ABSTRACT
Islamic cemeteries in Europe are sites replete with sound, recitation and listening. Those sonic practices, whether in formal liturgical rituals connected to burial or in less formalised visitations, serve to mediate between the living and the dead. This chapter makes three interconnected arguments about Islamic cemeteries, focusing on those in Europe in particular, though many if not all these claims may also apply to Islamic cemeteries elsewhere. First, these cemeteries have a distinctly social life, full of visits by the living to the dead (and for some, vice versa). Second, this social life is made strikingly manifest through (sometimes loosely) codified sonic practices that foster certain interactions while proscribing others; these practices and the norms that govern them act as a kind of cemetery poetics. Finally, these cemetery poetics play an important role in forging a sense of shared heritage and cultural identity, and, as such, they become sites of potential contestation where sound – especially prayers and protests – yet again plays an important role in shaping what these cemeteries are and how they articulate the intertwining of past/present. Examples from Berlin, Germany; Istanbul and Kars, Turkey; and sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro illustrate these cemetery poetics and their function.
