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Chapter 2

Muharram Rituals in Iran

Past and Present

I shall exhaust my life weeping and sighing.

In distress and grief I shall pass my lifetime.

—Baḥrāni̅’s al-Fawādiḥ¹

Performing Passion

Fernea provides a description of the events performed in honor of Husayn at his tomb in Karbala during the month of Muharram. After each “taaziya group” performed their preliminary rituals in “religious ecstasy,” the processions began. She describes them as follows: “We could hear the chant of the group next in line, echoing and re-echoing within the great courtyard around the tomb. Then the new group emerged; a green banner and a black, lit by flickering torches held high, were borne forward by the hands of very old men and boys.… Then a score of young men, bare to the waist, wearing only black or white trousers and white head cloths, surged out, marching in strict rows of four.… Whatever I had expected, this was completely different, different in scope and quality from the taaziya I had seen in El Nahra.”²

On one level, this quotation indicates the diversity found in the rite’s performance in southern Iraq. On another, it hints at Fernea’s sense of amazement and otherness as she witnesses an event that seems so foreign to her. Certainly the Muharram rituals do seem “different” to people of other faiths, but they are not so far removed from Western experience that they must be understood as wholly other. After all, the rituals bear strong resemblance to Christian penitents performing bodily mortification on Good Friday. Indeed, one scholar has recently posited that Christian influence from the Mediterranean region may have inspired the Shi‘i tradition of flagellation.³ Moreover, the passion plays to be discussed below would seem vaguely familiar to those who have witnessed the performance of dramas concerning Christ’s passion at Oberamergau in Germany during the Christian Holy Week. But it would be a mistake to judge the forms discussed below from a solely Western perspective, for they have developed along a different set of performance principles that defy conventional Western categories of drama.

The study of the so-called “Persian passion play,” the holy drama known as ta‘zi̅yeh in Iran, is well developed. But even the word drama must be used cautiously here because the application of Aristotelian theatrical terminology is not entirely appropriate for the description of this phenomenon. Ta‘zi̅yeh denotes an “expression of condolence” for Husayn, lamentation for all of the martyred imāms, the tragic event itself, and the Shi‘i staged performance of the historical event.⁴ Because it does not contain dialogue intended to convey plot in the Greek sense, the drama should be viewed as a distinct indigenous genre that is not equivalent to European theater. Rather, it has a metacommunicative quality resulting from the constant interaction between performers and audience. The Sprechraum of a ta‘zi̅yeh performance is not limited to the stage, as it is in conventional Western theater, but is extended to include the entire space within which the audience is situated. Peter Chelkowski has suggested that the closest parallel in the West would be the unconscious avante-garde of Grotowski’s “poor theatre,” which also attempts to burst bound performance space open to allow for audience participation.⁵ The viewer takes part in a discourse and thus becomes a conarrator. There is no concrete experience of dramatic time during the event, as there is in theatrical dialogue. There is, rather, a suspension of time in ta‘zi̅yeh discourse, for past, present, and future coexist simultaneously in its performance, thereby allowing the original event, the existential reactualization, and the future goal of salvation to merge into one experiential event.

Let us be content in saying that ta‘zi̅yeh is a distinct Iranian performance genre not easily explained in European dramatic terms.⁶ It is wiser to attempt to understand the genre in indigenous terms. To do so, we must go back to pre-Islamic times to glean glimpses of a Persian tragic ethos that was incorporated into Shi‘i Islam after the nation officially adopted the religion in Safavid Persia (1501–1722 C.E.).

The Emergence and Early Development of Mourning Rites in Iran

Ta‘zi̅yeh has a long history of development in Iran. The rite has never lost its religious implications, and as a dramatic form it has its origins in the Muharram processions commemorating Husayn’s martyrdom. Throughout the development of ta‘zi̅yeh, the representation of the siege and carnage at Karbala has remained its central focus, with special attention placed on certain key episodes that correspond to each of the ten tragic days. Even though it is thoroughly Shi‘ah in character and orientation, the performance tradition is heavily influenced by pre-Islamic Persian religion. The evidence for this influence does not come from Persian literature directly, because “dramatic” art was not an acknowledged medium of expression in Persia, but from the mourning rites for slain heroes that existed in eastern Iran before the advent of Islam.⁷ The Persian writer Firdausi (ca. 935–1020 C.E.), for example, provides a late account of an Iranian prince named Siyavush, who, like Husayn, predicts his own tragic beheading. In the poet’s national epic, the Shāhnāmeh, we read:

They will strike off this guiltless head of mine,

And lay my diadem in my heart’s blood.

For me no bier, shroud, grave, or weeping people,

But like a stranger I shall lie in dust,

A trunk beheaded by a scimitar.⁸

Veneration of deceased heroes had long been an important part of Persian culture; the theme of redemption through sacrifice found parallels in such pre-Islamic legends as the death of Siyavush cited above and in the ancient Mesopotamian rituals of renewal for Tammuz and Adonis.⁹

Perhaps because of their system of hereditary kingship and strong nationalistic sentiment, the people of the Iranian plateau were particularly hospitable to the Shi‘i form of Islam.¹⁰ According to legend, the daughter of the last Persian king of the Sasanid dynasty was taken captive during the Muslim invasion and was married to Husayn, merging indigenous ethos with foreign religion.¹¹ But even before the development of expressive ritualistic forms to reenact Husayn’s passion in Persia, the earliest emotional remembrances for Husayn took shape in the Arabic world. From the beginning, the annual Muharram mourning ceremonies were observed with great emotion. Ayoub suggests that lamentation (niyāḥah) for Husayn started shortly after the battle of Karbala, when citizens of Kufah “met the captives of the Holy Family beating their heads and breasts and weeping in deep remorse for their own treachery.”¹² Pageantry, however, was to be added later.

