Lecturer: Dr Paul Anderson, PhD, Harvard NELC, 2021, and recent Lecturer of Persian Liturature at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University (affiliation at the date recorded)

Duration: 53 Minutes

Date Recorded: July 2023

Subject: This lecture presents the first English in-depth study of one of the most important maqtals (martyrdom narratives) ever written in Persian, the Rowz̤at ol-Shohadā’ (Meadow of the Martyrs) by Ḥoseyn b. ʿAlī Beyhaqī Kāshefī (d. 910 A.H./1504 C.E.). Through the broader lens of the literary apotheosis of a historical figure, Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (d. 61 A.H./680 C.E.) into an epic hero, I argue that 1) Kāshefī’s text largely changed the landscape of Iranian Twelver Shiʿism by recasting Ḥusayn’s story, resulting in the rise of Persian martyrdom literature; 2) Kāshefī’s decision to compose the book in Persian, instead of Arabic, as well as his incorporation of references from Iranian legend, resulted in a maqtal that was particularly appealing to a Persian-speaking audience; 3) after Kāshefī’s death, the Safavid dynasty encouraged the creation of a mourning cult with the Rowz̤at as its centerpiece. With this, the Safavids laid out their vision for the conversion of Iran to a Persianized Twelver Shiʿism. This dissertation also critiques the concept of syncretism, proposing the paradigm of memory relics as a methodological tool in analyzing the genealogy of religious, linguistic, and socio-cultural interactions without relying on Orientalist constructs of religion.