Acts of self-mortification are accompanied with musical instruments. Cymbals (sanj) and large kettle and cylinder drums maintain the steady rhythm for striking blows. The leader of each subgroup, chanting dirges, follows the same rhythm. The entire dasteh will stop in front of a religious edifice or the tomb of a local saint, in front of the homes of prominent community members to receive donations, or in an open space. At such sites, the participants in one group beat themselves rhythmically while others join in the chanting of simple verses, such as the following:
It is the eve of Ashura.
Karbala is in commotion.
How sandy is Karbala.
It is the final evening.39
The tempo quickens until the excitement reaches an uncontrollable pitch. A sideshow may be performed, followed by more marching. The cries of the participants, who curse the villains while proclaiming sympathy for Husayn, are mingled with mournful songs. Canetti describes the communal nature of these processions as “an orchestra of grief … The pain they inflict on themselves is the pain of Husain, which, by being exhibited, becomes the pain of the whole community. The beating of their chests, which is taken up by the spectators, gives rise to a rhythmic crowd sustained by the emotion of lament. Husain has been torn away from all of them, and belongs to all of them together.”40
The Shi‘i dasteh is, by and large, the most common processional ritual performance, and it is a tradition that continues in many parts of South Asia today. Although it is one of the oldest forms of commemoration, more extensive accounts of the dastehs begin appearing during the Safavid period. Resident foreigners in Safavid Iran left very rich but often contradictory accounts of what they saw.41 One fairly typical account comes from Thomas Herbert, who wrote in 1698 C.E.: “Nine days they wander up and down, all the while shaving neither head nor beard nor seeming joyful, but incessantly beating their breasts; some tear their garments, and crying out Hussan, Hussan in a melancholy note, so long, so fiercely, that many can neither howl longer, nor for a month’s space recover their voices.… The tenth day they find an imaginary Hussan, whom they echo forth in sentorian clamours, till they bring him to his grave; where they let him sleep quietly till the next year’s zeal fetch him out and force him again to accompany their devotion.”42
Although these accounts are fairly repetitive and stereotypical and focus on the sensational, they are a virtual year-by-year record of the development of the pageantry; they chronicle the steady increase in the number of dasteh participants costumed to represent various Karbala episodes. For example, floats of living tableaux on wheels eventually came to follow riders on camels and horses. Various attributes that symbolized the battle of Karbala were featured individually. These included standards, banners, martial clothing and instruments, and a variety of ancient and modern weapons.43 Some of the weaponry (for example, firearms) may seem out of place to European observers, but the Shi‘ah attempt to bridge the historical gap between Karbala and the present.
Fischer describes nine floats paraded in Yazd during the 1970s that accompanied the dastehs in which many were performing self-mortification. The floats, which were located at both ends of the procession, included decorated camels and horses carrying Yazid, his men, and the blood-soaked corpse of Husayn; a green-clad Abbas attempting to get water; a large pan of water signifying thirst; and a man dressed as a lion mourning for the martyr. His earlier data from the 1960s adds the bridal chamber of Qasim and Fatimah, the cradle of Ali Asghar and his nurse singing wistfully, and a red-clad Harmala (the archer who killed the infant) shooting arrows into the grieving audience’s midst.44 Depicting such key episodes becomes the core of the exhibitionary complex and provides the central motifs for observances in India, where they take on new forms, while preserving the central ingredients of the master narrative.
It is clear that such massive displays were, and continue to be, an emotional and colorful spectacle for all concerned. Indeed, as the dastehs pass by lines of spectators on either side, the spectators may be moved by emotion to join in the process. As the ambulatory rituals continued to evolve, numerous props were added to increase the spectacle’s grandeur. Decorative items such as textiles, mirrors, lamps, and rugs donated by local participants were thus added to the dasteh out of devotion. The decorative items contributed by the devout once again reaffirm the communal nature of the event, reminding us that even though the event is primarily religious, it also functions as a social occasion for fostering a common group identity. Today some of the donated items are attached to biers, coffins, and standards. A lamp is often placed inside the replica of Husayn’s coffin (tābūt) to symbolize the light emanating from his corpse.45
The dastehs, organized by guilds or special committees representing various districts of a town, follow a prescribed order of precedence, each carrying ‘alams (standards) inscribed with the name of the sponsoring organization. Sometimes a mobile passion play is performed as part of a mourning dasteh. In the past, all these elements added glamour and color to complement the crimson of the flagellants’ flowing blood. In the present, all the elements described above are embellished with objects of modernity, such as villains wearing sunglasses. Although virtually everyone participates in the events on the level of popular practice, such forms of piety have not always gone without challenge and criticism from certain sectors of learned Shi‘i society. William Beeman, for example, indicates that the performances were never popular with the clerical establishment, and we have already seen that the Shah had them officially banned, even though they were tolerated to a certain extent.46
Werner Ende has pointed out that flagellation rituals, as well as other aspects of the drama during Muharram, have been controversial throughout the 1900s.47 He indicates that certain members of the Shi‘i ‘ulamā’ (clerical establishment) have over the years questioned the way that muḥarram is observed. The issue revolves primarily around the use of flagellation as a legitimate means of identification with the martyr. The great fitnah (struggle), as the debate came to be known in the twenties, was aroused by a pamphlet authored by a Lebanese Shi‘i Muslim named Sayyid Muhsin (d. 1952), in which he declared flagellation, among other aspects of the processions, to be unlawful innovation (bida‘). Although Ende’s study is concerned with Shi‘i communities in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, the same issue has been raised on occasion in Iran.48
Gustav Thaiss writes of the tense relationship between the ideal form of Islam propagated by the orthodox literary tradition and the concepts and practices of everyday life as follows: “In many instances they are often the same, but often there is a divergence between what the learned men of Islam believe and teach and what people believe and practice. Perhaps most outstanding here is the official attitude of disapproval of the majority of Shi‘a ‘ulema toward the self-mutilation and flagellation involved in the mourning processions during the month of Moharram, in contrast to the acceptance of such practices by a large number of believers in the bazaar as religiously praiseworthy behavior.”49 Most recently, there has been a ban placed on flagellation in Iran as a result of the tension Thaiss describes. The practice, however, continues in South Asia to the present day, especially in the form of breast-beating (mātam). The tension between so-called high and low culture on the level of ideology and practice is a theme that runs through interpretations of Muharram wherever it is practiced. In Trinidad, where flagellation is absent, the tension rests not in the mutilation of the body but in other practices with cognates in South Asia. For my purposes in this book, I thus want to draw attention to another material feature of Iranian observances during Muharram, for it provides a useful point of comparison with some of the objects used in processions both in India and Trinidad.