Encyclopedia of Islam

baraka

  

91  J

---

as God’s agents, can also bestow blessings, as 

a

braham

 and m

oses

 do in the Quran. Like a kind 

of electricity, it was thought to emanate primarily 

from God to his creation through the Quran and 

intermediary prophets and 

saints

. Once i

slam

became a fully institutionalized religion in the 

ninth century with hierarchies of political and 

religious power and 

aUthority

 that involved rul-

ers, soldiers, 

Ulama

, administrators, commoners, 

and slaves, then baraka itself was also thought of 

as a sacred power that flowed from God through 

a hierarchy of supermundane beings. Today the 

ordinary person still has simply to hear or see 

the Quran to benefit from its baraka. It can also 

be obtained by touching a saint, a saint’s relic, 

or even a person who has visited the k

aaba

, a 

shrine, or similar holy place. Indeed, obtaining 

baraka is one of the main reasons people perform 

pilgrimages.

As an impersonal force, baraka is supposed 

to be present in certain stones, trees, natural 

springs, or manufactured objects—especially in 

pre-Islamic cultures, among the b

edoUin

, and in 

rural populations. Egyptian peasants still believe 

that the antiquities of the ancient Egyptians have 

this power, and they take scrapings from the 

pyramids and temples to place in amulets or to 

mix into a potion with other substances to cure 

a disease. The idea of blessing also has become 

diffused in the everyday speech of Muslims and 

non-Muslims in the Middle East, who use words 

derived from the Arabic word baraka to wish 

each other a happy holiday and to congratulate 

someone upon marriage or some other success 

in life.

See also e

gypt

; 

miracle

; 

wali

; 

ziyara

.