Sayyida Zaynab in the State of Exception: Shiʿi Sainthood as “Qualified Life” in Contemporary Syria

Szanto, Edith

doi:10.1017/s0020743812000050

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…For an art historical study of the Ruqayya Mosque's expansions, see Tabaa (2007). On the shrine town Sitt Zainab, see Mervin (1996) and Szanto (2014).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Zainab's traffic: spatial lives of an Islamic ritual across Southwest Asia

Yıldız

2023

Royal Anthropological Inst

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Since the 1979 Revolution, Iranian pilgrims have engaged in saint visitation (ziyarat) to sites in Syria. By travelling via Turkey on buses, and venerating Sayyida Zainab at their destination, these pilgrims disrupt conventional conceptions of not only Islamic ritual, but also Iranian mobility under sanctions. Their experiences venerating Sayyida Zainab – emerging out of a self‐described ‘poverty of mobility’ – demonstrate the utility of a more expansive conceptualization of ritual in anthropology. Instead of taking ritual for a scripturally canonized ‘manual for’ pious self‐cultivation, here I approach ziyarat as a traffic of pilgrims, goods, and ideas across Iran, Turkey, and Syria. This approach produces a dynamic and spatial conception of ziyarat as a ritual of mobility. Ethnographic attention to these pilgrims’ politically conditioned and regionally networked spatial practices reveals that their movements are irreducible to ethical projects of cultivating piety alone. What is at stake in Iranian pilgrims’ movements is nothing short of the extra‐religious conditions of religion – those of the economy and the polity. These stakes illuminate how religious practices interarticulate with political and social institutions – including bazaars, borders, and shrines – that remain understudied in recent anthropological scholarship on Islamic piety.

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“…For an art historical study of the Ruqayya Mosque's expansions, see Tabaa (2007). On the shrine town Sitt Zainab, see Mervin (1996) and Szanto (2014).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…88On the feminist analytical potentials of this transnationally networked practice of visitation and emulation, see Deeb (2009 a ) and Szanto (2012). On saint visitation as a literal and figurative sanctuary from patriarchy and provider of physical mobility for women, see Mernissi (1977).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Zainab's traffic: spatial lives of an Islamic ritual across Southwest Asia

Yıldız

2023

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…Although there is a tendency to view Syrian lives through the lens of the suff ering subject, the evocation to God may be understood as an expression of agency (Szanto 2012). Using the unmediated authority of the ultimate judge, this evocation forms a boundary marker between those who are still there and those who are not.…”

Section: "If God Wishes": Sectarianism Socio-economic Hardship and Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Still There

Kastrinou,

Said,

Jarbouh

et al. 2023

Conflict and Society

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What gets displaced in war, even when people don't move? How does conflict transform and reverberate among those still there? And, what can sectarianism tell us about state power in war and in occupation? To answer, we theorize and problematize the relationship of sectarianism to the state, and explore the effects of war and occupation in everyday practice and in socio-economic and political institutions. The cases come from two Syrian Druze regions, from the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Height and from Jaramana, Damascus. In the first case, the Israeli occupation shifted the national border, and, in the second case, the war in Syria created new internal borders and checkpoints. Tracing the displacement of conflict through sectarianism allows us to think through state borders, and explore everyday life in relation to economic pressures and geopolitics. It is within these absences and presences of the state that the transformations of conflict and belonging appear.

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“…An assumption that was based on the form of repor that developed between Israel's state authorities and its own Druze citizens. For a discussion on the fate of the Syrian population from the Golan who fled to Syria see Abu Fakhr, 2007;Szanto, 2012. For a discussion on the convoluted relationships between Druze and the Israeli state see Firro, 1998.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnic cleansing and the formation of settler colonial geographies

Gordon

Ram

2016

Political Geography

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The Daily Show was well-known for its left leaning political satire. Although the program focused on the United States, from time to time Stewart broadened the coverage and examined political events in other countries. Over the years, the policies adopted by the Israeli government had been among his satirical targets. A section dealing with Israel's 2014 military campaign in Gaza caught our eyes, since in the map suspended behind Stewart Israel's borders were not drawn according to the internationally recognized 1949 armistice agreements (Figure 1). The map is accurate in the sense that Israel's borders do not encompass the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, but its depiction of the Golan Heights as an integral part of Israel is flawed. The fact that Stewart's team chose this map is, however, hardly coincidental, since many existing maps have erased the line separating the Golan from Israel. Figure 1 about here Reflecting on the difference between the West Bank and the Golan Heights, two areas that Israel occupied in the June 1967 War, Meir Shalev, one of Israel's most popular authors, remarked that 'The holy sites of the West Bank represent today the pinnacles of lunacy, evilness and stupidity… The Golan, on the other hand, is the only normal territory we have left. It has no holy tombs, sites of religious frenzy or a large downtrodden and rebellious population' (Shalev 1994, emphasis added). Normal for

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Sayyida Zaynab in the State of Exception: Shiʿi Sainthood as “Qualified Life” in Contemporary Syria

Cited by 11 publications

References 16 publications

Zainab's traffic: spatial lives of an Islamic ritual across Southwest Asia

Zainab's traffic: spatial lives of an Islamic ritual across Southwest Asia

Still There

Ethnic cleansing and the formation of settler colonial geographies

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