Aurality and orality lie at the heart of Islam. The Quran, whose literal meaning is âthe recitation,â was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad not through vision, inspiration, or inscription but through sound (Frishkopf 2009; Nelson 2001). In text and print, Islamic ritual language appears to be standardized and widespread, yet sounded ritual practices and forms of religious expressive culture tend to vary more widely across time and space, evoking the diversity at the core of identity and faith. The soundscape that forms the backdrop to Muslim mundane and religious experience is produced not only by the conventional and all-pervasive presence of Quranic recitation but through a profusion of other devotional expressive traditions (Qureshi 1986; Schulz 2008). These devotional sounds not only have a theological or spiritual function but carry the capacity to promote affective unities and alliances, engendering collectivities â sonically imagined communities and articulating socio-spatial as well as temporal boundaries in and beyond the ritual sphere.
Despite the growing number of scholars from various disciplines who are engaging seriously with sounded forms of Islamic expression (Frishkopf and Spinetti 2018; Eisenlohr 2018; Harris 2015; Hirschkind 2006), the acoustic worlds of ShiÊ¿i Muslims have received far less attention.1 Devotion to the Family of the Prophet â the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, and the Twelve Imams, collectively known as Ahl al-Bayt â is central to ShiÊ¿ism. Within ShiÊ¿i communities, the central and shared sounds of the recitation of the Quran exist amongst a range of other vocalized supplications, laments, and chants of joy and celebration, which generally focus on the remembrance of the figures of Ahl al-Bayt. Within Twelver ShiÊ¿ism there is a surprising consistency in content and form of these genres worldwide. Yet, a huge diversity in style correlates with the wide geographic distributions of these communities.
The annual rituals of mourning and celebration which mark a distinct ShiÊ¿i ritual calendar across the globe are occasions in which individuals come together in a shared physical space to co-create sonic, material, and sensory atmospheres. The experience of these bodies, often squeezed into small rooms, crammed on the floor, excited by the aromas of delicious food and sweets, conversation, and the intensity of amplified live recitation is, in theory, far removed from the apparently individual experience of listening to audio recordings of lamentation or praise hymns on cassettes, compact discs, or online. As apparently individualized forms of listening, these media may appear to represent a radical departure from âtraditionalâ modes of listening and reciting and face-to-face sociality at ritual gatherings. Yet, upon closer observation they clearly build on, and supplement, existing practices in multiple ways. The use of recording technology and new media has afforded alternative and supplementary forms of devotion and sociability, making them more popular and ubiquitous.
In this chapter, I demonstrate how audio recordings of specialized reciters, known as meddah in Turkish (from the Arabic maddÄḥ),2 have extended and transformed forms of listening and recitation hitherto restricted to the face-to-face ritual gatherings called majlis. Based on ethnographic research carried out with Azeri-Turkish Twelver ShiÊ¿i communities in Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan, I argue that practices of listening and sharing audio and videos of devotional recitation aim towards the cultivation of love and attachment to Ahl al-Bayt.3 Furthermore, this chapter contributes to recent understandings of transnational ShiÊ¿ism (Leichtman 2015; Mervin 2011; Scharbrodt 2019; Shaery-Eisenlohr 2008; Shanneik, Heinhold and Ali 2017; Ridgeon 2012) by demonstrating how the circulation of audio and video recordings have contributed significantly to the development of transnational networks and ties across a wider Azeri-Turkish speaking geography.
By analyzing audio recordings, their production, and the ways they are listened to and incorporated into everyday life, I build upon wider scholarship on the adoption and adaption of new media technologies and their relation to existing modes of religious mediation. Amongst Shiʿi Muslims, new media technologies have generated debate and discussion and attracted criticism as they have been included into devotional contexts. While some of my interlocutors see these recordings as a welcome extension to pre-existing everyday practices of devotion to Ahl al-Bayt, others are indignant at the adjudged blurring of the boundaries between devotion and entertainment.
Rather than seeing these technologies as individualizing devotion, I explore the ways by which flows and circulation of media â first through cassettes and now online and through mobile technologies â offer new forms of sociability. This circulation gives an indication of the possibilities afforded by media technologies and the consciousness of connections that they may provide. The physical and digital circulation of audio recordings does not simply reflect pre-existing communities but, in itself, creates a spacio-temporal domain through which communities are produced. As will be seen in this chapter, media technologies allow for communities to extend far beyond their immediate physical, social, and political surroundings.
