Syria is in a state of exception. Even before the current political upheavals (also known as the Arab Spring) began, there were pockets and places of exception, such as the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab, just ten kilometers south of Damascus.Footnote ¹ According to Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, the state of exception is established by the sovereign's decision to suspend the law.Footnote ² However, as Nasser Hussain notes, this suspension does not imply anarchy but rather the suspension of the rights of citizens and the imposition of long-term emergency laws and regulations, which allow the state to better control that which is paradoxically deemed both inside and outside the sphere of sovereign power.Footnote ³ The Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab constitutes a state of exception in the sense that it was founded as a refugee camp for Palestinians in 1949 through a sovereign decision by the Syrian state.Footnote ⁴ The Sayyida Zaynab refugee camp was augmented by settlements for displaced Syrians from the Golan Heights in 1967 and for exiled Iraqis in the 1970s and 1980s. It became an important center of Shiʿi education and pilgrimage when Saddam Husayn's repressive policies, as well as the Iran–Iraq War and sanctions, made the shrines of Karbala and Najaf inaccessible to non-Iraqi Shiʿa in the 1980s and 1990s.Footnote ⁵ Thus, the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab gained prominence among Twelver Shiʿa in general as a site for pilgrimage and a center of learning and among Iraqi Shiʿa in particular as a place of refuge due to political instabilities in the region.

According to Agamben, the state of exception is linked to the classical Roman figure of homo sacer, who was cast out of the community and banned by the sovereign and who could be killed without retribution but could not be sacrificed.Footnote ⁶ Living outside the political order and unable to participate in it, homo sacer lived what the ancient Greeks called a “bare life” (or zoē) rather than a “qualified life” (or bios). For the Greeks, “bare life” refers to the life of animals, slaves, and women, while a “qualified life” is a politically engaged life.Footnote ⁷ In Shiʿi accounts, the female saint Sayyida Zaynab, as well as her brother Imam al-Husayn and his infallible male descendants (i.e., the Shiʿi Imams), resemble homo sacer because they could be (and many of them were) killed without reprisal, even though killing them constituted a sacrilege.Footnote ⁸ At the same time, they resisted being reduced to “bare life” by refusing to be silenced, demanding their rights, and continuing to exercise religious authority. Drawing on Michel Foucault, Agamben holds that modern biopolitics have reduced everyone to the status of homo sacer by politicizing “bare life,” thereby making a good or “qualified life” unattainable.Footnote ⁹ This article challenges Agamben's thesis by demonstrating how the saint Sayyida Zaynab offers healing, restoration, and a model for how to escape “bare life” and lead a “qualified life” in contemporary states of exception.

Sayyida Zaynab, the female saint after whom the shrine town was named, is a crucial figure in Twelver Shiʿism. Zaynab was the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad, the daughter of his daughter Fatima and of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, who was both the first Shiʿi Imam and the fourth Sunni caliph. She was the sister of the second and third Imams, Hasan and Husayn. Unlike her parents and her two brothers, Zaynab is not one of the fourteen infallibles (mʿaṣūmūn).Footnote ¹⁰ Yet, she is considered to have “minor infallibility” (al-ʿiṣma al-ṣughrā) because she was raised by and with infallibles. Zaynab is important because Shiʿa believe that she witnessed the Battle of Karbala in 680 ce wherein her brother Imam al-Husayn was martyred along with his male followers on ʿAshuraʾ, the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram. After Husayn died, Zaynab was taken captive along with the other women and children and was brought to Damascus in shackles. According to Shiʿi historians, Zaynab courageously confronted the Umayyad caliph in Damascus and spread the message of Husayn by conducting commemorative mourning gatherings at which pious Shiʿa listened to the story of Karbala, cried, and, at times, performed self-flagellation. Using Agamben's terms, Zaynab refused to be reduced to “bare life” and continued to lead a politically relevant, virtuous, and therefore “qualified life.”

Recent academic literature by scholars such as Lara Deeb and Kamran Aghaie has examined the ways in which Sayyida Zaynab's life and piety have been interpreted by Shiʿa in Iran and Lebanon.Footnote ¹¹ This article complements the content of these works by analyzing Zaynab's sainthood in Syria as well as its theoretical implications. It enriches their binary conception of the Karbala paradigm, which focuses on “revolutionary” versus “salvific” interpretations, by reconciling that binary via Vincent Cornell's theory of Muslim sainthood. According to Cornell, the concept of the walī Allāh or sainthood rests on the “double subjectivity” or conceptual duality of wilāya and walāya. The former connotes authority and guidance (even institutionalization), while the latter connotes love and closeness.Footnote ¹² Saints are therefore both guides, or patrons, and close friends whose authority and closeness allow them to dispense two related forms of beneficence: shafāʿa (intercession) and shifāʾ (healing or restoration), which help Shiʿa lead “qualified lives” in states of exception.Footnote ¹³

