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This chapter discusses sacred topography, providing a background to pilgrimage sites and the manner in which Jews and Muslims employed Scripture to refer to sacred places. It examines how Jews and Muslims understood sacred space through similar means. It explains how sacred topography, as depicted in Scripture and shaped by the physical environment and sensory and ritual means, informs and transforms the process of rediscovering sacred space. Baraka lies at the foundation of Jewish and Muslim conceptions and perceptions of the sacred. The consecration of sacred space as well as popular stories and traditions described the way in which devotees venerated saints at shrines and interacted with each other.

“How the Maya Shaped Their World” provides context for the volume and describes its origins in the 14th Annual Tulane Maya Symposium, which took place in 2017 and was organized around the theme “Monumental Landscapes: How the Maya Shaped their World.” Rather than compelling authors to adhere to a single definition of monumental and a traditional concept of landscape, the editors asked the authors to creatively answer the question, “What does monumental landscape mean to you in the context of your research into the ancient Maya?” The chapter introduces the three sections of the volume—natural and built landscapes, political and economic landscapes, and ritual and sacred landscapes—and summarizes each chapter.

This chapter seeks to document the complex nature and choreography of Bosnian Muslims' relations with holy sites in the context of debates on sacred landscapes in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. It shows that these sacred sites are not necessarily venerated, worshiped, or shared by Muslims strictly as members of an ethnoreligious group. On the contrary, these sites in Muslim Bosnia entail a complex nexus of (power) relations cutting across multiple scales. The sacred sites in the Central Bosnian highlands assemble female and male, village and urban Muslims, or Sunni Muslims and dervishes of divergent cults. Yet the sites are intricately entangled in the state-level bureaucratic field as their administration, and thus their appropriation, involves the Islamic Community (IC), international Islamic organizations, and the state.

This chapter examines the way Pausanias, the 2nd century CE author of the Periegesis of Greece, constructs a religious landscape, focussing on his account of Corinth. It starts from the observation that Pausanias faced a difficulty in trying to harmonise his description of Corinth with the rest of his Greek topography in so far as, having been destroyed by the Romans and refounded as a Roman colony, it was one of the most conspicuous emblems of Roman domination on the Greek mainland. The chapter shows how Pausanias solves the problem by employing a range of discursive strategies (exclusion, transformation, arrangement and contextualization) whose culminative aim is to represent Corinth as far more Greek than it actually was.

Chapter 1 examines late-sixteenth century Persian tazkiras (Sufi biographies) and tarikhs (historical narratives) to argue that they were part of a shared narrative practice that made little distinction among facts, memories, and myths, and incorporated a variety of forms of spatiality and temporality within their narrative frameworks. They relocated regional myths of origin and settlement from earlier Sanskrit narratives into a more universal Islamic imagination as well as local sacred sites. Focused on the shaping of Kashmir’s natural and political landscapes through the activities of Sufi mystics, these narratives were critical to naturalizing Islam in Kashmir, thus rendering it into a sacred (Islamic) landscape. Even as they established Persian as the vernacular language of place-making, the narratives rendered a specifically Islamic religious sensibility a key feature of historical narration in Kashmir through the centuries.

Chapter 1 considers the Buddhist inscription of Thailand’s landscape across the longue duree of history. One main theme in this chapter is the replication in situ of the sacred geography of India and Sri Lanka, including physical sites such as footprints and reliquaries (stupas). A second theme is the historic relationship between relics as powerful objects and men of power as those seeking to appropriate and manipulate relics. A third theme is the construction and restoration of cultic edifices as a practice constitutive of cultural memory.

The conclusion highlights three important aspects in the study of the history of places, of which sacred landscapes form a part: the question of textual transmissions and genres that affect the accuracy of the historical evidence on places; the sources’ construction of places as sacred landscapes; and the continuity of sacredness of a given place over time, irrespective of conversions to new religions.

This chapter explores the dynamics unfolding around the politics of Muslim holy sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. It focuses on the outdoor spaces of veneration and prayer (dovište), from small village spaces to larger regional pilgrimage sites. These sites offer a window onto the historical, political, and religious transformations and continuities that have taken place around them over the last hundred years. It shows how the Muslim holy sites became a nexus for local Muslims, national politicians, and numerous international faith-based organizations from Turkey and the Gulf countries to articulate their agendas and interests. Through ethnography of several Muslim holy sites, it illustrates wider ambiguities and areas of contestation over Islamic religious authority, authenticity, and control of historical narratives in postsocialist, postwar Bosnian Muslim politics at large.

