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 theatrical terminology is not entirely appropriate for the description of this phenomenon. Ta‘zi̅yeh denotes an “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