Description

Book Synopsis

This book examines contested Muharram practices, as well as the institutions and authorities that promoted or condemned them until 2011, when most Shi?is fled Syria.

For 40 years, the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab was a place of miracles, where violence engendered healing. To experience miraculous healing, Shi?is attended mourning gatherings, studied at seminaries, self-flagellated, and frequented spiritual healers. Supported by the political establishment, Shi?i institutions arose to serve Iraqi refugees and Iranian pilgrims. Seminaries promoted various practices, some highly controversial. Wounded, traumatized, impoverished, and oppressed, asylum seekers from Iraq who performed flagellations sought salvation - a worldly restoration requiring saintly beneficence. In Syria, where Shi?is were often asylum seekers from Iraq, daily concerns centred on the here and now, on survival, and on the bitterness they felt. They prayed for justice and retribution, as much as for physical and psychological healing.

Twelver Shii Selfflagellation Rites in

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    A Hardback by Dr Edith Szanto

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      Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
      Publication Date: 11/7/2025
      ISBN13: 9781399548281, 978-1399548281
      ISBN10: 139954828X
      Also in:
      Islam

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      This book examines contested Muharram practices, as well as the institutions and authorities that promoted or condemned them until 2011, when most Shi?is fled Syria.

      For 40 years, the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab was a place of miracles, where violence engendered healing. To experience miraculous healing, Shi?is attended mourning gatherings, studied at seminaries, self-flagellated, and frequented spiritual healers. Supported by the political establishment, Shi?i institutions arose to serve Iraqi refugees and Iranian pilgrims. Seminaries promoted various practices, some highly controversial. Wounded, traumatized, impoverished, and oppressed, asylum seekers from Iraq who performed flagellations sought salvation - a worldly restoration requiring saintly beneficence. In Syria, where Shi?is were often asylum seekers from Iraq, daily concerns centred on the here and now, on survival, and on the bitterness they felt. They prayed for justice and retribution, as much as for physical and psychological healing.

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