to embody and whether they were regularly used or not from the wear and tear. Under the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal dynasties, the industry flourished and carpets came to be considered as national treasures. They were traded to Europe and the Far East, often considered too precious to be prayed on and would end up being hung like a painting in a home or palace.
One example of the gentlest of prayer rug designs, but with great detail, is a year-old Ottoman prayer rug, which has a traditional Ramadan fanous, a glass lantern or lamp, at the niche. This hangs surrounded by Quranic calligraphy along the borders of the 90cm-bycm rug.
They have become part of the flow of commodities that is transnationalizing religion and religious practices. In the commodification of sacred objects, or sacralization of commodities, the convergence of religion and capitalism has been crucial for the continuity of religious meanings and practices. In the everyday circulation of objects, the sacred and the profane converge, animating and producing religious subjects rather than subjects that have a religion. Consumption as a material practice changes religious meanings and practices, and value comes to be invested in certain religious objects, rituals, and ideas rather than others.
Such objects are produced to satisfy consumer needs and desires based on their gender identification, purchasing power, religious affinity Shia, Suni, Wahaabi, Hanafi, Sufi, etc. Influenced by transnational capitalism and religious tourism, the aesthetic and sensual relations mediated by material objects in Muslim prayer have taken new forms.
Muslim prayers, performed five times a day, number among the disciplined, embodied, and sensual everyday practices of Islam. Namaz requires a bodily awareness of boundaries between what is pure and impure in everyday life. These boundaries are set and performed through a series of rituals.
First, the practictioner must have an awareness of time sunrise and sunset as the beginning and the end of the cycle of prayer in the particular geographic location in which he or she is present.
The practitioner listens for the sound of azan the call to prayer , performs the ritual ablution wuzu of the human body, and cleans the location of the namaz it must be tidy and free of any human or animal body fluids and waste. Lastly, the practitioner must be oriented properly in space facing towards the Kaaba in Mecca. A number of objects are used to ornamentalize and aestheticize prayer. In Iran, particularly among women, one of the central objects is janamaz. The term references the location of the prayer or namaz.
Materially, jamanaz consists of two pieces of colorful paisley-patterned embroidered tissue. Muslim prayer begins with the practitioner in standing position, before moving to ruku, or bending the body forward by placing the hands on the knees. This is followed by sajdeh , 3 putting the forehead on the ground similar to child pose in yoga. Hand-made janamaz is predominantly used by women. The janamaz used by elite women is made of termeh , a precious handmade silk-and-wool fabric often inherited from mothers and grandmothers for generations Fig.
Among Iranian Muslims other objects are added to janamaz to further adorn the prayer space. This may include the placement of mohr or turbah in Arabic, a piece of clay brought from Mecca , tasbih prayer beads, which may be made of wooden, plastic, or precious stones, depending on price, see Fig.
Each of these objects—the janamaz, mohr, tasbih, chador-namaz, dry flower sachets, fresh jasmine, and rose petals—spatializes and aestheticizes Muslim prayer by using the senses ofsight, touch, and smell to invoke affective spatial and temporal memory.
It also allows access to consumerism as these objects and commodities are bought and sold in baazars or around holy shrines and mosques, especially in Mecca or online. These objects have become common souvenirs offered at a range of prices to individuals returning from pilgrimage or any form of religious tourism. Small prayer rugs are used for individual performance of Muslim prayers. Prayer rugs and carpets are the most significant portable objects displaying Muslim architectural design regulating time and space.
I will also cover Islamic prayer beads as another example of a material object with Islamic symbols that enhances prayers for Muslims. I argue that while these symbols and imagery on prayer items are not mandatory, they serve to heighten the experience.
Breadcrumb Home. Presenting Speakers. Sahar Shakeel. Faculty Sponsors. Sheri Lullo. Visual Arts. Faculty Division.
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