Columns of scent : perfumed signs of the prophet in early Islamic spaces

Examining ritual uses of scent in early Islamic sacred spaces, this article highlights the olfactory aspects of a set of columns and stones in Mecca and Medina that commemorated places where the Prophet Muḥammad was said to have performed ritual prayer. Several such locations of the Prophet's prayers became memorialized sites of visitation and ritualization over the course of the seventh to ninth centuries CE. At a number of these sites, perfume was applied to parts of the buildings, apparently to mark them as spaces associated with the memory of the Prophet's presence and, thereby, to highlight them as worthy of veneration. At the same time, contestation also emerged regarding the application of scent to these spaces, perhaps resulting from the complex and contradictory valences of perfume in the early Islamic sensorium.