It seems likely that throughout the Ummayyad period (661–750 C.E.) the observance of Husayn’s martyrdom was a private affair conducted in the homes of influential members of Husayn’s clan, during which poets led lamentation sessions by reciting mournful verse.¹³ As Shi‘ism spread, however, so too did the mourning assemblies. By the tenth century, during the rule of the Persian Buyid dynasty (945–1055 C.E.) in Baghdad, impressive Muharram processions became well established. According to historians, the Buyid ruler Muizz al-Dawlah ordered the bazaars in Baghdad to be closed down and draped in black cloth on ‘āshūrā’ of 352 A.H./963 C.E.¹⁴ Yitzhak Nakash cites the historian ibn al-Athir, who writes that the ruler “forced the people to close the bazaars, suspend their business, to mourn, and to place cupolas covered with wool [in the markets]. Wailing women, their clothes torn, walked in the streets, slapping their faces and lamenting Husayn.”¹⁵ Chelkowski adds that ibn al-Athir “tells of great numbers of participants, with blackened faces and disheveled hair,” repeatedly circumambulating the city while beating their chests and mournfully reciting dirges.¹⁶ At that time the event was public and took shape as a procession, but during periods of non-Shi‘i rule, the observance must have gone underground, continuing within the homes of the devout as a private observance, much as it did during the Ummayyad period. Evidence such as this suggests that the earliest mourning observances moved from predominantly Arab areas into Persian domains after 1500 C.E., when Shah Ismail I, the first king of the Safavid dynasty, declared Shi‘i Islam the state religion of Persia and staged public performance gradually took shape.¹⁷

Persia’s cultural influence in the region prior to the Safavids was substantial, but it again became a political power when Shi‘i Islam was established as the state religion and was used to unify the country in opposition to the military campaigns of Sunni adherents such as the Ottomans and Uzbeks. It was at this time that the Karbala narrative was used to bolster a strong sense of national identity. Lincoln, for example, makes the following observation: “Invocation of the Husayn myth ever since has served, inter alia, to separate Shi‘i from Sunni and Iranian from Arab.”¹⁸ It was at this time also that the Muharram observances received royal encouragement; commemoration of Husayn’s martyrdom increasingly became a vehicle for patriotic sentiment even as it retained its soteriological function as a ritualistic act.

European eyewitness accounts of the processions are abundant, and they describe marching characters clothed in colorful regalia accompanied by mounted soldiers enacting the battle of Karbala. Chelkowski describes these early public displays as follows: “Living tableaux of butchered martyrs stained with blood, their bodies showing simulated amputations, were moved along on wheeled platforms. Mock battles were mimed by hundreds of uniformed mourners armed with bows, swords, and other weapons. The entire pageant was accompanied by funeral music and spectators, lined up along its path, beat their breasts, shouting ‘Hussein, O Hussein, the King of Martyrs’ as it passed by.”¹⁹ Such staged performance grew out of the processional observances held during the first ten days of Muharram.

As the Muharram ceremonies began to flourish and further develop under the Safavids, a second significant form of observance emerged as a genre of verbal and written poetry concerning the lives and actions of Shi‘i martyrs. Belonging to the maqtal genre, these narratives in verse form were taken predominantly from a book written by Vaiz Kashifi titled Rawḍat al-Shuhadā’ (Garden of Martyrs), and they were read to assemblies for the purpose of eliciting lamentation (nawḥ) from audience members.²⁰ The work, given an Arabic title but written in Persian, was widely circulated in Shi‘i communities from the sixteenth century onward and had broad-based popular appeal. The text was later translated into Urdu in India to continue the narrative tradition there.²¹ Originally, it was customary to recite or chant a chapter from the Garden of Martyrs in public each day during the first ten days of Muharram. Repeated in gatherings hosted by private patrons, the recitations came to be known as rauz̤eh khvāni̅s (garden recitations). During these events a series of extended threnodies interspersed with exegetical digressions (guri̅z) would occur to add secular color and allow the raconteur to display his skills at verbal art.²² Other martyrology books were eventually written based on the model of Kashifi’s classic text for use in such mourning assemblies (majālis), and today they comprise a huge body of literature.

Traditionally, a muraṣṣa’ khvān, someone with good recitation skills, would read elegies (mars̲i̅yahs) embedded in the larger rauz̤eh corpus or recite pithy ones from memory. The poet would recite while standing at a pulpit (mimbar) or sitting on a raised platform. From his elevated position, he would recite loudly in an oscillating timbre to insure that his tragic verses would be heard by all in the mourning assembly. Here is a powerful example of the genre from the opening lines of an elegy by the Persian poet Qaani (d. 1853 C.E.):

What is raining? Blood.

