Page 186 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

166 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

procession, Persian residents started to throw chairs and household uten-

sils out of the windows. As the torches and lamps which illuminated the

procession were hurled to the ground and caught fire, mourners, specta-

tors and the police forces engaged in bitter fighting. 39

In spite of such communal divisions, Muharram processions were not

marked by quarter competition, a feature which distinguished the cele-

bration of religious events in major Iranian cities like Teheran and

40

Bushehr, where neighbourhoods sponsored their own performances.

As an indication of the overarching solidarity which united the Shi‘i

population, the route was shared by all the parades and crossed the

quarters where the largest ma’tams were located. In common with the

establishment of the funeral houses themselves, the emergence of auton-

omous processions reflected the progressive consolidation of urban com-

munities. In the early years of the establishment of Ma’tam al-‘Ajam

al-Kabir, for instance, its followers joined the procession of the Bin

Rajab. At the turn of the century Arab and Persian parades parted com-

pany once the number of Persian devotees increased and their ma’tams

acquired sufficient funds through donations. 41

The composition of the parades expressed hierarchies of prestige based

upon the seniority and following of the houses of mourning. The large

ma’tams established before World War I have continued to monopolise

the Muharram celebrations to the present day. Among the ma’tams estab-

lished after the collapse of the pearl industry, only al-Safafir in 1954 began

to stage its own procession. Ritual performances also celebrated those

houses of mourning associated with the mercantilist era of the pearl boom,

and the families which had supported them. According to a meticulously

defined choreography, the chest beaters (halqat al-sanqal) who opened the

parades performed outside and inside the old ma’tams to salute their

leaders and devotees. By the 1950s the chest beaters of al-‘Ajam al-
Kabir stopped in front of the building of the ma’tam named after Sayyid
Ja‘far Agha as a token of respect for its pious founder, who had contrib-
uted to the establishment of this small house of mourning several decades
earlier. 42
39
Belgrave Diaries, 27 and 28 January 1942, AWDU; Belgrave, ‘Report on Muharram
Disturbances’, 30 January 1942, R/15/1/345 IOR.
40
Aghaie, The Martyrs of Karbala, pp. 34–5; interview with ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri, Manama,
20 May 2000.
41
Interviews with ‘Abdallah Sayf and ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri, Manama, 3 and 12 September
2004.
42
Sayf, al-Ma’tam, vol. I, pp. 77–9; interviews with ‘Abdallah Sayf and ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri,
Manama, 3 and 12 September 2004.