SIGNED AL-‘AJIZ KNOWN AS AL-SAYYID HASAN BIN AL-SAYYID ‘UTHMAN AL-AMASILI, OTTOMAN TURKEY, DATED AH 1213/1798-99 AD

The Dala’il al-Khayrat, whose full title is Guidelines to the Blessings and the Shinings of Lights, giving the saying of the blessed prayer over the chosen Prophet, is one of the most popular prayer books of the post-mediaeval period. Written by the Moroccan religious scholar and Sufi Abu ‘Abdallah bin Sulayman al-Jazuli (d. 1465), it is a manual of devotion which consist of an introductory prayer, an enumeration of the virtues of the Prophet, a list of his names and a description of the tomb of his tomb in Medina. The majority of Dala’il al-Khayrat manuscripts are illustrated with images of the sanctuaries in Mecca and Medina, either very detailed or sometimes diagrammatic. The burial chamber of the Prophet is usually depicted as a niche with a lamp, under which are the tombs of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar, sometimes with the tomb of Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. The vast majority of these manuscripts come from the Ottoman world and north Africa, particularly in the 19th century but fine illustrated copies were also produced in India and south east Asia. The book is still widely used today in the Sunni world (Venetia Porter, ed., Hajj, A journey to the heart of Islam, London, 2012, p.24).