Who? The eyes.

How? Day and Night.

Why? From grief.

Grief for whom? Grief for the King of Karbalā’.²³

J. M. Unvala, who witnessed a number of Iranian rauz̤eh khvāni̅s in the second decade of the previous century, described the poet and his effect on the audience as follows:

[He] sits and recites for about an hour an anecdote of the martyrdom in a sing-song manner, … He has such fluency of speech and such volubility, that he recites sometimes for hours together without stopping even to think. In order to dispel fatigue after every sentence or couplet he draws in his breath with a noise produced at the back of the throat.… His serious and grave features, his lachrymose voice, his gestures of helplessness and deep mourning, combined with the crescendo tempo, in which he reaches the climax of the tragic stuff of his recital, is sufficient to make even hard-hearted men cry dispairingly like babies and women beat their thighs hysterically, shed bitter tears and shriek incessantly Husein, Husein.²⁴

It is important to emphasize again that such gatherings for lamentation were arranged to elicit emotional responses from audience members and to remind the pious of Husayn’s suffering. Participation in these events offered the audience members the possibility of experiencing the martyr’s pain vicariously through what I have been calling subjective apprehension. By subjective apprehension I mean a personal experience of Husayn’s passion on the phenomenological level, a level on which individuals have direct access to the imām’s mediating powers within a larger social collective. This physical and psychological dimension of the ritual complex is the most central aspect of muḥarram praxis. But rather than generalizing about a phenomenon so richly variegated and complex, let us follow the historical progression of the narrative tradition’s development to see how it dovetails with processional rituals to create a distinct ritual idiom.

Gradually, special elegies were developed for each of the days leading up to the tenth. By hearing these elegies recited on the proper days, participants made the past present, thereby actualizing their sacred history, even if in panegyric form. Through choice of episodes and voice modulation, the innovative narrator was able to excite and manipulate the emotions of his audience to produce an intense emotive unity, what Turner would call communitas. Because the occasions for reciting verses from the Garden of Martyrs were opportunities for the professional raconteur to display his own particular ability to innovate, the text became secondary to the bard’s own creative prowess, thus giving rise to an oral canon of martyr narratives in flux. Digression and improvisation allowed the oral poets to engage in acerbic political and social commentary. The oral performances within stationary rauz̤eh khvāni̅s were complemented by spectacular public events such as the special processions for ritual flagellation to participate in the imām’s suffering, a dual tradition that continues to the present day.²⁵ I will return to a contemporary example later, but for now let us see how the two traditions historically came together in ritual performance.

For nearly two and a half centuries, the two traditions—public processions and private recitations—existed side by side but separately, each becoming more complex and at the same time more refined and theatrical. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the two traditions fused to give birth to a new dramatic form known as ta‘zi̅yeh khvāni̅, or more simply, ta‘zi̅yeh, in which villains could be distinguished from heroes by their style of oration.²⁶ The master narrative still remained the Karbala tragedy, but scripts began to be composed about other martyred heroes who received the honor of having their own hagiographies come to life in performance. Since a number of figures from the beginning of time have participated in the cosmic drama of Husayn’s passion, it is not surprising that dramas written in their honor should have emerged over time to complement Husayn’s turmoil.

Pelly’s 1879 translation of a ta‘zi̅yeh manuscript serves as an excellent example of the expansion of the performance canon. His text comprises thirty-seven self-contained scenes ranging from the Old Testament ‘Joseph and his Brethren” (Scene 1) and the respective deaths of the members of the Holy Family (The Prophet [Scene 5]; Fatimah [Scene 7], Ali [Scene 8], Hasan [Scene 9], and Husayn [Scene 23]) to the culminating act, “The Resurrection” (Scene 37), with events leading up to the battle of Karbala sandwiched in between.²⁷ Writing some three decades later, Wilhelm Litten lists fifteen additional plays, beginning with Ismail’s sacrifice and ending with a play about the sixth imām. This is followed by an act concerning the conqueror Timur, who figures prominently in legends relating the introduction of muḥarram observances into India later in the fourteenth century.²⁸ Thus we see that the repertoire expanded to include pre- and post-Husayn figures, allowing the whole of history to participate in the cosmic drama of the supreme martyr’s passion. As Ayoub pointedly writes, “this long drama … has the entire universe for its stage and all creatures as members of its universal cast.”²⁹

Staged performances of such narratives grew out of the processional observances held during the first ten days of Muharram. As a compromise between public/moving processions and the private/stationary recitations, reactualizations first took place at socially marginal locations, such as crossroads, and in places like public squares where large numbers of people could gather. Soon, however, they moved into the courtyards of caravanserais, bazaars, and private houses. Naturally, the need for specially constructed sacred spaces to remember Husayn arose as the performative tradition developed. Ayoub documents the early emergence of ḥusayni̅yyāt, buildings that were constructed for the sole purpose of mourning during the third century in Cairo, Baghdad, and Aleppo, which came to be departure points for public processions.³⁰ These specially constructed buildings have their South Asian parallels in the imāmbāṛās and ‘āshūrkhānahs of north and south India respectively. Chelkowski has also written extensively on the development of special performance arenas for Husayn in Iran, and I summarize his findings below.³¹

