Senses of Mourning

A multisensory approach to the study of Shii Iran that examines how devotional Moharram performances changed over time

The mourning traditions of Moharram comprise a body of Shii Muslim devotional performances commemorating the martyrdom of Hosayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and the Third Imam of the Shii, in 680 CE. These traditional rites are performed during a period of communal mourning when Shiis remember Hosayns sacrifice and affirm their allegiance to him and to the Prophets family. Through remembering the martyrs of Karbala, Shii Muslims reflect on their own afflictions and aspirations, and how these bear consequences for everyday ethical and devotional conduct.

Babak Rahimi analyzes Moharram in Iran through the five senses--sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste--with an emphasis on the relationship between religious practices as embodied experiences and how these performances--and practitioners experiences of them--have changed over time. Rahimi begins his investigation in the nineteenth-century Qajar period, when Moharram became a pervasive urban communal practice across most of Iran. He covers the Qajar-era dramatic performances of taziyeh, their transformation into cultural spectacles during the Pahlavi era, the public processions in the form of urban street protests in 1978, the tent-burning rituals in the southern city of Bushehr in 2006, and, lastly, the votive performances during Moharram in the digital sphere during the pandemic in 2020.

Through the study of mourning in terms of the senses in a specific historical and social context, Senses of Mourning not only shows the changing embodied dimensions of religious practices that have played an integral role in the complex lifeworld of Shii Iranians but also details the transformation of Moharram within the broader history of Shii Iran in an increasingly interconnected global era. The books multisensory approach sheds new light on the performativity of embodied practices, in which spiritualities, materialities, and the politics of the sacred are articulated through lived performances over time.