1 Mediation and Mediatization
Religion and media have, on occasion, been portrayed as two irreconcilable and distinct spheres. Religion was represented as under threat from modern technological development and mass media in the proclaimed move towards secularization (De Vries and Weber 2001). With the subsequent critique of secularization theory, scholars dismissed such an idea and focused instead on depicting the diverse ways in which religion, mass media, and technology have been entangled in the past and present. Far from being irreconcilable, the adoption of new media has been shown to be a key feature of global âre-enchantmentâ and the increasingly public character of religion (Meyer and Moors 2005). A number of studies have long highlighted the importance of media in the Muslim world. According to the work of scholars, such as Michael Gilsenan (1973) on Egypt and Sheriff Mardin (1989) on Turkey, Islamic religious movements and revivals have not developed in reaction to modernity and mass-mediation but have themselves employed mass media in their expansion, development, and success. In countries like Turkey, the spread of media technologies and state liberalization have provided a platform for religious voices to destabilize the association of modernity and modern technologies.
The growing interest in the social uses of media in religious life has reaffirmed the perceived links between technologies and secularization. Scholars have investigated the changes stemming from the adoption of new technologies and analyzed the implication of media on both the content of religion as well as on the social relations through which community is organized. Media technologies are generally considered to have enabled new forms of spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic participation, and, thus, of community (Stokes 2016, 53). The development and incorporation of media technologies into religious life have been shown to provide the conditions for new and diverse forms of religious experience. One such example of this is Paolo Apolitoâs (2005) work on The Internet and the Madonna. Apolito has argued that media technology, the internet in particular, was central to the growth of the Catholic visionary movement in the last decades of the twentieth century as a site of witnessing and affirmation of religious visions and miracles. The movement proliferated through countless websites and electronic communications which âprofoundly altered the very perception of religion among a substantial number of Catholicsâ (Apolito 2005, 2). According to Apolito, technology is used not just to report or investigate visions and miracles but actually to produce them. Significantly, the power to control, channel, and regulate the visionary experience and relationships between Heaven and Earth is shown to have passed from the ecclesiastical to the technical dimension, with technology becoming the site of peopleâs experience and the measure of âtruth.â The Internet becomes a place where relationships are established and contacts multiplied with other devotees and, for worshippers, a place where Heaven is directly seen and heard. Moreover, he makes the important point that the entanglement of technology and religion is far from new. Various media are said to provide templates that structure religious experience, such as Marian apparitions, over different time periods. Conversely, the internet has been significant in the promotion of clerical authority in ShiÊ¿i Islam in recent decades. Since the late 1990s many of the highest-ranking ShiÊ¿i clerics opened virtual offices in multiple languages on the Internet where they, and their staff, answered the questions of ordinary people. The internet has been used by leading clerics to establish contact with believers, canvass donations, and distribute their books (Masserat 2008).4
Studying religion itself as a form of mediation de-exceptionalizes the rise of new media technologies. Arguing that religions, by definition, mediate between the transcendental, spiritual, or supernatural â making these accessible for believers â implies that religion âcannot be analyzed outside the forms and practices of mediation that define itâ (Meyer and Moors 2005, 8). As such, the recent adoption of electronic and digital media needs to be understood in terms of the continuities and changes with established forms of mediation within religious traditions. Following this line of argument, I take the adoption of audio technology in ShiÊ¿i devotional settings as representing a transition from one form of sonic mediation to another, tracing the continuity and ruptures entailed by this transition. The adoption of media technologies reconfigures particular practices of religious mediation. The transition from the majlis to the mobile is, therefore, not a radical break, but an extension and development of certain aspects of pre-existing ideas and practices, though with new possibilities and problems. Attention to the dynamic and creative appropriation of new media technologies in diverse religious contexts thoroughly shatters the view that the âspiritualâ and âtechnologicalâ are ontologically distinct spheres. Instead, it has become clear that religionâs continued relevance is due to its ability to adopt new media over the ages as can be seen in the prevalence and popularity of religious and devotional audio recordings.
2 Meddah on Tape
Devotion to the imams and Ahl al-Bayt has always transcended the physical and emotional space of the majlis through utterances, texts, and material culture in everyday practices. Diverse media forms long enabled people to engage in devotion of Ahl al-Bayt no matter where they were, these include the habitual repetition of phrases honoring them, such as the salawat (salutations upon the Prophet and his progeny), vocatives directed at members of Ahl al-Bayt or invoking their succor (for example, âYa Aliâ or âmedet, ya Ali!â), or prostration on clay tablets from Karbala during daily prayers. However, advances in media technology and sound reproduction have generated new practices as elements of acoustic devotion, once restricted temporally and spatially to the majlis, have now made their way into everyday life. The availability of devotional genres on diverse media formats adds a new dimension to domestic religious lives, as they can be listened to at any time of day and the domestic space can also be easily transformed sonically into devotional space. A number of scholars have already highlighted the significance of audio and video media in creating spaces of ethical formation and discipline (Boylston 2018; Eisenlohr 2009, 2018; Hirschkind 2006; Oosterbaan 2008; Schulz 2008) and shown that one of the most consequential features of such media is its transportability. Through audio recording technology practices and experiences related to the aural perception of spiritual presence and experience once restricted to the immediate sphere of ritual action enter into daily life in new ways.