Chelkowski indicates that by the nineteenth century, nascent dramas found their homes in specially constructed buildings known as taki̅yehs, an alternative term for ḥusayni̅yyāt. Wealthy members of the aristocracy funded the construction and maintenance of these arenas in urban areas. Some of the buildings had the capacity to seat more than a thousand people. Considerably more modest ones began cropping up, however, in towns and villages. Many of the taki̅yehs were temporarily constructed for the Muharram observances, and their architectural design allowed for dialogic interaction between the assembled audience and performers. The main action occurred on an elevated dais located at the center of the structure, a feature reminiscent of the raised platforms of the martyrdom narrators. Subplots could be performed in the space surrounding the central stage, creating intertextual frames of reference. Secondary stages on the periphery provided spaces from which actors could converse with those at the center. The overall effect was something akin to modern surround sound.

Corridors running outward from the center of the taki̅yeh were added to the central performing space. This arrangement allowed actors on horses and camels to come and go, as in a circus tent, rendering the entire building a performance space. Indeed, battles and other acts were enacted behind the audience, so that the feeling was one of being encircled by the dramatic action. This added effect enhanced audience participation. The taki̅yeh, in other words, became a microcosmic representation of Karbala that enabled spectators to participate in the historic events so central to their lives. The dynamics of the engagement of audience with performer through narrative enactment is one of the key features of events related to Muharram. Moreover, the theme of portable and temporary karbalā’s, the transposition of sacred space, is one to which I will return as the study proceeds to India and Trinidad in subsequent chapters.

In summary, ta‘zi̅yehs, like the muḥarram processions to be discussed at length below, developed historically as communal events, whether they were performed in houses, gardens, crossroads, or arenas, which makes them first and foremost social dramas. The important element in the observance was participation. An audience member could not just observe passively. The viewer had to show emotion by weeping in order to experience the suffering of Husayn, and only in this way could he or she completely identify with the martyr. Modern-day Muslim writers of polemical religious literature often even cite the physical benefits to be gained from weeping and wailing, just as New Age gurus, such as the laughing doctor of Mumbai, India, praise the healing effects of humor.³²

In spite of the numerous historical transformations that contributed to the shaping of ta‘zi̅yeh as we know it today, the soteriological purpose remained constant: participation in the performance helped an individual obtain salvation through the intercession of the martyr. The vicarious suffering and death of Husayn was an instrument of redemption for all believers, and belief was manifested best in performance participation. Staged ta‘zi̅yeh has been central to the muḥarram observances in Iran for over four hundred years. It has also survived various political vicissitudes, such as the ban on ta‘zi̅yeh performance by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who, in 1932 decreed that mourning rites were incompatible with his program of modernization.³³ Despite his views about the rite’s decadent and backward character, it has remained a creative force of religious and national expression, especially at times of weakness and oppression. At the same time, it has functioned as an agent of social change.³⁴

In the next section, I want to shift to the contemporary situation and the material dimension of the Muharram ritual complex, for I wish to draw attention to some motifs that will recur as we move from Iran to the Indian subcontinent and then on to the Caribbean.

The Contemporary Phenomenon

I described above in historical fashion the interrelated phenomena of stationary and ambulatory performances pertaining to Husayn’s passion. Now I wish to pay a bit more attention to the processional aspect of the rite. Dasteh (procession) is the term used most commonly in Iran for ambulatory rituals held during the months of Muharram and Safar.³⁵ That dasteh can also mean a “division of an army” should immediately alert us to the martial imagery intended by the use of this term, for the symbolism of battle is central to the occasion.³⁶ The most spectacular dastehs take place on ‘āshūrā’ and arba‘i̅n, and their most salient feature in Iran, up until recently, has been ritual flagellation (taṭbi̅r) performed by male members of the mourning community.

The flagellants, aged twelve and upward, are arranged according to height, the smallest preceding the tallest. Some of them who strip to the waist and strike their chests with the palm of their hands are called sinezans (chest beaters). Others wear black shirts cut away in the back so that the chains of their whips can fall directly on their flesh and are known as zanji̅rzans (chain beaters). Another class of penitents known as the shamshi̅rzans (sword beaters) wear white burial shrouds symbolizing their readiness to sacrifice their lives, and they strike their foreheads with knives and swords, letting the blood drip down onto the shrouds. Yet another group, known as sangzans (stone beaters), scourge themselves with stones.³⁷ All these various penitential groups compete against one another to see who could draw the most blood. Nelly Caron writes that the flagellation processions “tried to outdo one another in the severity of their self mortifications, the least of which consisted of locking padlocks to the skin.”³⁸

Acts of self-mortification are accompanied with musical instruments. Cymbals (sanj) and large kettle and cylinder drums maintain the steady rhythm for striking blows. The leader of each subgroup, chanting dirges, follows the same rhythm. The entire dasteh will stop in front of a religious edifice or the tomb of a local saint, in front of the homes of prominent community members to receive donations, or in an open space. At such sites, the participants in one group beat themselves rhythmically while others join in the chanting of simple verses, such as the following:

It is the eve of Ashura.

Karbala is in commotion.

How sandy is Karbala.

