384 maria couroucli
fifteenth century, when Jewish refugees expelled from Spain and Portugal established
themselves in North African lands. Some are said to be more “ancient”, dating from
the first Jewish settlers to North Africa after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem
(Voinot, 1948). Voinot’s inventory of “double shrines” venerated in his time by both
Jews and Muslims (mainly Berbers) in Morocco counted almost 100 cases, most of
them situated in the middle and high Atlas, and divided into three categories: saints
claimed by both Jews and Muslims, Muslim saints also venerated by Jews, and Jewish
saints also venerated by Muslims, the last being the most important category (Driessen,
2012). Early travelers also mention shrines shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians in
Palestine during the crusade period: the German pilgrim/traveler Ludolph von
Suchem mentions a cave in the Mount of Olives that was a Jewish shrine of the
Prophetess Khuldah, a Christian shrine dedicated to Pelagia, and a Muslim sanctuary
dedicated to the sufi Rabi al Adawiyya (Irwin, 2012).
Testimonies from thirteenth-century Byzantium point to similar practices involv-
ing Muslims and Christians, such as the miraculous healing of the Emir of Sivas’
spouse in St Phocas’s sanctuary in Trebizond on the Black Sea (Foss, 2002), while
archaeological findings in Palestine include thousands of coins at the bottom of a
miraculous spring, where women would submerge themselves in order to become
pregnant, in use since the fourth century ce (Bar, 2008).
Hasluck, who visited a number of “mixed” shrines at the beginning of the
twentieth century in the Balkans and Anatolia, considered them part of a long pro-
cess of the Ottoman conquest of Byzantine provinces that included massive
conversions of the local populations and the establishment of Muslim orders in or
near sanctuaries belonging to Christian monastic communities as the Ottoman
armies conquered these new lands. Hasluck described a pattern of sharing or peace-
ful transmission of sanctuaries between Christian heterodox monks and members
of the Bektashi Muslim orders, thus transforming a network of Christian landmarks
in the deep countryside into a new web of localities occupied by dervishes, holy
men belonging to the religion of the new lords of the land. Hasluck called these
practices “ambiguous cults:”
Possibly the most extraordinary case of an ambiguous cult in Asia Minor is the worship
of the Christian saint Mamas under his own name by Turks and Greeks in the wholly
Turkish village of Mamasun. The sanctuary, called Ziaret Kilise (“Pilgrimage Church”)
was discovered, apparently in the last [nineteenth] century, by a series of ‘miraculous’
accidents ... A rock-cut Christian church and human bones were ... discovered, the
church being attributed to St. Mamas, probably on account of the name of the village,
and later adapted for the modern cult. At the East end stands a Holy Table (at which
itinerant Christian priests officiate) with a picture of St. Mamas, while in the south wall
is a niche (mihrab) for the Turks. There is no partition between the Christian and Moslem
worshippers, but the latter, while at their prayers, are allowed to turn the picture from
them. The skull and other bones of the saint, discovered on the site, are shown in a box
and work miracles for Christian and Turk alike: sick people are also cured by wearing a
necklet preserved as a relic. (Hasluck, 1929: 44–45)Shared shrines as local phenomena are inscribed in the religious traditions and
calendar customs of a particular area, but they also partake of networks spreading across
vast territories that had been organized politically as empires. Before the formation of