The first available recordings of meddah in Iran date back to the pre- revolutionary period, where a number of professional reciters were recorded live on radio in Tehran during the month of Muharram. Amongst these, the best known was Seyed Javad Zabihi who recited the Quran and recorded several versions of the call to prayer, supplications during the fasting month of Ramadan, and lamentations for Radio Tehran during the mourning month of Muharram.5 In the 1970s, recordings of Shiʿi vocal genres were pressed and distributed on phonograph and vinyl records in Iran and South Asia (figures 2.1 and 2.2).
A seven-inch vinyl record of Seyed Javad Zabihi released by the Iranian record label Royal in the mid-1970s
© Stefan Williamson Fa
Majlis-e-Sham-e Ghariban vinyl LP recording by Allama Rasheed Turabi released by EMI (Pakistan) and distributed by The Gramophone Company of India in 1974
© Stefan Williamson Fa
The rise of the cassette, however, allowed for the proliferation of recordings of such genres across a wide geographical area. The low cost and mobility of cassettes fostered the development of the production, distribution, and reception of music across the globe with the ease of duplication, ending specialistsâ monopoly of sound recording and production. The cassette is often considered to have marked a fairly radical change in audio technology production and consumption. In contrast to the vinyl records that preceded it, the specific materialities of cassette â durability, portability, and affordability â helped spawn a proliferation of diverse recordings and made it ubiquitous across the globe (Bohlman and McMurray 2017).
The rise of cassettes in Turkey is said to have challenged state control and censorship of the media; this is particularly noted in studies of Kurdish language music in the country. Kurdish language music and recordings faced successive bans between the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the successive military coups. The mass production of blank cassette tapes and introduction of pre-recorded cassettes began in Germany in the 1960s, but it was not until the mid-1970s that Kurdish music cassettes became widely available in Turkey (KuruoÄlu 2015; Reigle 2013). In contrast to the phonograph records, which were easily censored and controlled as they had to be recorded in studios and manufactured in factories, anybody could now record cassettes and make copies of existing tapes at a low cost. While no Kurdish language vinyl records were ever produced in Turkey, the introduction of the cassette allowed Kurdish language artists to reach a wide audience. Later, exiled Kurdish musicians were able to produce major works in their adopted countries and impact listeners in Turkey via the circulation of illegal cassettes and broadcasts. The status of media containing religious material or undertones followed a similar pattern â severe restrictions early on, looser control with the spread of cassettes and, eventually, taking on multiple forms with the privatization of media and lifting of certain restrictions in 1990s Turkey (Stokes 2016).
The introduction of recordings of ShiÊ¿i meddah in Turkey was similar and relied on the private and discreet circulation of cassettes, unsupervised by the state. Without a recording industry to support the production of such devotional genres, cassettes were duplicated and circulated among informal networks. Several cassette collectors in Kars and Istanbul explained to me in interviews that the portability and cost of cassettes meant that students or pilgrims travelling to and from Iran could purchase them there, where their production grew exponentially in the 1980s, and bring them back to Turkey where they would be copied and shared amongst friends and family, or by small-scale entrepreneurs. It was not until the mid-1990s, that studio recordings of ShiÊ¿i ilahi â hymns and laments â began to be produced in urban centers such as Istanbul, where many Azeri-Turkish ShiÊ¿a had migrated to from the provinces of Kars and IÄdır.