It is the final evening.³⁹

The tempo quickens until the excitement reaches an uncontrollable pitch. A sideshow may be performed, followed by more marching. The cries of the participants, who curse the villains while proclaiming sympathy for Husayn, are mingled with mournful songs. Canetti describes the communal nature of these processions as “an orchestra of grief … The pain they inflict on themselves is the pain of Husain, which, by being exhibited, becomes the pain of the whole community. The beating of their chests, which is taken up by the spectators, gives rise to a rhythmic crowd sustained by the emotion of lament. Husain has been torn away from all of them, and belongs to all of them together.”⁴⁰

The Shi‘i dasteh is, by and large, the most common processional ritual performance, and it is a tradition that continues in many parts of South Asia today. Although it is one of the oldest forms of commemoration, more extensive accounts of the dastehs begin appearing during the Safavid period. Resident foreigners in Safavid Iran left very rich but often contradictory accounts of what they saw.⁴¹ One fairly typical account comes from Thomas Herbert, who wrote in 1698 C.E.: “Nine days they wander up and down, all the while shaving neither head nor beard nor seeming joyful, but incessantly beating their breasts; some tear their garments, and crying out Hussan, Hussan in a melancholy note, so long, so fiercely, that many can neither howl longer, nor for a month’s space recover their voices.… The tenth day they find an imaginary Hussan, whom they echo forth in sentorian clamours, till they bring him to his grave; where they let him sleep quietly till the next year’s zeal fetch him out and force him again to accompany their devotion.”⁴²

Although these accounts are fairly repetitive and stereotypical and focus on the sensational, they are a virtual year-by-year record of the development of the pageantry; they chronicle the steady increase in the number of dasteh participants costumed to represent various Karbala episodes. For example, floats of living tableaux on wheels eventually came to follow riders on camels and horses. Various attributes that symbolized the battle of Karbala were featured individually. These included standards, banners, martial clothing and instruments, and a variety of ancient and modern weapons.⁴³ Some of the weaponry (for example, firearms) may seem out of place to European observers, but the Shi‘ah attempt to bridge the historical gap between Karbala and the present.

Fischer describes nine floats paraded in Yazd during the 1970s that accompanied the dastehs in which many were performing self-mortification. The floats, which were located at both ends of the procession, included decorated camels and horses carrying Yazid, his men, and the blood-soaked corpse of Husayn; a green-clad Abbas attempting to get water; a large pan of water signifying thirst; and a man dressed as a lion mourning for the martyr. His earlier data from the 1960s adds the bridal chamber of Qasim and Fatimah, the cradle of Ali Asghar and his nurse singing wistfully, and a red-clad Harmala (the archer who killed the infant) shooting arrows into the grieving audience’s midst.⁴⁴ Depicting such key episodes becomes the core of the exhibitionary complex and provides the central motifs for observances in India, where they take on new forms, while preserving the central ingredients of the master narrative.

It is clear that such massive displays were, and continue to be, an emotional and colorful spectacle for all concerned. Indeed, as the dastehs pass by lines of spectators on either side, the spectators may be moved by emotion to join in the process. As the ambulatory rituals continued to evolve, numerous props were added to increase the spectacle’s grandeur. Decorative items such as textiles, mirrors, lamps, and rugs donated by local participants were thus added to the dasteh out of devotion. The decorative items contributed by the devout once again reaffirm the communal nature of the event, reminding us that even though the event is primarily religious, it also functions as a social occasion for fostering a common group identity. Today some of the donated items are attached to biers, coffins, and standards. A lamp is often placed inside the replica of Husayn’s coffin (tābūt) to symbolize the light emanating from his corpse.⁴⁵

The dastehs, organized by guilds or special committees representing various districts of a town, follow a prescribed order of precedence, each carrying ‘alams (standards) inscribed with the name of the sponsoring organization. Sometimes a mobile passion play is performed as part of a mourning dasteh. In the past, all these elements added glamour and color to complement the crimson of the flagellants’ flowing blood. In the present, all the elements described above are embellished with objects of modernity, such as villains wearing sunglasses. Although virtually everyone participates in the events on the level of popular practice, such forms of piety have not always gone without challenge and criticism from certain sectors of learned Shi‘i society. William Beeman, for example, indicates that the performances were never popular with the clerical establishment, and we have already seen that the Shah had them officially banned, even though they were tolerated to a certain extent.⁴⁶

Werner Ende has pointed out that flagellation rituals, as well as other aspects of the drama during Muharram, have been controversial throughout the 1900s.⁴⁷ He indicates that certain members of the Shi‘i ‘ulamā’ (clerical establishment) have over the years questioned the way that muḥarram is observed. The issue revolves primarily around the use of flagellation as a legitimate means of identification with the martyr. The great fitnah (struggle), as the debate came to be known in the twenties, was aroused by a pamphlet authored by a Lebanese Shi‘i Muslim named Sayyid Muhsin (d. 1952), in which he declared flagellation, among other aspects of the processions, to be unlawful innovation (bida‘). Although Ende’s study is concerned with Shi‘i communities in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, the same issue has been raised on occasion in Iran.⁴⁸