Three sections follow. The first maps out the ethnographic scene: the shrine town and its history. It explains how the shrine and town of Sayyida Zaynab can be thought of as a state of exception. The second section begins with an examination of the evolution of the concepts of authority and political power in Shiʿi thought and then looks at how these concepts have shaped the debate between ayatollahs Muhammad Shirazi and ʿAli Khameneʾi about religious authority and what leading a good life entails.Footnote ¹⁴ Ayatollah Muhammad Shirazi (d. 2001) was the brother of the founder of the oldest and largest seminary in the shrine town, while Ayatollah Khameneʾi, the supreme leader of Iran, is the symbolic head of another very important local seminary as well as the sponsor of Friday prayers at the shrine. Though Muhammad Shirazi and Khameneʾi are both physically absent, their ideas, books, institutions, representatives, and followers proliferate in the Syrian shrine town. And while the two groups disagree on what constitutes normal versus exceptional states as well as the conditions and ritual practices (such as self-flagellation) that enable and constitute virtuous living, they both draw on Sayyida Zaynab for their legitimacy. The third section of the article analyzes the local repercussions of these scholarly debates. It returns to the notion of sainthood and draws attention to practices (such as making vows and attending ritual gatherings) through which numerous Shiʿa relate to saints like Sayyida Zaynab in order to receive healing and intercession, which in turn allows them to lead qualified lives in a state of exception.Footnote ¹⁵

THE SHRINE AND TOWN OF SAYYIDA ZAYNAB

The question of where Sayyida Zaynab lies buried has been debated since at least the 9th century ce, when the famous historian al-Tabari (d. 923) wrote that she lies in Cairo.Footnote ¹⁶ Even Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin (d. 1952), the foremost Twelver Shiʿi mujtahid of Damascus at the time, thought it unlikely that Zaynab was buried in Syria. Yet, al-Amin was one of the Syrian shrine's most vocal proponents.Footnote ¹⁷ For him, the importance of the shrine is only marginally related to its authenticity as Zaynab's final resting ground. Its greater significance lies in its role in attracting people, honoring Zaynab and the ahl al-bayt (the family of the Prophet Muhammad), and promoting piety as a model for good living.

The shrine of Sayyida Zaynab forms the center of a suburb with an estimated population of 130,000 in addition to receiving between one and two million religious tourists each year.Footnote ¹⁸ The shrine town's growth is a recent phenomenon, a product of political instabilities in the region. Until 1949, the area around Zaynab's shrine consisted mainly of olive groves.Footnote ¹⁹ Following the establishment of the State of Israel, Palestinian refugees came to Syria and were settled by the Syrian government in various urban and rural camps, including one just west of the shrine. Thus, the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab was first established as the Sayyida Zaynab refugee camp through a sovereign decision of the Syrian state that accorded Palestinians some rights but not the complete package of rights that Syrian citizens possess. For Agamben, following Carl Schmitt, such sovereign decisions are a condition of the state of exception and of sovereignty itself.Footnote ²⁰

In 1967, the evacuation of the Syrian side of the Golan Heights resulted in the “internal displacement” of Syrians. Some of these Syrians were settled north of the Sayyida Zaynab Palestinian camp, to the northwest of the shrine in an area referred to as Hijera.Footnote ²¹ Today, Hijera is inhabited not only by Syrians from the Golan Heights but also by Syrian Kurds as well as by Twelver Shiʿi students from Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan who attend seminaries near the shrine.Footnote ²² Beginning in the early 1970s, the first Iraqi Twelver Shiʿa settled north and northeast of the shrine along what later became known as the “street of the Iraqis” after fleeing religious oppression and violent clashes with the government in Iraq. The Iraqi area was expanded in the 1980s after many of the 40,000 Shiʿa whom Saddam Husayn suspected of Iranian descent and expelled from Iraq came to the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab.Footnote ²³ Starting in the 1990s, and especially after the U.S. invasion of 2003 and the ensuing violence, even more Shiʿa (as well as Sunnis and other minorities) fled central and southern Iraq and sought refuge in Syria. Neighboring the Iraqi quarter to the south lies the most recently built part of town, which also attracts the most tourists. There, Syrian investors have built hotels and furnished rental apartment blocks for the massive numbers of religious tourists from Iran and the eastern Arabian Gulf.Footnote ²⁴ For the sake of business the majority of the vendors in this market, as well as of the employees in hotels and restaurants, have learned to speak at least some Farsi.Footnote ²⁵

