Islamic Prayers, Invocations and Decorations comprises of seventy-two folios of thin white paper bound in brown leather. Written in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish in naskh and thuluth scripts, and occasionally embellished with gold and blue pigment, it brings together a rich array of devotional symbols and rituals. These include divine names of God, the Prophet, Islamic leaders, and caliphs; invocations and prayers with explanations in decorative circles; relic imagery of the Prophet’s footprint, sandals, banner, rose, cloak, rosary, ewer, and basin; sacred topographies, various prayers, and talismanic numerology squares. Purchased from Worldwide Antiquarian with the Edwin J. Beinecke Book Fund, it joined the collection of the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2005.

Folio 39b features a gold rendering of the Prophet Muhammad’s footprint, a motif rooted in longstanding Islamic devotional practices. While actual footprints of Muhammad historically functioned as a relic with talismanic properties, the small painted footprint here assumes a didactic role. Inscribed in white ink is the phrase “Heaven is under the feet of the mothers,” a line from Muhammad’s hadith to Jahimah that underscores filial devotion as the path to Paradise. This inscription connects Muhammad’s footprint to the symbolic “feet” of the mother, transforming the image into a moral directive. On the adjacent folio, the line “remove your shoes” is inscribed onto an image of Muhammad’s removed golden sandals, an invitation for the viewer to emulate the Prophet’s and, in doing so, embody him in the path to Paradise. Together, these elements position the manuscript as a guide to devotional practice, collapsing the boundaries between relic, text, and devotee within a shared spiritual framework.

Sources:

Aydın, Hilmi. The Pavilion of the Sacred Relics. Istanbul: Kaynak Publishing, 2004.

Bursi, Adam. Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024.

Gruber, Christiane. “A Pious Cure-All: The Ottoman Illustrated Prayer Manual in the Lilly Library.” In Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires, edited by Kishwar Rizvi, 95–123. Leiden: Brill, 2018.