‘Martyrs of Love’

Abstract

Asghar Seyed-Gohrab analyses the concept of ‘love’ in the context of Islamic mystical martyrdom. As a concept, love was used increasingly in a religious and mystical context from the Tenth century onward in the Islamic world in such a way that it was often hard to make a distinction between profane and spiritual love. A true lover was often a pious person who would offer everything including his life for the beloved or for love itself. Love was frequently connected with death or to be killed by the beloved either in a metaphorical or literal sense. There are several examples referring to love death and how such a death is interpreted as martyrdom. After an analysis of the origin and the evolution of the concept of love-death to martyrdom in medieval texts, Seyed-Gohrab examines how love martyrdom was reactivated in 20th century Iranian political philosophy for a wide range of purposes. He focuses in particular on the cult of martyrdom, scrutinising how the concept was deployed during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) to propagate a militant ideology, to justify violence, and to convince soldiers that their fight was a spiritual quest to attain the immaterial beloved.