Due to the status of such recordings within Turkey and the lack of an established tradition of specialist reciters, Iran has, and continues to be, the most important source of devotional recordings. With the introduction of cassettes, meddah and poets from Iranian Azerbaijan became hugely popular amongst Twelver ShiÊ¿is in Turkey and Azerbaijan. The city of Ardabil, in the northwestern Azeri-Turkish speaking region of Iran, has long been a center for Turkish-language poetry and recitation in praise of Ahl al-Bayt. Some local historians put this down to the fact that Ardabil was the first capital of the Safavid Empire. The Safavids had their origins in an Alid-centric Sufi order in the region and their first shah, Ismail I (1487â1524 CE), is known to have composed mystical poetry in honor of Ali and the imams in Turkish under the pen name Hatai (Gallagher 2018). Over the subsequent centuries, a relatively distinct tradition of Turkish language poetry praising and mourning Ahl al-Bayt and melodic mourning and elegiac recitation emerged in the urban center of Ardabil. Tohid Ghavom, a historian whom I interviewed in Ardabil, explained this tradition, claiming that the city of Ardabil has a supernatural connection with Karbala. âEven before the Safavids it has been reported in travel literature (safarnameh) that the people of Ardabil were lovers of Imam Husaynâ he said.6 âThe perspective of Ardabil is different from the rest, rooted in Islamic mysticism (irfan) ⦠it has a divine source. These roots in irfan have changed the way poetry, literature and recitation developed here.â7
Following the Iranian Revolution, existing traditions of meddah recitation found new platforms with the development of audio recording combined with the implicit and explicit support of the Iranian State. Meddah in Ardabil, like in other parts of Iran, are mostly supported by informal networks of religious groups or associations (heyʾat mazhabi) that organize various gatherings and religious activities throughout the year. These gatherings are local phenomena, open to the public but usually attended by people from the neighborhood or by workers of the specific trade guild connected to the organizers. While majlis mourning gatherings peak during the Islamic months of Muharram and Safar, Ardabil is particularly known in Iran for its year-round and for the huge number of professional and amateur meddah who participate in them. During the short period I spent in Ardabil carrying out fieldwork between May and June 2016, around the beginning of Ramadan, I was surprised to find that every single evening numerous majlis were held at mosques, purpose-built assembly halls (hosseinieh) and private homes across the city. Each of these gatherings has a minimum of four or five meddah and poets waiting to recite. This is in stark contrast to the minimal number of ritual gatherings held in Turkey, exclusively during Muharram and Safar, a difference acknowledged by many of my interlocutors there.
In Turkey, I would often have long conversations with my friends and interlocutors about the near-mythical status of Ardabil. Hasan, a musician in his thirties who regularly recited laments at one of the ShiÊ¿i mosques in the city of Kars, had never visited Iran but once passionately explained to me the importance of the city: âArdabil is the heart of this culture. It is the center for meddah and poetry. There, they are professionals; they start learning to recite at a young age and hold mourning gatherings every night of the year! You have seen it yourself. We cannot compare, we are a small community here and have little support, time, and money for these things.â Hasan often told me he dreamt of going to study with the meddahs in Ardabil. âI have been listening to Salim Moazenzadehâs cassettes since I was a little boy. Every day I would put on the same cassettes, write down the words, and try to replicate his voice [â¦] The way he begins in a low rumbling tone and then rises up to a high pitch when reciting laments. No one can compare with Salim, he is the âThe Sultan of Recitersâ (Sultan-ul Zakirin).â
Salim Moazenzadeh (b. October 7, 1936âd. November 22, 2016) is undoubtedly the most popular Azeri-Turkish meddah of the twentieth century. Born to a family of reciters, Salimâs father, Sheikh Abdul Karim Moazenzadeh Ardabili, was the first to recite the call to prayer on Iranâs National Radio. Salim Moazenzadeh reputedly spent an average of five hours a day reciting, studying poetry and training his voice and would often recite in Persian and Arabic as well as in Turkish, his mother tongue. With his phenomenal voice and charisma, Moazenzadehâs popularity spread beyond the majlis, thanks to the cassette tape. Cassette recordings were not produced in studios but captured by amateurs or professional recorders at gatherings and then edited and copied by small-scale distributors across Iran, particularly in the Azerbaijan region. With these cassettes, the sounds of mourning, recitation of mersiye, long unmetered narrated laments, and noha, rhythmic lament poetry, left the confines of the majlis and entered the private spaces of the listener, wherever that may be. The cassette allowed individual meddah, such as Salim, to become well known, loved and idealized household names. In the past, many of these reciters would have remained relatively unknown, now their images and names adorned the covers of cassette tapes which circulated widely. The early cassettes of meddah remained relatively unmodified from their original live recordings, often only being cut to fit on the two sides and occasionally additional reverb would be added. The visual imagery on the front of the cassettes, however, used montage and collage, often to present the meddah and the contents of the cassette as being particularly holy or close to the Ahl al-Bayt.