The residents and visitors in Sayyida Zaynab come from diverse ethnic and sectarian backgrounds, yet living together in a state of exception has helped minimize social and economic gaps to a certain extent. For instance, Shiʿi students from Afghanistan, South Asia, the Arabian Gulf, Iran, Iraq, and Syria all attend the same seminaries and ḥusayniyyāt, which are halls dedicated to the ritual commemoration of the deaths of Husayn and the other members of the Prophet's family. Moreover, close social and economic interactions have made ethnic and sectarian intermarriage a familiar practice. Palestinians, Golani Syrians, and locally employed Syrian Kurds have intermarried for decades. More recently, some Iraqi men have taken second local (Syrian or Palestinian) wives and have thereby gained residency along with work permits.

According to Nasser Hussain, the suspension of normal laws in the contemporary state of exception does not actually mean that there is a legal void. Rather, he argues that the state of exception is marked by the intersection and proliferation of various exceptional legal orders, disciplinary regimes, and administrative classifications.Footnote ²⁶ In Sayyida Zaynab, there are multiple, differing, and constantly changing regulations at work. For example, Golani Syrians are considered Syrian citizens who have the right to vote and the responsibility to serve in the Syrian military. Palestinians must also serve in the military, albeit in a special unit, but they do not have the right to vote, and their lack of citizenship makes traveling abroad difficult. However, Palestinians are considered equal to Syrians in their right to work. Those who arrived prior to 1956 even have the right to work for the Syrian government.Footnote ²⁷ They also have the right to buy and sell real estate. Other non-Syrians could do so until 2008 but were then disqualified from buying real estate.Footnote ²⁸ In the past, non-Syrian Arabs were able to enter Syria without visas. In 2007, however, the rules changed for Iraqis, who were required to obtain renewable one-month visas before entering Syria. These visas do not permit Iraqis to work, and, as a result, they tend to work illegally in menial jobs.Footnote ²⁹ These differing regimes of law and order produce a schism between Sunnis and Shiʿa because local Syrians, Palestinians, and Golani Syrians are mainly Sunni, while the majority of the Shiʿa in Sayyida Zaynab are “foreigners.” While studying at the same seminaries, interacting with diverse others in the market place, and intermarrying have enabled some residents to bridge socioeconomic divides, differing legal statuses have nevertheless reinforced the idea that the Shiʿa in particular live in a state of exception.

(IN)FALLIBLE AUTHORITY

Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims agree that the Prophet Muhammad legitimately held both power (sulṭa) and authority (wilāya).Footnote ³⁰ However, with the death of the Prophet in 632 ce, disputes arose over who should succeed him and in what capacity. For proto-Sunnis, legitimate political leadership—sovereignty, including power and authority—was passed on to Abu Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthman, and ʿAli. Among later Sunnis, these became known as the four rightly guided caliphs. Proto-Shiʿa argued that both authority and power should have passed directly from Muhammad to ʿAli, making the first three of the rightly guided caliphs illegitimate usurpers of power. ʿAli's reign did not remain uncontested and after ʿAli's death in 661 ce, his elder son Hasan was not able to retain political power. Instead, Muʿawiyah (d. 680 ce) became the ruler and the founder of the Umayyad dynasty. When Muʿawiyah passed away, his son Yazid demanded an official oath of loyalty from Husayn. Such an oath, he hoped, would grant him religious legitimacy. However, Husayn refused and instead died fighting Umayyad forces at the Battle of Karbala in 680 ce. The killing of Husayn at Karbala seals an irreversible turn in history for Twelver Shiʿa. From then onward, power (sulṭa or, as Agamben calls it, potestas) became opposed to authority (wilāya or auctoritas), as none of the subsequent Imams held power, though they continued to claim authority.Footnote ³¹

The death of the fourth ambassador of the twelfth, or hidden, Imam in 940 ceFootnote ³² marked the beginning of the era of the Greater Occultation. The absence of an infallible Imam caused a new crisis of authority among Twelver Shiʿa. Some Shiʿi scholars held that during the absence, no sovereign power could be legitimate. According to this view, all Twelver Shiʿa necessarily live in conditions resembling states of exception.Footnote ³³

