Reshaping sacred landscapes: notes on Sufi Cult in Sangaw Village shrines

The shaykhs occupy a prominent role in the religious landscape of Iraqi Kurdistan. Their reli- gious authority is legitimised and publicly performed as karamat, the ability to perform ‘won- ders’. The karamat of a powerful shaykh does not die with him but is believed to linger on grave or other places that bore a significant role in their religious life. In the course of time, popular devotion shaped the landscape scattering rural areas with small villages shrines, which today stands alongside newly established mosques. This present paper presents some preliminary notes on change and continuity in religious be- liefs and practices related the shaykhs’ karamat, interrelating ethnographic and topographic data on shaykhs’ shrines and mosques of the subdistrict of Sangaw, in the southern limit of the Sulaymaniyah governorate, collected within the framework of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Iraqi Kurdistan (MAIKI) of Sapienza, University of Rome.