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Paper short abstract:

Shared shrines in the Eastern Mediterranean have been related to representations of a past characterized by "tolerance" towards the religious other. In fact, they are situated in marginal lands and embody the relation between local -chthonian- spirits (Saints, holy men, etc) and alternative concepts of local social communities and identities.

Paper long abstract:

Shared religious practices in the Balkans and the larger post-Ottoman space, have been the focuses of recent ethnographic research {Bowman, 1993; Hayden, 2002; Hann and Goltz, forthcoming). These phenomena have often been related to representations of a past characterized by "tolerance" towards the religious other.

My paper is based on ethnographic observation of an annual festival taking place at one of the sites traditionally visited by both Christians and Muslims in Istanbul - and still attracting tens of thousands of people. I look at the local configurations of such sacred places in a comparative perspective within the Eastern Mediterranean, where Christianity and Islam have a long tradition of coexistence and highlight the specific concepts of space and representations of the local community involved.

Shared shrines are mostly situated in marginal places, outside and beyond the state-controlled administrative territories, villages or towns, often in the wilderness. They become focal points of the autochthonous communities, across religious frontiers. Sharing sacra seems a phenomenon at once local and marginal, pointing to the dynamics involved in the making of concepts of belonging to place - beyond and despite organized religious and political communities. The ways local society copes with the consequences of (officially prohibited) marriages across religious frontiers point to the existence of larger collective identities, expressed during celebrations at shared shrines, outside the jurisdiction of political and religious authorities. Is there a relation between local -chthonian- spirits and alternative concepts of local social identities?