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Although Muslim theologians generally condemned the belief in theintercessory power ofimages, places, or objects, the Islamic world wasnonetheless filled with dozens of *loca* considered to be holy. Thesewereplaces in which people sought a privileged contact with the sacred. Theproject „Holy Places in Islam“ willinvestigate the modalities throughwhich a specific Muslim society made holy a determinate place or,alternatively,dismissed it. In order to analyse these processes theproject seeks to integrate both material culture and literarytexts. Texts,such as pilgrimage guides and geographical descriptions, in fact not onlycarry important information tolocate and identify holy places, but alsohelp to reconstruct the discourse which was created around a specificplace.At the same time material culture reflects how the sense of holinesswas embodied and given substance. The samematerial will also beinterrogated in order to explain how a site was forgotten or erased bysocieties.The project,established by Andreas Görke, Mattia Guidetti and AlanWalmsley is supported by the AHRC (UK), MIRI (Copenhagen) andCASAW(Edinburgh). It is designed as an international and interdisciplinarynetwork of scholars. Over the duration ofthe project of 18 months(September 2013 – March 2015), participants will come together for threeworkshops andcontribute to a database - only accessible to theparticipants in the network - which aims at bringing togetherinformationon specific holy sites in order to facilitate the research and allow for abetter overview and comparison.Participants are expected to take part in one or more of the workshops, topre-circulate their papers before theworkshops and eventually to publishone contribution in a final edited volume. Ideally, participants shouldalso bewilling to share material and contribute to the database.We are therefore looking for scholars willing to become partof thisnetwork.The three workshops are roughly scheduled to focus on, respectively: “EarlyIslam and the search fora model”; “The expansion of Islam and theemergence of regional patterns” and “Re-interpreting holy sites in themedieval period and beyond”.The first meeting will take place in Edinburgh from 4 to 7 December 2013,the secondmeeting is provisionally scheduled to June 2014 in Copenhagen,and the third to September or October 2014 in Edinburgh.Board and lodging will be provided. Travel expenses will be partially orfully refunded depending on the number ofparticipants in each singleworkshop.Scholars interested in participating in the network should send an abstractoftheir research (max. 500 words) and a short CV to the followingaddresses by 22 July 2013. Applicants will be notifiedby mid-August.a.goerke@ed.ac.uk AND mattiaguidetti@staffmail.ed.ac.uk