From Deritualization to Ritualization: The Arbaeen Walk Based on the Experience of Female Iranian Pilgrims

Abstract

Abstract Despite the rich Shi’i literature, the Arbaeen Walk as a collective ritual remains a rather newly-emerged phenomenon. Without a recognized ritual for the Arbaeen Pilgrimage, the principal hypothesis of this paper is founded on ritualization in a social and intersubjective process. This research studies the experience of pilgrimage in the Arbaeen Walk using the thematic analysis and deep semi-structured interviews with 25 female Iranian pilgrims. The five main issues discussed in these narratives include the pilgrim’s body in the dichotomy of imposed and deliberate suffering, identification with the historical suffering of the Shia and hope toward the promised future, overlapping with everyday life and contradicting with the anti-everydayness, from being sought to being left behind and the feeling of sin, and Arbaeen as an incomplete pilgrimage and feeling of nostalgia. In general, the ritual avoidance and anti-cliché nature of the Arbaeen Walk is a pleasant experience for the pilgrim; however, to recompensate for the feeling of the incompleteness of pilgrimage and the lack of experiencing religious conducts, the deeds of pilgrimage and the fixed time and place will be gradually established as a part of the Arbaeen ritual.