âSultan Qaysâ cassette recording by Salim Moazenzadeh distributed in Tabriz, Iran
© Stefan Williamson Fa
CDâs of Azeri-Turkish meddah, including Salim Moazenzadeh (top shelf), at a bookshop in Ardabil, Iran
© Stefan Williamson Fa
The rise in the popularity of individual meddah also meant that, perhaps more so than in the past, audiences at public gatherings would be attracted by the reciter, for acoustic, aesthetic as well as for spiritual reasons. The ability to playback recordings meant that meddah also came to be known for their renditions of particular poems or texts that gained popularity through cassette releases; reciters would therefore be expected to repeat these during live rituals. Moazenzadehâs best known noha, âZaynab Zaynab,â in honor of Zaynab, Imam Husaynâs sister, was so popular and strongly associated with him that it was played repeatedly as crowds filled the streets of Ardabil for the meddahâs funeral in November 2016.8
The increase in the number of students from Turkey going to study in Qom and on pilgrimage to Iran, Iraq, and Syria meant that more individuals came into contact with other ShiÊ¿i ritual traditions and the styles of recitation and poetry popular in other regions. During the 1980s and 1990s, cassettes of ShiÊ¿i lamentation were often brought back from such travels and they were copied and shared extensively, both informally and also by some shops. Cassettes of Azeri language meddah, such as Salim Moazenzadeh were particularly sought after, as they were not only aesthetically pleasing but could be easily understood, unlike Persian or Arabic recordings. The independence of the [Former Soviet] Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991 also led to new contact between communities in Turkey and both the bordering Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhchivan and mainland Azerbaijan. By the early 2000s, those travelling to Azerbaijan from Turkey were able to collect CDâs of meddah and books containing Latin alphabet Azerbaijani collections of noha and mersiye, which were much easier to read than Arabic alphabet Azeri texts from Iran.
3 Between Ethics and Entertainment
Charles Hirschkindâs (2006) work on cassette sermons in Cairo has been pivotal in showing how audio media forms can act as tools of ethical discipline as listeners seek to cultivate certain feelings and emotions. Careful listening to cassette sermons among Muslims in Cairo is said to operate as a âtechnique of the self,â supporting a striving for greater piety and orthopraxy while also constituting a sphere of deliberation and dialogue. In interviews and conversations I conducted, my interlocutors spoke about listening to recordings of meddah in a way was similar to Hirschkindâs (2006, 68) account of cassette listeners in Cairo, Egypt, where listening was a form of meditation or relaxation that simultaneously enriched oneâs knowledge and purified the soul. Thus, listening to sermons or devotional recordings, enables one to live more piously and avoid moral transgressions as they are a means for sedimenting a range of virtues into oneâs character.
Hirschkind asserts that the Cairene sermons also provide affective conditions of virtuous conduct and evoke a particular set of emotional and ethical responses, primarily an active fear of God. By contrast, the relatively short, five-to-ten-minute recordings of noha or mersiye arguably summon up different emotional and ethical responses. These shorter recordings quite clearly aim to strengthen sentiments of love and closeness to Ahl al-Bayt, by constantly reminding the listener about their suffering. The ability to constantly remember the suffering of Ahl al-Bayt in daily life is much desired as a way of bringing one closer to them, and through them, to God.
One significant feature of recordings, whether digital or cassette, is that they can be played at any time or place. The playback of these recordings may, therefore, not always constitute active listening in the same way as listening at the majlis. Listening to mersiye and noha in the context of the majlis is rich in its related programmatic elaboration. When noha are recited in the mourning majlis, listeners are expected to beat their chests in rhythm to the recitation, self-flagellate with chains at certain points, and repeat the chorus (nakarat) and respond to call and response chants. Listening to recordings of noha is completely different. Listeners would not consider beating their chests in a similar manner while listening to a recording alone; at most they might tap their chest lightly with the palm of their hand and recite the lyrics simultaneously in a low voice. Murat, a friend and shopkeeper in Kars, would turn down the volume when customers walked into the shop but he claimed that during quiet moments in the day he would play a longer recording of a mersiye, turn up the volume, close his eyes and listen carefully. These moments were not scheduled or at fixed points in the day, like his breaks for daily prayer (namaz). Other interlocutors affirmed that they too waited for appropriate moments to listen to recordings. One of my interlocutors said that,
Sometimes I come home late from a long day at work and I go into my room, choose a recording of a mersiye on YouTube, and I listen to it from start to end. It is not the same as being in the majlis, but I always cry for Imam Husayn [â¦] even if it is on my phone.
Thus, it is clear that these recordings, like the cassette sermons, are attended to with âshifting degrees of focusâ (Hirschkind 2006, 82).
Not everyone, however, may cry over or consider such recordings to be tools for the cultivation of ethical virtues or emotional attachment to the Family of the Prophet. Recitation recordings are inevitably listened to and shared in multiple ways and this has raised concerns and skepticism in some quarters about their ethical potential. For Murat and others, the recordings, although beneficial, are only ever a supplement to daily prayer, attending majlis, and ethical action.
Despite his constant playback of these recordings, Murat was not uncritical of others who he thought misused them. He often commented on young men who drove around with the noha blaring out from their cars during the first ten days of Muharram.
Blasting these recordings out of your car window does not make you a good Muslim. If you donât pray, donât fast, and just play these recordings occasionally to try and prove some point, it is no good. Some of these young guys donât know what they are doing. You canât just listen to a noha and then change the CD and put on Ibrahim Tatlises [a well-known Turkish singer]. That is just disrespectful.
This view highlights a key tension brought about by the growth of mediatized Islamic devotion â the blurring of the boundary between ethics and entertainment. The use of media formats associated with entertainment and the transfer of devotional genres beyond their original ritual contexts is a concern for many. Cassettes, CDâs, DVDâs, and social media sites and apps such as Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp which allow the sharing of recordings are, by convention, media of entertainment. For many, this association with entertainment undermines the âseriousnessâ of listening to devotional cassettes and makes it questionable. Patrick Eisenlohr has identified a similar dubious association with devotional recordings in the Mauritian and South Asian context, claiming it âthwarts the dream of a fully transparent mediumâ (2009, 285). Here, audio-taped performances of devotional poetry, called naÊ¿t, in praise of the Prophet, are occasionally associated with the Hindi film industry and its perceived moral dangers by opponents of the genre. Critics of naÊ¿t recitation see it as crossing into the questionable domain of music and singing â a fine line for many devotional traditions. The fear of noha recordings blurring into the domain of âmusicâ and commercial entertainment was also common among some of my interlocutors, including Murat who worried about listening to such recordings alongside other âsecularâ music.
Some believe that the spirituality of the traditions of the majlis and recitation is devalued by the recording and circulation of these genres. In Ardabil, Tohid Ghavom firmly opposed the spread of recording technology:
Because we did not have recorders in the past the only place to listen to mersiye or noha was in the majlis. Some people believe that the recitation of these poems in the majlis has a supernatural quality and therefore shouldnât be recorded ⦠some poets and reciters did not like people to record their voices because they feared it may interfere with the supernatural. They would even ask people with recorders to leave the majlis. Before, I did not agree; but now I have come to understand this point, which many meddah and clerics also agree with. In these gatherings there is an atmosphere which is restricted to that time and place. It is within this atmosphere that we weep for Imam Husayn, beat our chests, or flagellate with chains. There is a spiritual atmosphere there. Outside of this time and place these things may seem ridiculous to some. That is why these things should not be recorded and removed from their context. These things have a time and place.
Now we have such an abundance of recordings we have diminished the value of the majlis, the meddah, and the mersiye. As we increase the quantity, the quality has decreased. In the past, there were only two or three gatherings, but right now they are uncountable. Those who would attend such gatherings in the past were the educated and intellectuals. Right now, there are around 400 gatherings ⦠the quality has lessened because of this. We have spread supernatural mourning onto CDâs and the internet ⦠Now there are so many recordings, the poets and meddah have to continuously produce more and more material. In the past there were much fewer but they were much better.
⦠Before going to a majlis we would take our ablutions, spiritually cleanse ourselves and prepare for the gathering. We had to purify ourselves so we could free ourselves from everything and sacrifice ourselves to listen to that mersiye. But, now? A taxi driver can put on repeat a CD with a recitation about Ali al-Asghar (Imam Husaynâs youngest son) while, at the same time, he is using bad language to talk with his friends!9
For Ghavom, and others, the huge proliferation of recordings has greatly devalued both the art and experience of mourning and recitation has moved from the sphere of ritual to that of entertainment. Ghavomâs sentiments, shared by others I heard in Turkey, suggest a dangerous crossover of sounds from the sacred sphere to the profane. The success of a mourning majlis relies on a range of material, sensory, and embodied features to stage an atmosphere that is conducive to appropriate mourning. The affective qualities of the majlis cannot be reproduced in recordings of the same event, as acknowledged by both meddah and listeners. These recordings are affective in different ways. For some, like Murat, who are aware of such problems, the recordings should not be dismissed entirely. They are far from a replacement for the majlis but, if listened to in a âcorrectâ manner, they can supplement devotion in domestic space.
The posting of devotional recordings online and the ensuing changes in recitation practices have stoked disagreement further. For the time being, there is no clear consensus on whether these recordings are beneficial or merely a distraction to ethical improvement on the path of Ahl al-Bayt.
4 Transnational Aesthetics
For much of the twentieth century, there were restrictions on ShiÊ¿is building mosques and congregating during Muharram and other times of the year in Turkey. The circulation of cassette recordings of Azeri-Turkish language meddah from Iranian Azerbaijan presented opportunities for individual participation in a wider ShiÊ¿i aesthetics and ethics of mourning through listening.10 As in Hirschkindâs accounts from Egypt, ShiÊ¿i Muslims in Turkey could compensate for the limitations the state imposed on public discourse and religion through these acts of individual audition afforded by the medium of the cassette tape (Hirschkind 2006, 55). The circulation of cassettes, the ease with which they could be duplicated, shared, and distributed also enabled sociability locally through the physical exchange of the objects as well as the shared sentiments, discussions, and debates they inspired. I argue that, most significantly, the emergence of cassettes also marked an important acceleration of the development of wider transnational Azeri-Turkish networks as the same recordings were also listened to across Iran, as well as clandestinely in Soviet Azerbaijan. Despite the interconnected histories of these communities, the distinct political trajectories of Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan and the relatively rigid borders over much of the twentieth century meant that contact between them was limited. Recordings of folk music, of bards (aÅıq) transmitting from the radio stations across the Soviet Caucasus and, later, cassettes of Azeri-Turkish ShiÊ¿i devotional material undoubtedly contributed to fostering a sense of cultural and religious continuity for many Azeris in Turkey, a sentiment which has persisted and, occasionally, been mobilized by Pan-Turkic nationalists as well as ShiÊ¿i Islamists.
This transnational community, however ephemeral or unfixed, is mediated through sound. It is the sound of meddah, in particular, that allows Shiʿi Muslims in Turkey to imagine themselves as part of a bigger and transnational community. The significance of sound, and the media that carries it, is its ability to travel and create, negotiate, and mediate relations across time and space. The act of listening, in Turkey, to recordings produced in Ardabil, Baku or Tabriz connects listeners fleetingly with a wider geography of co-religionists.
The circulation of devotional recordings on the internet has led to a further increase in the popularity of individual reciters. In recent years, the most popular reciters from Azerbaijan or Iran have begun to produce recordings which are distributed widely online on social media platforms. As a result of this the most popular reciters now travel regularly and can be heard reciting for Azeri-Turkish communities in cities as far apart as Tehran, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Tbilisi, or Moscow. The increase in access to recording equipment means that studio productions have become much more widespread, with the production of media often being a transnational process in itself. One recent example highlights the transnational nature of the production of Azeri-Turkish devotional media today. In August 2019, the well-known Azerbaijani meddah from Baku, Seyyid Taleh Boradigahi, collaborated with a studio producer from Ardabil, Fariborz Khatami, to produce an album of ten tracks for Muharram of that year. These recordings drew on a range of sources for inspiration taking both melodies and poems from writers and reciters from both sides of the Azerbaijani border, including Salim Moazenzadeh. The album was released on YouTube and physically on CD in Iran where YouTube is currently banned. Whilst the audio was recorded and produced in Ardabil and Baku, the videos were shot in a number of different locations. This media was not only produced transnationally across the Azeri-Turkish geography but were also shared throughout the month of Muharram widely across a range of social media platforms by users across Iran, the Caucasus, and Turkey. Both the practice of reciting/ listening and the circulation of media, therefore, has come to connect people transnationally as a community sharing not only the same âbeliefâ but engaging in aesthetic and poetic practices.
5 Conclusion
Both popular and academic accounts of sectarianism in the Middle East have often problematically depicted a homogenous âShiÊ¿i Crescentâ subservient to the political expansion of the Islamic Republic of Iran.11 While a number of scholars (Shaery-Eisenlohr 2008; Mervin 2011; Leichtman 2015; Hashemi and Postel 2017) have sought to challenge such claims by describing the multifaceted transnational nature of ShiÊ¿i Islam across the globe, studies of transnationalism have tended to focus almost exclusively on political and clerical networks (Corboz 2015; Louër 2008).12 By focusing on the circulation of ShiÊ¿i devotional media, I have argued that sound is significant in mediating across transnational networks. The ways in which audio recordings of devotional recitation, both online and in earlier media forms, connect people and have the potential to foster communities of feeling underline the need to consider the role of aesthetics, emotion, and media together to better understand transnational religious communities. The circulation of sonic media is hugely significant in the formation of ShiÊ¿i communal imaginaries and highlights alternative flows and connections which do not neatly map onto existing ideas of the âcenters and peripheriesâ of political and clerical authority in ShiÊ¿i Islam such as Qom, Najaf, and Karbala.
