“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
