Summary
Up until the protracted attacks on Mosul and neighboring regions this area was long described as one of the most diverse in the world. Mosul was a place where Muslims of different sects, Christians, and other religious minorities had long co-existed. Medieval and early modern shrines formed one of the greatest tangible proofs of that co-existence; the audiences for some of these shrines were as mixed as the population of Mosul. This paper considers the role of shared saints and prophets in forming places of connections between different groups as a way to investigate why and how these shrines continued to function as unique sites of interaction between minority and majority populations despite dramatic changes in population and political rule. 

Ethel Sara Wolper is an art historian of the medieval and early modern Islamic world. She is the author of Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia (Penn State University Press, 2003), and a coeditor with Daphna Ephrat and Paulo Pinto of Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes: Emplacements of Spiritual Power across Time and Place (Brill, 2021). Wolper's current research focuses on shared sanctuaries and the politics of heritage conservation in destroyed cities of the Islamic world. She also is the founder of the Remembering Mosul project (www.rememberingmosul.org). Wolper is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire.