SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article investigates the spatial organization of the Shi’i-Muslim procession and its changes under the Iranian modernization in the city of Dezfoul. The study is the result of interdisciplinary research integrating spatial analyses and qualitative fieldwork to explore the procession as a social and spatial phenomenon. The analyses show the ritual has not been unilaterally affected by transformations of urban shape and also by social transformations. This article argues that the ritual organization will be stable as long as social organization is not fundamentally changed, even when the city shape/morphology undergoes major change. The analyses show that the processions were locally organized in each part of the city because of the traditional Heidari-Nemati division. The processions were reorganized in the 1950s to ritualize social integration in Dezfoul, while at the same time the idea of traditional social division was kept alive through the reorganized processions. The new procession routes through the transformed city also preserve the idea of the traditional city structure. The article concludes by proposing that the processions, as a lived environment, constitute a space in which past and present coexist in a discursive relationship.