From Mecca to Mashhad: The Narrative of an Illustrated Shiʿi Pilgrimage Scroll from the Qajar Period

Hajj certificates are stylized legal documents testifying to the fact that a certain individual has participated in the pilgrimage to Mecca and has executed the required rituals. While most previous studies of hajj certificates and related phenomena are concerned with specimens that are either very...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Muqarnas
Main Author: Marzolph, Ulrich 1953- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2014
In: Muqarnas
Further subjects:B pilgrimage
 hajj certificate
 lithographic printing
 lithographic illustration
 Shiʿi sanctuaries
 Shiʿi visual culture
 Carsten Niebuhr
 Mecca
 Mashhad
 Karbala

Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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Summary:Hajj certificates are stylized legal documents testifying to the fact that a certain individual has participated in the pilgrimage to Mecca and has executed the required rituals. While most previous studies of hajj certificates and related phenomena are concerned with specimens that are either very old or particularly attractive in terms of their execution, fairly recent items, and particularly printed ones, have not received much attention. Moreover, hajj certificates have so far mostly been studied as a Sunni or general Muslim phenomenon, and items with a specific Shiʿi agenda have largely been neglected. The present essay discusses in detail an illustrated Shiʿi pilgrimage scroll from the Qajar period that is currently preserved in a private collection in Hawai‘i. Preceded by the Niebuhr scroll, an illustrated manuscript copy dating from the middle of the eighteenth century, and followed by modern printed posters, the lithographed Qajar-period scroll presents a distinct Shiʿi perspective in that the pilgrim’s ultimate goal is the sanctuary of the Eighth Shiʿi Imam, ʿAli ibn Musa al-Rida (d. 818), in Mashhad.

ISSN:2211-8993
Contains:In: Muqarnas
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/22118993-00311P09