The Discursive Manifestation of Past and Present Through the Spatial Organization of the Ashura Procession

Abstract

This article investigates the spatial organization of the Shi’i-Muslim procession and its changes under the Iranian modernization in the city of Dezfoul. The study is the result of interdisciplinary research integrating spatial analyses and qualitative fieldwork to explore the procession as a social and spatial phenomenon. The analyses show the ritual has not been unilaterally affected by transformations of urban shape and also by social transformations. This article argues that the ritual organization will be stable as long as social organization is not fundamentally changed, even when the city shape/morphology undergoes major change. The analyses show that the processions were locally organized in each part of the city because of the traditional Heidari-Nemati division. The processions were reorganized in the 1950s to ritualize social integration in Dezfoul, while at the same time the idea of traditional social division was kept alive through the reorganized processions. The new procession routes through the transformed city also preserve the idea of the traditional city structure. The article concludes by proposing that the processions, as a lived environment, constitute a space in which past and present coexist in a discursive relationship.

Remembering Karbala in the diaspora: religious rituals among Iraqi Shii women in Ireland

“…As examples seeAghaie 2005;Ayoub 1978;Deeb 2005;Hussain 2005;Nakash 1993Nakash , 2003Nejad 2013;Sharif 2005;Tabar 2002. For references in Arabic seeAl-Haidari 1999;Haddad 2011. 6 Y. Shanneik Downloaded by [Erciyes University] at 09:36 21 December 2014…”

Introduction. Islamicate Lucknow Today: Historical Legacy and Urban Aspirations

“…The Shi'a-Sunni map is inclusive of more than one way of mapping the sectarian landscape of Lucknow. An important part of Shi'a ritual life is the commemoration of the Karbala tragedy, which, in spatial terms, is observed in highly significant ways (Nejad 2013). Lucknow's Shi'a take great pride in extending their Azadari activities for two months and eight days; they undertake processions, or juloos, across the city (in particular between the first of Muharram and Ashura).…”

Spatial culture, processional culture and the materialities of social memory in nineteenth-century Sheffield

“…how the city 'means' or 'comes-to-meaning' as a social entity). A number of recent historical studies have provided useful accounts of the material context of urban processions (for example Georgiou 2016;Vari 2013;Vandeweghe 2011;Favro and Johanson 2010;Fassler 2007) but these still leave the crucial question of the material agency of the city, with regard to the production of its social, political and cultural symbols, rather under-conceptualized (though see Nejad 2013).…”