Khadija, the wife of the Prophet, dies and the whole family, including the daughter of the Prophet, Fatima, begin mourning. At the same time there is a wedding celebration nearby. Fatima sends an envoy to Sister Abdul Aziz asking her to cancel the wedding out of respect for the death of the Prophet’s wife. Sister Abdul Aziz refuses to obey, and tells the guests at the wedding to celebrate with louder voices so that the mourning house of the Prophet will suffer more. This act of selfishness is not enough for Sister Abdul Aziz. She sends someone to the Prophet’s house, inviting Fatima to the wedding. She knows that Fatima has no suitable dress for such an occasion and that all the other women are in sumptuous dresses. Fatima rejects the invitation, but Sister Abdul Aziz exhorts the Prophet to send his daughter to the wedding. When the Prophet tells Fatima to go, Gabriel and other angels come and dress her up in such glamorous clothes and jewellery that, when she arrives at the wedding party, all the women, including Sister Abdul Aziz and the bride, faint at the sight of her magnificent appearance. As the bride remains unconscious, the wedding party turns into a mourning party. The repentant Sister Abdul Aziz asks forgiveness from Fatima and begs her to pray that the bride regain consciousness. Fatima does so and the wedding proceeds.
The play presents a comic situation as well as a few comic characters. One can see that the behaviour of the women of Qurash could easily be acted in a comic manner. There is historical evidence that illustrates just how comical this play was when performed at the Takiyeh Dowlat.
19. The Death of Hazrat-e Fatima.
20. The Martyrdom of Imam Abbas.
M.H.Etemadol-Saltane, a prominent minister in the court of Nasseredin Shah, witnessed a production of this play in the Takiyeh Dowlat in 1882. He writes:
Last night The Marriage of Qurash was performed in the takiyeh. This Taʹziyeh has become disgusting, and was especially disgusting last night. What was particularly shameful was that the laughter of the members of the harem came from the galleries to the pit and people who were there said it was funnier than any Western playhouse.*17
The Marriage of Qurash is also known in Iran as a type of Taʹziyeh that is associated with the ‘molodi-khani’. Molodi-khans were groups of women who performed The Marriage of Qurash for an all-female audience. This was the only form of the Taʹziyeh that was performed by women for women. This play was usually performed on religious holidays such as the birthday of the Prophet.18
In Amir Taymour and the Governor of Damascus (Amir Taymour va Vali Sham), comedy is created both by the use of comic characters and comic situations. Although the central character of the play, Amir Taymour, is a historical character, the events and the rest of the characters are all fictional.
Amir Taymour comes to the Karbala to avenge the murder of Imam Hussein. The Governor calls his ministers to discuss the situation. They finally come to the conclusion that they are not strong enough to stand against Amir Taymour and his army. Carrying many gifts, the Governor then goes to Amir Taymour to make peace with him. The Amir rejects the offer and returns the gifts. Later, in a surprise move, he asks to marry the daughter of the Governor in order to bring the two states closer together. The Governor, pleased by this offer, orders his daughter to be dressed up in a bridal gown and to be brought to them. However, Amir, in an act of revenge, instead of marrying her, orders his soldiers to take off her dress and remove her veil in order to disgrace her and her father in front of many people. The Governor is arrested and beaten and the play ends with those who sought revenge for the murder of Imam Hussein laughing at the Governor.
The theme of the play is a religious one. It depicts the revenge on the Governor of Damascus and on those responsible for the death of Imam Hussein. However, because all the characters are secular people who behave ridiculously, the tone of the play is comic.
I have a manuscript version of this Taʹziyeh in my possession that is different from the manuscript in the Litten Collection discussed above. My script is a prologue, probably written between 1920 and 1940, and is written in a more modern style than that of the Litten Collection version. According to the version in my possession, when Amir Taymour arrives at the Karbala he orders the Taʹziyeh of The Martyrdom of Imam Hussein to be performed for him. After he witnesses what was done to Imam Hussein, he decides to take his army to Damascus to take his revenge on the Governor. In the version I have, at the moment when the daughter of the Governor is unveiled, Amir orders that she be seated on a camel and taken to the city. A group of musicians play around her and the whole scene allows the people to make fun of her. The speeches in this later version are also shorter and more theatrical than those in the Litten Collection version.
