Paintings & Beats, Plays and Elegies: Ashura in Iranian Culture

Nour Rida

“The most merciful person is the one who forgives when he can take revenge” – Imam Hussein (AS)

Visiting Iran during Ashura can be an extraordinary experience. It allows particular understandings into the Shia Muslims and hospitable nature of the Iranian people. It also allows one to see how Ashura is demonstrated in arts and music, as it stands as an integral component of Iran’s culture.

Ashura has become so integrated in Iranian culture, especially since the majority of the Iranian society is Shia. Walking down the streets day and night, one can see Ashura portrayed in every street or neighborhood. The ways of mourning include religious lectures and elegies that take place in decorated halls, with hand-embroidered charts and tents that have the names of Imam Hussein and his companions, sayings and proverbs relating to Ashura or sayings by Imam Hussein himself, Taziyeh plays which are the reenacting of the tragedy, musical bands basically percussion instruments as well as trumpets, the art of Alam which is deeply enrooted in Iranian culture as well as paintings and posters.

Embroidery

When the first of Muharram comes around, in every main street a tent (if not more than one) is set up to distribute food, water, tea and play mourning music and poetry for free; or as Iranians say “for the love of Hussein”. Some of these tents, echoing the tents of Karbala, are put up for mourners to congregate every night while others serve the passersby.

The material for the tents, flags, street charts and posters can be hand-embroidered and passed down through generations. Such material is usually preserved throughout the years, and reused by the same group called Hey’at on the annual occasion.

Mrs. Kanji, or as they say in Farsi Kanji Khanom, has hand embroidered a chart for her son twenty years ago, when he was only ten to use in the Hey’at he had joined at that age. Twenty years since then, her son still belongs to the same group and the embroidered piece is used every year for the ceremony decoration.

Taziyeh Play

Taziyeh plays, or the reenacting of the Ashura tragedy are very famous across Iran and neighboring countries. They are also held by the Shia community in other countries such as Lebanon and Syria.

In a Tazieh, local residents play the same roles year after year. But it is now mainly performed by stage actors or local actors. The beginning of this art goes back to story reading, elegizing and taziah-khani in Iran that has a long history. The reenacting became also pretty famous and had a new form with the rise of coffeehouses, where a storyteller would present a painting and recite the story instead of having a real play before the audience. However, today, these plays are still very popular especially on the tenth day of Muharram and are performed on the streets and in bazars mainly.

Ta’zieh (meaning condolence theater) and Pardeh-khani (dramatic narration that accompanies events depicted on painted curtains), were inspired by religious and historical events, symbolizing epic spirit and resistance. The common theme is the heroic tales of resistance against the evil, love and sacrifice.

Musical bands

Ta’zieh itself has been one of the means of preserving the classical Persian music known as Radif. The musical instruments used in ta’zieh or rallies are primarily those of the battle field in the middle ages, such as trumpets and drums. By time as the plays and commemoration became more sophisticated, cymbals, horns, and clarinets were added. The players are usually young men, with a musical band belonging to every Hey’at or mourning group. On the ninth and tenth of Muharram, these bands head to the streets for mourning ceremonies.

Alam art

An Alam is a heavy metal installation filled with intricate ornaments, figurines and engravings, used in the Ashura ceremonies. Alams are artistic installations made with love, as member of a mourning group says. Mr. Nasseri noted that “the art of Alam is made with so much love, as if Iron is melted with love and turned into a piece of art despite its hard labor work.”

The alam, which can weigh up to 300kg, is carried by the man leading the procession of mourners during Tasua and Ashura, the ninth and tenth days of Muharram, when mourning for Imam Hussein and his brother Abbas which culminates on the anniversary of Karbala.

In the middle of an alam is a long sword-like structure with poetry about Imam Hussein inscribed on it. Sometimes also the names of the prophet Mohammad and his children, and verses from the Qu’ran are inscribed on it as well. Themes in Alams are common, however it is up to the artist to choose the details. The figurines and ornaments include lions, dear, birds, feathers and horses; each symbolizing an idea or part of an Ashura event.

Paintings and posters

Throughout the post-Islamic history of Iran, paintings on Ashura have been produced and many of these are preserved in the famous museums across the country. Mahmoud Faraschchian’s “The evening of Ashura” is probably one of the most famous paintings on Ashura, which sits in the artist’s permanent museum in the Sa’ad Abad complex North of Tehran. Versions of the painting are made and put up in tents and streets. The painting depicts the female relatives and family members of Imam Hussein along with children mourning his martyrdom. These women and children were taken to Damascus as captives. In the middle of the painting stands Imam Hussein’s horse without a rider.

Coffeehouse painting is an interesting Iranian type of oil painting. It reached its climax during the Qajar era almost simultaneously with the constitutional revolution. These coffeehouse paintings were the source of oral plays, stories narrated by story tellers. These story tellers would narrate religious and cultural tales describing the artistic crafts and pieces. This type of painting is a combination of the religious and country values that manifests the myrmidons epics, the altruism of the religious leaders, the twelve imams in Shia culture as well as the national heroic athletes in Iran. The eulogists as well as the narrators read stories with the help of these paintings in the hussainiyas, tekyehs, Hey’at and the coffeehouses that had a huge role in keeping these events alive. Today, these coffeehouse paintings are present at the different museums across the country.

Other types of paintings exist as well such as Iranian miniatures and paintings on Ashura and its tragedy can be seen across the country in several museums.

It is worth mentioning that some of the Ashura rituals are deeply engraved in Iranian culture and history. These date back to the pre-Islamic period and to Persia’s myths. Iranians during the Sassanid period used to mourn the mythical hero Siavash’s martyrdom by staging these rituals including Taziyeh, musical performances and other. Later, when Iranians embraced Shiism during the Safavid dynasty, the means of mourning were used then to keep alive the memory of Imam Hussein.

Ashura marks the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and 72 of his companions in 680 AD in a land that is known today as Iraq, after they refused to pledge allegiance to the tyrant Yazid. It is the culmination of a 10-day annual mourning period in the lunar month of Muharram for the third Imam of Shia Muslims, who was a grandson of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him). The Battle of Karbala between a small group of supporters and relatives of Imam Hussein and a larger military detachment from the forces of the Umayyad caliph represents the war as one between good and evil.

Imam Hussein's martyrdom is considered by the Shia community as a symbol of humanity's struggle against injustice, tyranny and oppression. Ashura is considered more as a political and historical event, and viewed less is an aesthetic and epistemological perspective, and this has been demonstrated in many of Iranian artists’ works.

Source: Al-Ahed News