Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across BordersWhat is the value—religious, political, economic, or altogether social—of getting on a bus in Tehran to embark on an eight-hundred-mile journey across two international borders to the Sayyida Zainab shrine outside Damascus? Under what material conditions can such values be established, reassessed, or transgressed, and by whom? Zainab’s Traffic provides answers to these questions alongside the socially embedded—and spatially generative—encounters of ritual, mobility, desire, genealogy, and patronage along the route. Whether it is through the study of the spatial politics of saint veneration in Islam, analysis of cross-border gold trade and sanctions, or examination of pilgrims women’s desire for Syrian lingerie accompanying their pleas with the saint in marital matters, the book develops the idea of visitation as a ritual of mobility across geography, history, and category. Iranian visitors’ experiences on the road to Sayyida Zainab—emerging out of a self-described “poverty of mobility”—demonstrate the utility of a more capacious anthropological understanding of ritual. Rather than thinking of ritual as a scripturally canonized manual for pious self-cultivation, Zainab’s Traffic approaches ziyarat as a traffic of pilgrims, goods, and ideas across Iran, Turkey, and Syria. |
Contents
Introduction I | 1 |
across Southwest Asia | 26 |
Parastoos Pathways and Observant Participation | 40 |
Banus Pathways and Familial DeAttachments | 76 |
of Territory | 110 |
Karam and Sahands Pathways and a Khayyam | 141 |
Epilogue | 151 |
References | 167 |
Other editions - View all
Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others across Borders Emrah Yildiz Limited preview - 2024 |
Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders Emrah Yildiz Limited preview - 2024 |
Common terms and phrases
actors Ahl al-Bayt Aleppo Ali Shari'ati Anatolia Antep Anthropology Arab Arrested Mobilities Banu Beirut Bordering Ziyarat Çelebizade cigarettes contraband contraband commerce contraband merchants CRAFTING PATRONAGE cross-border Cultural Damascus doctor donations economic Fariba Fatima formal French Mandate Fugitive Markets Gaziantep genealogy hajj hajj-i fuqara Hani Murtada Hazrat-i Zainab historical Hıdır Imam Iran Iranian Bazaar Iranian pilgrims Iraq Iraqi Islamic Istanbul journey kaçak Karam Karbala Khanum Kurdish Metin Middle East Mobilities and Fugitive Muhsin Murtada Murtada family Muslim Narmin numbers Osman and Yaşar Ottoman Parastoo paths of Zainab Persian pilgrimage route police political practices production Prophet refugees regime region religion religious Sahand saint visitation sanctions Şanlıurfa Sayyida Zainab shrine sectarian seminaries Shi'i Shi´i social sovereignty space spatial Studies Sunni Syria Syrian lingerie Syrian pounds Syrian Revolution Tabriz Tehran territory tion transformation transnational Turkey Turkey’s Turkish University Press veneration waqf women Yıldız ZAINAB'S TRAFFIC ziyarat ابن بن السيد