The process of introducing comic elements into the Taʹziyeh ultimately produced plays such as Taxing the Taʹ ziyeh by Moin al-Boka (Maliat Gereftan-e Jenab-e Moin al-Boka). This particular Taʹziyeh is completely comic in terms of both its plot and its characters. The play supplies us with a considerable amount of information about the Taʹziyeh performers and the nasty competitive nature of their profession.
There are two versions of Taxing the Taʹ ziyeh by Moin al-Boka: one in the Vatican Collection (No. 503), and one in the Bibliothèque de l’ Université de Paris/Sorbonne (1959).
In the Bibliothèque de l’Université de Paris version,19 the Master of the Taʹziyeh, Ali Akbar, with his group from the city of Kashan, arrive in Tehran. The sincerity and skill of their performance leads them to become so popular in the capital that they take away most of the business from the other performing groups. These other groups find it so hard to survive that they take their problem to Moin al-Boka, the Master of the Taʹziyeh in Tehran. They wish to find a way to stop Ali Akbar from performing in Tehran. Moin al-Boka agrees to help them:
Moin al-Boka: I will punish this Ali Akbar so harshly that all women and men will cry
for him!
If he is Hussein, I am Bastard Shimr,
Or if he is Hassan, I am Mu’awiya.
I will not leave him in peace
Until he leaves this place and goes back to Kashan.*20
We can easily identify the usual underlying theme of the Taʹziyeh, which takes the form of a conflict between Ali Akbar (Good) and Moin al-Boka (Evil), or between Olya (Imam Hussein) and Ashghya (Shimr).
Moin al-Boka orders Ali Akbar to leave the city, but when he refuses to do so Moin al-Boka asks the Chief of Police in Tehran to send a bunch of hooligans to teach him a lesson and steal his costumes. However, when the fight starts, Ali Akbar pulls out a gun and the hooligans run away.
When Moin al-Boka realizes he cannot defeat Ali Akbar by intimidation, he gives the monopoly for Taʹziyeh performances in each suburb to one of the performing groups that are jealous of Ali Akbar’s success. This action makes it hard for Ali Akbar to do business. In addition, Moin al-Boka imposes a tax on each group for the right to perform in each suburb.
There are a few structural problems with the text of this particular Taʹziyeh that need to be discussed. The ending of the play is inconclusive. We are not told the eventual outcome of the conflict between Moin al-Boka and Ali Akbar. We do not know whether they continue to fight or come to some compromise. This lack of clear resolution is unusual for a Taʹziyeh.
ʹ We can surmise that this script was written between 1920 and 1950, when the Taʹziyeh was under attack from both government and intellectuals for supposedly being a product of religious fanaticism. There is an argument among Iranian scholars, which is supported by Farrokh Ghaffary,21 that this text was written either by an intellectual or by a member of the clergy who disliked the Taʹziyeh. What makes this argument weak, however, is that this Taʹziyeh is written with such an accurate knowledge of the nature of the Taʹziyeh groups and of their profession that it is difficult to believe that it could have been written by a person who was not himself a member of the profession. It is more likely that the text was written by a dissatisfied performer who wanted to reveal some of the corruption that existed.
21. The Ruins of Damasc
us.
22. The Martyrdom of Qasim.
23. The original manuscript of Shah-Cheragh.
CONCLUSION
A brief concluding summary of some of the characteristics of the Taʹziyeh plays that we have discussed will reveal the ways in which the Taʹziyeh plays developed over time.