Gustav Thaiss writes of the tense relationship between the ideal form of Islam propagated by the orthodox literary tradition and the concepts and practices of everyday life as follows: “In many instances they are often the same, but often there is a divergence between what the learned men of Islam believe and teach and what people believe and practice. Perhaps most outstanding here is the official attitude of disapproval of the majority of Shi‘a ‘ulema toward the self-mutilation and flagellation involved in the mourning processions during the month of Moharram, in contrast to the acceptance of such practices by a large number of believers in the bazaar as religiously praiseworthy behavior.”⁴⁹ Most recently, there has been a ban placed on flagellation in Iran as a result of the tension Thaiss describes. The practice, however, continues in South Asia to the present day, especially in the form of breast-beating (mātam). The tension between so-called high and low culture on the level of ideology and practice is a theme that runs through interpretations of Muharram wherever it is practiced. In Trinidad, where flagellation is absent, the tension rests not in the mutilation of the body but in other practices with cognates in South Asia. For my purposes in this book, I thus want to draw attention to another material feature of Iranian observances during Muharram, for it provides a useful point of comparison with some of the objects used in processions both in India and Trinidad.

Figure 1. An unadorned nakhl frame from Nain, located in central Iran, being constructed for muḥarram processions. Photograph courtesy of Peter J. Chelkowski, Sr.

Figure 2. A large nakhl from Mahriz in procession on the tenth. Photograph courtesy of Peter J. Chelkowski, Sr.

Perhaps the most outstanding structure to emerge out of this ceremony is the huge teardrop-shaped nakhl, which is constructed on a lattice wooden frame (see Figure 1).⁵⁰ Virtually every town and village in central Iran has one, and although there is a general uniformity in its teardrop shape and design, each is built in proportion to the specific community’s financial prosperity. Some of them are as small as a baby’s cradle, while others are incredibly large, such as the one in Yazd, which weighs, according to knowledgeable sources, three tons, requiring hundreds of men to carry it on their shoulders during the processions.⁵¹ At the height of approximately one meter, wooden beams set roughly a meter apart protrude around the bottom of the structure. Those who carry the nakhl use these beams to lift the object in the manner of weight lifters. There are additional beams along the length of the nakhl above these, which rest upon the shoulders of those who carry it. These huge structures are focal points for the processions. The nakhl in Mahriz, for example, is a colossal structure that accommodates 156 people, 39 on each side (see Figure 2).⁵²

The word nakhl means date palm in Arabic. According to those directly involved in the construction of Yazd’s ritual objects, the nakhl’s structure, with all of its decorations, symbolizes the ma‘fah of Imam Husayn. Ma‘fah in the local dialect refers to the coffin of a holy person. Since it is said that the bier of Husayn was covered with date palm leaves to protect his corpse from the blazing sun of the desert, the structure symbolizing it has come to be known as a nakhl. Others call this structure a naql, a term that means “carrying from one location to another.”⁵³ In Persian religious poetry, nakhl stands for “stature,” especially of the martyred imām. Edward Browne makes this point in his translation of Safavid-period poet Muhtasham’s (d. 1588) celebrated haft-band (poem of seven-verse strophes). In the fifth verse, we read: “Many tall palm-trees from the grove of the ‘Family of the Cloak’ [Holy Family] did the people of Kúfa fell in that plain with the axe of malice.” Then in verse eleven the term appears again: “They cast to the ground his [Husayn’s] tall palm-tree even as the thorn bush; A deluge arose from the dust of the earth to heaven.”⁵⁴

In eastern India, “stature” becomes translated into the “courage” of Husayn. There Husayn’s courage is embodied in an object taken out in procession known as a sipar (shield) in Urdu and Hindi (see Figures 3 and 11). The shape and design of the sipar suggest strong parallels with the nakhl.

During the days preceding ‘āshūrā’, the structure is covered from top to bottom with black cloth, which is the sign of mourning, and it is decorated with various objects made specifically for this purpose. Anyone can assist and participate in the ceremonial decoration of the nakhl, which is called nakhl bastan. Some do it because of a naz̤ar (vow) and some out of sheer love for Imam Husayn. During the ceremony, people utter words of praise and greeting to the Prophet and his family. I describe the ornamentation here because it serves as a strong marker of continuity with the material culture of the tradition as it passes from Iran to India and onward to the Caribbean. Perhaps most noticeable on the black cover of the nakhl are the large and small decorative mirrors on its flat surfaces. The mirrors, often donated by people who have taken vows to perform some reciprocal act of exchange, are a gift of faith. These people believe that if they donate mirrors for the nakhl, Husayn will intervene on their behalf to have their naz̤ar fulfilled. Others also donate mirrors, in addition to colored pieces of fabric or daggers with which to decorate the surface out of sheer love for the imām’s radiance. According to those involved in the ceremony, a popular folk belief is that the mirrors symbolize the light emanating from Husayn’s body; this is the reason why lanterns are placed inside the coffin that often accompanies the larger structure in procession. Also, young women promise to donate mirrors for the nakhl if they find a good husband. This would symbolize the light of their destiny. Occasionally, lanterns are also hung from the nakhl to illuminate the entire structure in a symbolic way, reminding spectators that the structure’s iconicity represents not only Husayn’s bier but also his body. Moreover, because the nakhl also symbolically represents Karbala on another level, it serves as a microcosmic, multivocalic symbol of the overall event’s master narrative, integrating as it does images of Husayn, his bier, and the plain upon which he was slain.

