knowledge, and my knowledge is his, for we know of the recurrence of events before they occur.”63 It is important to my immediate concerns here that tradition states that Husayn learned after his death of his elevated yet humble status of being a mediator between man and God on qi̅yāmat, the Day of Judgment.
The social, theological, and psychological ramifications of Husayn’s role as intercessor are far-reaching. The Mu‘tāzili̅ scholar ibn Umar Zamakshari utilized the idea of tashabbuh (imitation)64 to explain that “according to religious traditions anyone who weeps for Ḥusayn is certainly destined to join him in eternity.”65 This idea is also expressed in certain key passages from ta‘zi̅yeh scripts such as the following:
[The Prophet]: Sorrow not, dear grandchild; thou shalt be a mediator, too, in that day. At present thou art thirsty, but tomorrow thou shalt be the distributor of the water of Al Kauser [in Paradise].
[Gabriel, bringing the key of Paradise and delivering it to the Prophet]: He who has seen most trials, endured most afflictions, and been most patient in his sufferings, the same shall win the privilege of intercession. He shall raise the standard of intercession on the Day of Judgement who hath voluntarily put his head under the sword of trial, ready to have it cloven in two like the point of a pen. Take thou this key of intercession from me, and give it to him who has undergone the greatest trials.
[Gabriel, speaking for Allah]: The privilege of making intercession for sinners is exclusively his. Husain is, by My peculiar grace, the mediator for all.
[The Prophet, handing over the key]: Go thou and deliver from the flames every one who has in his life-time shed but a single tear for thee, every one who has in any way helped thee, every one who has performed a pilgrimage to thy shrine, or mourned for thee, and everyone who has written tragic verse for thee. Bear each and all with thee to Paradise.66
These illuminating passages, combined with Zamakshari’s exegesis, clearly suggest that salvation is guaranteed for all mourners. They also reinforce the importance of making physical pilgrimages to Husayn’s actual tomb at Karbala.67 Elizabeth Fernea, for example, writing about her observation of other participants on her pilgrimage to the sacred site, notes: “At first I wondered why on earth they had brought this sick child to Karbala in such heat, but the obvious answer came. Dying on pilgrimage assures the soul immediate entrance into heaven.”68 Interpreting the observance from this indigenous point of view concretizes the notion that participating in annual renewal on the human level is not only desirable but also absolutely necessary.
Participation in the annual muḥarram renewal is humankind’s chief role and responsibility in this lifetime. Through participation in the performance of passion, systems of abstract theological meaning are shaped into emotional, experiential, and subjective local forms of knowledge comprehensible to the individual and his community. Much of the symbolic and emotive potency that has motivated the continuation of this annual renewal is grounded in the narrativization of hagiographic history. To conclude this chapter, a few theoretical words on narrative and history as a prolegomenon to my subsequent discussion are necessary.
The Narrativization of History
Hayden White has reminded us of a necessary theoretical and methodological concern for the narrative quality of history.69 History is, after all, a story that unfolds over time and is refashioned by scholars, raconteurs, and performers of ritual in the present. Insofar as history tells us a narrative about particular events believed to be empirically true, we must think of history as storytelling. History, from this point of view, is inscribed in narrative, whether oral or written. Indeed, aspects of a community’s history are often conveyed and preserved through the telling of stories about important events that have transpired in the group’s collective past: such storytelling provides a shared basis for remembering and understanding the significance of that past. It is also quite common for historic events to be communicated aurally through folkloric media such as songs or tales. This is the case with the events that transpired at Karbala, for conveying the historical tragedy in everyday discourse has proven insufficient in and of itself to induce the somber mood desired during the first ten days of Muharram each year. Other, more poetic, genres of conveying history, coupled with processional rituals and dramatic performances, have emerged in the Shi‘i world to create an integrated semiotic system of oral/aural, visual, and visceral channels through which to preserve, remember, and experience the tragic story of Husayn.
While the inscription and embodiment of history in narrative form and visual representation offer keys to understanding mechanisms of transmission, it is also important to remember that narratives themselves have histories. These metahistories may provide interesting clues for understanding interrelationships between genres and motifs over time. My intention above has been to highlight chronologically the series of historical events that function as a master narrative for the global Shi‘i community. In Iran, where muḥarram observances first developed into royally sanctioned ritual events during the sixteenth century, a unique Persian genre called maqtal developed as a literary medium for expressing emotionally the passion of Husayn and other Shi‘i martyrs.70 After recounting the early development of Iranian mourning traditions, I will return in the next chapter to the important role of vernacular narrative and drama in transmitting popular historical knowledge.
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
