Set in Stone

Homeless Corpses and Desecrated Graves in Modern Iran

Bibliographic Data

ID8968341
AuthorsMehrdad Amanat (corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume44
Issue2
Pages257-283
Publication date2012-04-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743812000049
OpenAlexW1989444356
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited22

Violence toward corpses and graves, especially the unusual practice of exhuming and burning remains, persisted sporadically through the 20th century in Iran but found new dimensions in the form of mass graves and a systematic desecration of cemeteries in the period following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This paper seeks to explore the roots of cemetery violence by examining the dynamics of apostasy and the experiences and challenges Babi and Bahaʾi converts faced in their interment practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This period witnessed a significant change in communal identities. Unconventional self-definitions expressed in religious conversions and in fluid or multiple communal affiliations and religious convictions defied traditional boundaries and led to tension between nonconformists and religious authorities. One way for Shiʿi ʿulamaʾ and Jewish rabbis to reassert a conventional center was through the control of cemeteries, including by not allowing converts to be buried in these semisacred spaces

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Apostasy · Archaeology · Art · Islam · Judaism · Period (music · Political science · Sociology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

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