Daggers, along with swords, used to be hung on the covering of the nakhl to symbolize the weapons used by the enemy to assassinate Husayn. It is customary to attach a cypress tree made from a cross section of plywood to the front surface of the nakhl. Various designs made from cork and small pieces of arrow-shaped wood are placed on the wood’s surface. In Persian literature, cypress has always symbolized a tall, straight figure in the shape of the beloved. The cypress attached to the nakhl stands for Husayn’s erect body being riddled by enemy arrows like a porcupine on the tenth of Muharram. The pieces of cork symbolize the actual arrows that struck him.

At either end of the nakhl, extending from the top, is a shaddeh, a long pole surmounted by a circular object festooned with colorful fringes, tassels, and sashes. As an act of devotion, people donate garment-sized pieces of cloth to be tied to the circular portion of the shaddeh. These fabrics can be of any color or even be multicolored. On the shaddehs, the pieces of donated fabric are so numerous that they have to be tied to the circles in a very dense concentration. Recall that it is said that after the battle at Karbala, the members of Husayn’s family were robbed of their belongings. Ayoub corroborates this belief by citing the verses of an unnamed poet:

[T]he womenfolk of Muḥammad were among the enemies, pillaged and their goods divided amongst low and dissolute men.

They were pushed around like slave girls, mistreated and beaten with whips … as though they were captives or even more lowly.

Their head covers and veils were forcibly torn off their heads and faces.

Behold a man, his limbs tied in stalks with no one to set him free, and a noble woman taken captive and her earrings snatched away.⁵⁵

The donation of these fabrics and tying them to the shaddeh is a symbolic gesture in memory of Husayn’s surviving family members. In addition, flags adorn the structure on top. In Arabic, the word al-‘alam can mean a “distinguishing mark.”⁵⁶ It can also mean a flag or banner, and that is how it is used in Taft and Yazd to refer to a banner of distinction. ‘Alams often adorn the nakhl or are carried in procession with it to symbolize the numerous standards carried by Husayn’s party. On top of the nakhl, between the shaddehs, there is a horizontal wooden beam spanning the structure. Several vertical sticks three to four meters high are attached to the horizontal beam, so that people performing naz̤ars may attach pieces of cloth to them.

According to Fischer, the nakhl is supposed to be taken out at noon on the tenth. In his vivid description of the observance in Yazd, he notes that the movement of the object represents a threefold desecration committed by Yazid’s army under the command of ibn Sad and Shimr: “they shed the blood of the Imam, they shed his blood during the time for Friday noon prayer, they shed blood during the holy month of Muharram when fighting is supposed to be suspended.”⁵⁷ These desecrations are not to be forgotten by the pious, and they remind the faithful that there is much tyranny and oppression in the world. As the nakhl moves about, a special stew named in honor of the martyr is being prepared for later communal consumption. Eventually, all of the dastehs converge at a central mosque, while villagers gather in a nearby graveyard to march smaller nakhls to their own homes. At the conclusion of the evening events on the tenth, participants settle down to a communal meal, after a period of partial fasting. The meal provides closure to the mourning period.

Weeping and Laughing

Up until this point, I have been painting a rather pious and tragic picture of the observances during Muharram. There is, however, another dimension that needs to be acknowledged. Much of the literature on the event has focused precisely on the tragic, the melancholy, and the somber, but in this focus we run the risk of essentialism. Iranians—and for that matter, all Shi‘ah—are not a morose lot, perpetually living in a darkened world within which an ethos of constant sorrow prevails. In fact, there is a festive and celebratory air engulfing the phenomenon of Muharram performances that demands our attention. Although the idea is controversial and is the subject of constant debate, we must recognize that there is room for joy and merriment within the Karbala paradigm. Browne, for example, mentions a genre of satirical poetry to be recited during the most serious occasion for weeping, the majlis assemblies created for this very purpose. He has translated a poem called “The Book of the Table, Censuring Hypocrisy,” which is a work “in which the ostentation of the host and the greed of the guests are satirized with some pungency.”⁵⁸ A few couplets from the poem will suffice for my purposes here:

Of those who make mourning for Ḥusayn and sit in assemblies in Frenzied excitement.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A host of gluttonous men, all beside themselves and intoxicated with the cup of greed,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

To sit in such an assembly is not meet, for without sugar and tea It has no charm.

God is not pleased with that servant in whose entertainment is neither sherbet nor sugar.⁵⁹

The image is one of a poet sitting in an assembly sarcastically commenting on the assembly itself. It is as if the poet is mocking the excesses of the aristocracy through biting social commentary, perhaps alluding to the feasting that occurred in Yazid’s palace when Husayn’s head was brought to him on a stick. The poetic license of the rauz̤eh khvān allows him to address serious and self-reflexive issues in a comic way. Thus humor too has its function during the annual period of mourning.

