E-mail: pankov@almaqam.ru Tel.: +7 (812) 328-08-12
3, Universitetskaya emb., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
PhD in History, Researcher, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, International Center for Islamic Studies
This article, using the example of the legends about the desecration of shrines, explores the process of constructing sacral spaces on tombs of“holy” patron-defenders. One of the main anthropogenic elements that make up “mazar” sacral space (the grave of a saint or a place of pilgrimage) and the cult of Muslim “saints” are narratives about “holy people” and “holy places,” especially in stories about the desecration of shrines and the divine retribution it begets. The author argues that this group of stories and legends, like the corps of legends that have developed around holy places, fulfills a number of pragmatic goals. One of them is the construction of the sacral. V. Propp’s theory gives a possible explanation for the structure of this type of folklore text and the functional significance of its parts. Sacral space is presented as the result of a synergy of divine and anthropogenic factors. To study sacred spaces A. Lidov has identified two key concepts, hierophany and hierotopy; from this perspective, stories and legends about the desecration of shrines are considered as an element of the “hierotopic project,” the construction of sacred space.
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