Originally, the plays were simple in structure, style and versification, consisting of only a few long poems in the form of monologues. These scripts had simple plots and simple characterization and were performed mainly in ‘open spaces’, such as squares, central yards of caravanserai (inns) and houses. When the Taʹziyeh became more popular, and especially when it gained the support of the Royal Court and aristocracy during the Qajar period, it was taken inside and was performed with more elaborate scenery, costumes and dialogue than had been used in outdoor performances. This move had a definite effect on the simple texts. Gradually they became longer, with more characters and more complex plots. Certainly the length and complexity of the plays differ from one era to another. The simplest were written before the Qajar period and the most elaborate during the Qajar period.
The Taʹziyeh plays are not ‘closet plays’. Most of them were created and evolved during the performing process. The plays were constantly changed and developed by performers who responded to particular situations and audiences. Being essentially performance pieces, the Taʹziyeh need to be seen rather than just read if we are to understand their true worth and power.
The plays are synthetic texts, in that they were not written or edited by one person. They were ‘compiled’ or ‘composed’ by different people. The three important groups who were involved in the creation of these texts were the poets (both professional and amateurs), the performers and the copyists. Among the people who created and performed these plays, the Master of the Taʹziyeh always had the most important role to play, not only in the actual production but also in the creation and development of the plays. In 1997, when I went to see a performance of a Taʹziyeh, Ali Akbar, in the city of Sabzevar, the actor who was supposed to play the leading role of Ibn-e Saad failed to arrive. The Master of the Taʹziyeh simply cut this role from the play and gave Ibn-e Saad’s lines to another player, Shimr. This shows the high degree of flexibility that is possible in a Taʹziyeh performance. Such changes can also be easily transferred into the texts themselves. Like the Italian commedia dell’arte, in which the scenario was ‘fixed’ but the performers utilized a high degree of improvization, the Taʹziyeh text was open to changes introduced by creative performers.
Originally the Taʹziyeh depicted only the Karbala events. Gradually, however, all kinds of subjects and characters were introduced. The plays can be divided according to subject matter into two basic categories. First there are those plays that deal only with the events of the Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and his followers. Second there are those that deal with other subjects taken from a variety of sources such as mythology, history, literature and even current affairs. The plays in the second group, however, are still connected to the Karbala events through either a Verbal or a ‘staging’ digression (guriz) that dramatizes the suffering and death of Imam Hussein.
Islam came into existence in Arabia, and the house of the Prophet and almost all the people involved in the Karbala events were Arabs. In the Taʹziyeh plays, however, we see nothing of this and all the characters behave as though they were Iranians. Certainly Iranian culture dominates the whole atmosphere of these plays. The Taʹziyeh is not simply the only form of Islamic drama, it is also the indigenous drama of Iran, which reflects the structures and ideologies of the country’s Shiʹa community as well.
The Taʹziyeh plays are written in Persian. There are, however, a few plays written in either Turkish or Arabic. We have no way of accurately stating just how many Taʹ ziyeh plays were written in Persian. The number we know of regularly increases as new plays or new versions of known plays are discovered.
The language of the Taʹziyeh is poetry, but since these plays were not written by a single poet, there is no single style of poetry within a given text. Most of the Taʹziyeh poetry is written in a simple popular form that is suitable for oral presentation and does not employ elaborate language. The simplicity of this popular poetry was necessary for the Taʹziyeh to be understood and appreciated by its common audience.
Although the creators of the Taʹziyeh plays are mostly unknown, certain famous names have been associated with several of the plays. This ascription of authorship should not be taken too seriously, as collectors of such plays have tried to make them more valuable and saleable by linking them to these famous writers.
There is an argument among Iranian scholars about the correct way of editing and publishing the Taʹziyeh manuscripts. Scholars such as Sadeq Humayuni22 believe that the manuscripts should be published as they are, and that editing should be limited to simply correcting spelling mistakes. Another group say that a ‘critical edition’ should be provided. According to E.Shahidi,23 for example, the different versions of a text should be compared and a composite text comprising the best parts of each version should be published with plenty of explanatory notes. My sympathies lie with first group of scholars, who believe the texts should be published in their original format. Only after this has been done should we proceed to provide critical editions.