To use another example, Beeman has surveyed the intertwined relationship between ta‘zi̅yeh and rū-ḥauzi̅, a form of traditional Iranian commedia dell’Arte that draws on indigenous folklore and even classical literature. Beeman sees the two, which at first seem almost diametrically opposed, as complementary because “they cannot be treated separately within the context of Iranian society.”⁶⁰ He suggests that both theater forms project the same presentation of Iranian morals and ideologies but do so from opposite ends of the performative spectrum: “Laughter and tears, though seemingly opposite emotional expressions, may indicate alternate, but equivalent ways of dealing with similar emotional and social situations.”⁶¹ The complementary emotions embodied in the acts of laughing and crying resonate with the English expression “I laughed so hard I almost cried,” which reminds us that laughing and crying can produce similar physiological effects and emotional states.

Another example comes from the sacred drama itself. Mehdi Abedi reminisces about his childhood in an Iranian village, where he was recruited at a very young age to play the “barely nubile bride” of Qasim for the wedding scene in a local ta‘zi̅yeh production. When he was in the second grade, he finally refused to play the role of the bride. He recounts the following: “What triggered the refusal I no longer exactly remember, but I remember bursting into angry tears at either being pinched, winked at, or obscenely teased as if I were a real girl.”⁶² He goes on to say that “Such teasing and humor had a regular place: the man who played Zeinab (sister of Husain, who led the women and children after the massacre …) always had a big mustache, and when someone would make a rude comment to him, he would show his mustache from under his chador. Typically, he had an obscene tongue as well, and would respond to propositioning with such retorts as, ‘Yes, I’ll sleep with you; bring your mother too.’”⁶³ Abedi remarks that there was even “ribald mockery” of the ta‘zi̅yeh itself: “Shemr and Zeinab would replay their repartee from the passion play in obscene variations, e.g., Shemr: … If you are Zeinab, then what’s that penis? Zeinab: … God knows it is an extra piece of meat.”⁶⁴ He finally notes that weeping was not always real but was sometimes pretend, but it nevertheless brought merit. Such reversals of the somber mood associated with the sacred month must also be accounted for in any discussion of Muharram rituals.⁶⁵

Lastly, let me simply point out the testimony of Iranian friends who have mentioned to me repeatedly that as young men and women they always looked forward excitedly to the advent of Muharram. They fondly remember it as a time of festivity, food, family reunions, and occasions for social intercourse. One male friend of mine, who had been a teenager in prerevolution Iran, said many of the young men wanted to join dastehs not necessarily out of compassion for Husayn but because they wanted to attract the admiring gazes of young women and prospective marriage partners. Moreover, referring to the flagellation processions in Nabatiyya, located in southern Lebanon, Richard Norton and Ali Safa add that after the processions were over, “young men casually walked the street showing off their blood-spattered clothes as testimony to their fidelity to Shiism. Teenage girls enjoyed themselves, sometimes ogling their male contemporaries, sometimes giggling.”⁶⁶ The flagellation therefore provided an opportunity for playful competition through a macho display of bloodletting. Muharram, in other words, offers the possibility of merging the sacred and the profane; it is profane social activity within a sacred frame of temporal reference.

The profane dimension is certainly found among the South Asian Shi‘ah as well, and even more so among their Sunni brethren. In his brilliantly conceived 1966 Hindi novel titled Ādhā Gā̃v (Half a Village), which unfolds in ten chapters corresponding to the days leading up to ‘āshūrā’, Rahi Masoom Reza paints a picture of Muharram in a rural area of northern India as a time of excitement and celebration. For Reza, an avowed Marxist and secular Shi‘ah, Muharram is filled with competition and sporting fun between neighborhoods. Concerning competitive breast-beating, for example, he recalls how “this matam used to be so powerful that the round and lotus-shaped candleshades and the crystal pieces of the chandeliers would tremble to its beat. And the silver-thread flowers embroidered on the hangings upon the platform where the taziahs stood would melt into teardrops.”⁶⁷ In his world the rituals are accompanied by swordplay as well as competitive attempts to faint during mourning assemblies to receive special attention and achieve elevated social status. Reza’s muḥarram is an occasion for loud and colorful processions that attract merchants and vendors who set up stalls along the procession routes, giving the whole atmosphere a carnival-like feel.

The merger of the sacred and the secular, the happy and the sad, is a contested issue to which I should like to return in the following chapters. As we will see, the issue of praying or playing is a recurrent one. Although I do not want to ignore the pious and somber dimensions of Muharram, I also do not want to privilege them. My reason for doing so should become apparent as we proceed. I speculated earlier that as we move farther from the Shi‘i core, the Muharram observances become increasingly localized, drawing on the indigenous customs and traditions of each geographic location where they take root to create something new. At the same time, I want to argue that the tradition remains to a large extent faithful to the underlying paradigmatic nature of the Shi‘i master narrative.

In this chapter, we have seen that the material and visual dimensions of the public rituals combine with their verbal and dramatic dimensions to create a distinct ritualistic complex. Taken together, these multi-sensory events—stationary and processional, private and public, sacred and secular—comprise the observances for Husayn in Iran, telling a story that is relived each year by the faithful. Step by tedious step, the final ten days of Husayn’s life are incorporated into each person’s being through acts of bodily neglect and emotive upheaval. As a performance configuration, these events annually recreate a mood that keeps the historical master narrative of Husayn’s passion alive in the hearts and minds of those who believe in the martyr’s redemptive powers. So powerful is this narrative that it diffused along with the spread of Shi‘i Islam to the Indian subcontinent, a topic to which I will turn in the next chapter.