Samer Akkach: The Wine of Babylon: Rethinking the Sacred in Late 17th-c. Damascus

Samer Akkach, Professor of Architectural History and Theory and Founding Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide, Australia

Modern understanding of the ‘sacred’ and ‘sacred space’ has been profoundly influenced by the works of two eminent scholars: the German theologian Rudolf Otto (d. 1937), and the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade (d. 1986). Both contributed significantly to establishing the irreconcilable polarities of the religious vs the secular, the sacred vs the profane, and to restricting human apprehension of the ‘sacred’ to the feeling that usually emerges in a ‘religious’ experience. This talk critically examines the assumptions underlying this modern understanding of the sacred with reference to the ideas and socio-spatial practices of the Damascene Sufi scholar, ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731). Al-Nābulusī, whose prolific life spanned 92 years and 300 works, led an unusual lifestyle that combined spirituality with leisure, material wealth with mystical poverty, innovative individuality with tradition. During a midlife crisis, he attempted to theorise his unique approach through a rethinking of the presence of numinosity in human life. Using landscape and architectural metaphors, he retrospectively structured his rich poetic output into a four-part anthology that captures the complexity of the human experience in a new way. His approach presents a fresh understanding of the anthropocentric essence of the sacred, highlighting, on the one hand, humanity’s spiritual, moral, and corporeal dimensions, and, on the other, human approaches to divinity through the multiplicity of worldly engagements. The talk pays special attention to the fourth part of his anthology, The Wine of Babylon, which is devoted to amatory poetry and recreational outings at the gardens of Damascus.