The Taʹziyeh has influenced many Iranian theatre directors in recent years. Most Iranian playwrights, however, still think and write in a Western style. Two playwrights who have used the Taʹziyeh techniques in some of their works are Babram Bayzaie and A.M.Afrashte. Bayzaie has used the form of the Taʹziyeh in plays such as The Stormy Passage of Farman the Son of Farman Through the Darkness (Rahe Tofani Farman Pesareh Farman),24 The Lost (Gomshodegan),25 and The Book of Conquering Kalat (Fat-Nameh Kalat).26 M.A.Afrashte used the Taʹziyeh to express his political views in the form of comedy. Taʹ ziyeh in the Municipality (Taʹ ziyeh dar Shahrdari), The Court of Balkh (Divan Balkh), Brick-kiln (Koreh Ajorpazi) and His Majesty (Alahazrat)27 are among the plays with a contemporary subject that Afrashte has written in the form of the Taʹziyeh. His Majesty is about the coup and uprising of 1953 in Iran, and the intervention of the CIA to bring the Shah back to power. This is a good example of how adaptable the Taʹziyeh techniques are for the presentation of contemporary subjects. Apart from these experiments, however, few attempts have been made by Iranian playwrights to use the techniques of the Taʹziyeh today.
NOTES
1 . History of the Theatre, p. 22.
2 . See the complete list of the collections and the scripts in the appendix.
3 . Abbas the Indian, manuscript in my possession, p. 2.
4 . Ibid., p. 8.
5 . Ibid., p. 10.
6 . Ibid., p. 13.
7 . This is a religious testimony that a Muslim tries to say before dying.
8 . The Martyrdom of Imam Hussein, Tehran, p. 22.
9 . Moses and the Shepherd, Tehran, Amir-Kabir, 1992.
10 . The Wandering Dervish and Moses, p. 2.
11 . Ibid., p.3.
12 . Ibid., p. 4.
13 . Ibid., p. 5.
14 . Ibid., p. 6.
15 . City of Abar-Koh, Muharram 1990.
16 . Fasl-nameh Theatre, No. 4/5, Tehran, 1989.
17 . Khaterat, Tehran, 1890, p. 132.
18 . Taʹ ziyeh dar Iran, p. 125.
19 . I published this text in 1987 in a collection of Taʹziyeh plays under the title Persian Passion Plays.
20 . Ibid., p. 235.
21 . Fasl-nameh Theatre, No. 5, 1978, p. 142.
22 . Fasl-nameh Theatre, Tehran, No. 15, 1992, p. 285.
23 . Fasl-nameh Theatre, Tehran, No. 16, 1992, p. 96.
24 . Tehran, Nilofar Publications, 1978.
25 . Tehran, Payam Publisher, 1978.
26 . Tehran, Damavand Press, 1983.
27 . Namayesha va Taʹ ziyeha, Tehran, Haydar Baba Publications, 1980.
CHAPTER 5
The Taʹ ziyeh in Performance
A NUMBER OF CRITICS have argued that the theatre emerged out of ritual. According to these critics, if a ritual becomes a performance to be only observed and not participated in, the ritual becomes theatre. In other words, participating and believing are recognized as the two most important elements in distinguishing ritual from theatre. I personally believe that the Taʹziyeh is theatre, but that it has managed, at the same time, to keep the ritualistic elements of participation and belief in its performances. That is why I have identified the Taʹziyeh in this book as a ritualistic form of theatre.1 It has been mentioned that the Taʹziyeh was developed from ritualistic processions of mourning for the martyrs of the Karbala. These ceremonies took place mainly in the open air. Thus, as an art form connected with ritual and with open spaces, the Taʹziyeh was originally able to establish a very close relationship between performers and spectators. However, this primitive yet powerful style of interaction necessarily changed as the performances became more elaborate and moved into the closed spaces. Unlike Western theatre, which lost its open-space qualities when it moved indoors and became imprisoned behind the proscenium arch, the Taʹziyeh was able to keep its ritualistic qualities and even imposed its own style upon the architecture of the playhouse, transferring its open-space quality into the closed space of the playhouse.
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