In the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh the landscape is dominated by places of worship, pilgrimage and supplication of the spirits of previous generations of learned and pious people. Identifying these sites—a study of the shrine structures, their locations, and the people buried in them—is the first task of this chapter. Secondly, the chapter explores the origin of sacred sites, and their evolution throughout a vibrant history of religious transformations. The Faḍāʾil-i Balkh establishes an ancient, sacred origin for Balkh’s sites, which begs the questions asked by F.W. Hasluck in the 1920’s about a comparable place: why were the sacred sites kept alive and not destroyed when the new religion was ushered in, and how much of their pre-Islamic ‘cultish’ power was retained once the site became Islamic? Was this transference simply of a ‘material’, or also of a ‘spiritual’ nature? Were the personality of the saint, local legends and customs just supplanted, or did they coexist?

Chapter 4 looks at the relationship between space and the reincarnation tradition. It explains the cultural geography of Tibet and how Tibet’s sited traditions were pressed into service to aid the Karmapa lineage. It explores the importance of place and environmental imagery to Rangjung Dorje’s poetry, his songs, and his praises. It then outlines Tibet’s cultural geography: its indigenous traditions of autochthonous deities and spirits, and the way Buddhism was said to have “tamed” them. It also describes Rangjung Dorje’s non-Tibetan, lineal forebears, the Indian mahāsiddhas whose mahāmudrā tradition approached environments with a mixture of skepticism and transformation. Following in their footsteps, Rangjung Dorje’s Tibetan forebears like Milarepa had begun to reimagine the Tibetan landscape as maṇḍalas and created a series of sacred sites. The early Karmapas’ monasteries also came to be seen as their maṇḍalas and, therefore, a place to which they should return life after life.

We focus on evidence of naming the landscape in the medieval period starting with evidence from Domesday Book (1086 AD) and then moving backwards. We make links between names, the use of the landscape, and issues of identity. Landscapes would have been named in all periods. We consider what can be said of earlier landscapes for which evidence is scant or non-existent. Enclosure and naming were probably linked, in that when smaller parcels of land, such as fields, were created the are likely to have been given names in order to refer to them. We think about boundaries as evidence of sacred landscapes and end with conclusions on long-term continuities and differences. The landscapes of the early medeieval period stand out from those earlier, especially after the divisions, such as parishes, imposed by the church.

This chapter traces Yogananda’s early years in the United States. The chapter begins by examining the conference that brought him to the U.S. and his presentation on “the Science of Religion,” placing both in the context of an intramural Protestant debate that offered competing answers to the epistemological challenges modernity raised for the universalistic claims of Christianity. A cross-country road trip in 1924 took Yogananda to Los Angeles, which quickly became his national headquarters. Southern California played an important role in fostering Yogananda’s ministry at a time when American racism stirred racism and Orientalism among white Americans. The nation’s new “spiritual frontier,” the region was an ideal space for a new religious movement, a relatively tolerant center of religious diversity that had already fostered Hindu movements by the time Yogananda arrived. He made Mount Washington his headquarters, which quickly become part of the sacred landscape to his followers.

This chapter examines sacred landscapes in Brittany. These include those in Saint-Just in central Brittany, those of the Crozon peninsula in the far west, and those of the Avrille region to the south. This chapter highlights the importance of standing stones in prehistoric Brittany and analyses the link of the stone monuments to the landscape and with the structure of rocks. It also explains the common features of the stone settings of Saint-Just, Crozon, and Avrille in terms of using extracted the blocks from outcrops, rather than taking opportunistic advantage of detached boulders.

Tibetans conserve the natural environment out of their respect for sacred landscape, yet the ecologically fragile Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is being eyed by the Chinese for its bounties of freshwater and precious metals. Tibetan herders are thrust into urban life with little to live on. The demolition of traditional architecture and construction of modern buildings severely mar the looks of Lhasa. Tibetan fashion is corrupted by official aesthetics to favor wearing animal skins, running counter to Tibetans’ religious belief.

This chapter covers the geography, natural resources (water, soil, plant, and animal), and environment of the Nasca region. The natural and climatic phenomena that impact the area are described and include earthquakes, El Niño, and drought. In addition, evidence for long-term patterns of environmental change in the region is presented. The sacred geography of the region is discussed, including the identification of sacred mountain peaks and their associated mythology. There is a detailed description of the site of La Tiza, and the field and laboratory research methods of the project are detailed.

This chapter focuses on the Kushite sacred landscape and Twenty-fifth Dynasty finds at Karnak. It is based on the results of archaeological excavations undertaken by a team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities directed by the author in the western and southern parts of the Karnak temple complex. The chapter examines textual, iconographical, and archaeological sources that provide evidence of important movements of the Nile during the New Kingdom until the abandonment of the site. The excavations revealed a great embankment at least 6.5 meters high, roughly running on a north–south axis, parallel to the Nile. It was built of rough-cut blocks of sandstone and connected with two quays constructed in front of the temple. Based on the evidence, the chapter draws hypotheses as to the historical evolution of the embankments in front of the temple from the New Kingdom to the Kushito-Saite period.