The transnational circulation of audio and videos, in their material and digital forms, is central to the ways in which Shiʿi men and women understand and imagine a larger religious community today. In the case discussed here a transnational community of Azeri-Turkish Shiʿis has evolved, in part, around shared audio and video recordings of Shiʿi devotional genres. Rather than seeing the adoption of new media forms by Shiʿi Muslims as an entirely new phenomenon, I have attempted to show how older sonic and poetic forms and ties between historically connected communities have developed and evolved in the current context. The adoption of cassettes and digital recording by reciters and listeners shows that religious forms are not erased or made redundant by new media but rather evolve in new forms of articulation, creating debates over what is lost and gained in these transformations. The circulation of people, sound, media, and poems examined here follows pre-existing tracks marked by earlier generations but also divert to new directions, moving between the borders of present-day nation-states and constituting a dynamic transnational community.
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The broad range of historical and contemporary practices of recitation, eulogizing, and vocalized lament of both trained professionals and amateurs around the ShiÊ¿i world has been relatively overlooked. Regula Qureshiâs (1981) analysis of South Asian majlis is a rare exception. Here, she systematically deals with the âmusicalâ forms of ShiÊ¿i mourning gatherings, examining the distinct features of the different genres of recitation featured in such rituals. Thomas Reckordâs (1987) unpublished doctoral thesis also uses musicological methods to examine âChant in Popular Iranian ShiÊ¿ismâ and highlights the connections between recitation and Persian Classical music. More recently, Richard Wolfâs (2000, 2007, 2014) work on drumming during Muharram reveals the range of sounded expression in South Asian commemorations of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn as well as the significance of sound and emotion in such ritual commemorations.
The transliteration of non-English words in this chapter follows the use of the respective terms as I encountered them in my fieldwork; additional notes to the Arabic terms may also be provided.
This research draws on 12 months of doctoral fieldwork carried out primarily in Turkey and additional shorter visits to Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.
In the context of Iran, Masserat (2008) and Rahimi (2003, 2014; Faris and Rahimi 2015) have shown how the internet and social media have been adopted in diverse ways which also contest clerical rule.
Zabihi started his career as a singer of Persian classical music before specializing in devotional recitation. His association with the Pahlavi regime earned him the label of the singer of the Shah [khanandeh-ye shah] but led to his immediate arrest and execution following the Islamic Revolution, whose courts charged him for treason and âweak moral fiber.â
Authorâs Interview with Tohid Ghavom (Ardabil, Iran, May 31, 2015).
Ghavom claims that the growth of the meddah tradition began in the early days of Safavid rule. The Safavidsâ aim of making ShiÊ¿i Islam the official state religion meant that previous poetic traditions used for praising the rulers and kings were transformed for the purpose of praising the imams and Ahl al-Bayt under their rule: âThe Safavids did not give permission to the poets to praise them [mÉdh etmÉk], instead they said to put their efforts towards praising Ahl al-Bayt. They started praising the people who were writing about the Imams, not just about kings or rulers ⦠this way they started motivating people to write mersiye. Here minstrels [aÅıqlar] who played musical instruments, such as AÅıq Qurbani, even began to sing the praises of Imam Ê¿Ali and the other Imams. These poets continued to write in the irfani tradition of the city throughout the centuries.â
Video of Salim Moazenzadehâs funeral, âMarÄsim tashÄ«Ê¿e peykare maddÄḥ Ahl al-Bayt Salim Moazenzadeh Ardabiliâ (2017).
Authorâs interview with Tohid Ghavom (Ardabil, Iran, May 31, 2015).
Here my understanding of aesthetics draws on the definitions of recent anthropologists of religion (Meyer and Verrips 2008; Pinney 2004) who use the term to refer to the material, bodily, sensational, and sensory dimensions of religion.
The term âShiÊ¿i Crescentâ was coined by King Abdullah of Jordan in December 2004 and has subsequently been used to depict a broad strip of ShiÊ¿i political dominance running directly through the Middle East from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, and into Southern Lebanon (Wright and Baker 2004).
More recently, studies of Shiʿi Muslim migrants living in diverse settings have also shifted the focus away from a politics and clerical authority to address issues of community, diaspora formation, and ritual change. Important contributions include: Flaskerud (2015); Gholami (2016); Scharbrodt (2011, 2015); Shanneik (2017, 2015, 2013); Shanneik et al. (2017).