Following “the triumph of Usulism” and the growing importance of jurisprudence (or fiqh) at the end of the 18th century,Footnote ³⁴ other views of the relationship between power and authority became prevalent. As Khalid Sindawi explains, the victory of the Usuli school contributed to the rise of the principle of emulation (taqlīd), which requires every follower of Twelver Shiʿism to choose a cleric to emulate and seek advice from and who serves as a link between the believer and the twelfth Imam. Consequently, the Shiʿi community was divided into two classes: one consisting of mujtahidūn to be emulated (muqallad) and the other of lay Shiʿa who follow and emulate (muqallid). This division furthermore necessitated the training of scholars whose judgments would be authoritative (mujtahid muqallad).Footnote ³⁵

During the 20th century, debates proliferated over the notion that fuqahāʾ (religious jurists) should take over the Imam's divinely sanctioned right to political power (sulṭa) in addition to the Imam's religious authority and moral leadership (wilāya). For example, Ayatollah Khomeini developed the idea of wilāyat al-faqīh (rule of the jurist) from an earlier notion that religious scholars are the heirs of the Prophet and the Imams. While earlier interpretations held that scholars are the heirs of the Imams’ religious authority, Khomeini argued that as the Hidden Imam's representative the faqīh (or jurist) should guide the Shiʿa and even govern.Footnote ³⁶ By solving the problem of Shiʿi governance in the absence of a legitimate Imam, Khomeini's concept offered Shiʿi Muslims the possibility to live qualified lives in a normal (rather than exceptional) state—namely, Iran.

Unlike in contemporary Iraq and Iran, Twelver Shiʿa in Syria constitute a minority and hold practically no power.Footnote ³⁷ Yet, Twelver Shiʿi scholars have generally enjoyed warm relations with the Syrian government, because the ʿAlawi regime has drawn on Shiʿi authorities for religious legitimacy.Footnote ³⁸ Starting in the 1970s, and because of these good relations, Twelver Shiʿi scholars were able to establish religious institutions such as seminaries and ḥusayniyyāt that draw students, visitors, and potential donors.Footnote ³⁹ Given the ongoing violence in Iraq and the high cost of living in Lebanon, Sayyida Zaynab remains a good alternative for Shiʿi students who want to study at Arabic-speaking seminaries.Footnote ⁴⁰ The popularity of Syrian seminaries in turn lends credibility to local scholars’ claims to authority.Footnote ⁴¹

Notably, there are no Shiʿi mosques in Sayyida Zaynab aside from the muṣalla or prayer hall that is part of the shrine's complex. Since the muṣalla was built and funded by the Iranian government, it may be of no surprise that Friday sermons and prayers at Zaynab's shrine are held in the name of the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khameneʾi (Khomeini's successor).Footnote ⁴² Khameneʾi, in turn, uses this privilege in order to claim sole legitimate religious authority over all Twelver Shiʿa, to be walī amr al-muslimīn, patron of the affairs of (all) Muslims.

The main competitors to Khameneʾi's claim to religious authority in Sayyida Zaynab are Ayatollah Muhammad Shirazi and his followers (collectively known as the Shirazis).Footnote ⁴³ Ayatollah Hasan Shirazi (the elder brother of Muhammad Shirazi) came from Karbala in the early 1970s, after the Iraqi government began clamping down on public Shiʿi rituals and educational institutions out of fear that they would encourage Shiʿi rebellion. In 1973, Hasan Shirazi founded the first, and still the largest, seminary and ḥusayniyya in Sayyida Zaynab, called the Zaynabiyya.Footnote ⁴⁴ In defiance of Ayatollah Khameneʾi, the Shirazis hold weekly Friday sermons and prayers at the Zaynabiyya.Footnote ⁴⁵ The Shirazis differ from Khameneʾi (and his predecessor, Khomeini) in their dedication to transnational issues and to the propagation of a worldwide Islamic revolution.Footnote ⁴⁶ They disagree with Khomeini's notion of wilāyat al-faqīh and hold that unless the entire world becomes Shiʿi, which they expect will usher in the end of time and bring about the return of the Hidden Imam, there can be no one single, legitimate jurist.Footnote ⁴⁷

In the meantime, the Shirazis encourage their followers to perform taṭbīr, a bloody form of self-flagellation wherein Shiʿi men strike their heads with swords on the day of ʿAshuraʾ, in commemoration of the Battle of Karbala. Taṭbīr was prohibited in Iraq under Saddam Husayn, and it has been banned in Lebanon and in Iran by Hizbullah and Khameneʾi, respectively, on the grounds that it projects a negative image of Shiʿism.Footnote ⁴⁸ Yet, despite the controversy attached to the practice, taṭbīr is legal in Syria.Footnote ⁴⁹

There are two points of contention in the debate on taṭbīr. The first is the question of legitimacy and authenticity. The second is the question of effect. For the Shirazis, taṭbīr is a legitimate practice because they can quote a hadith (a saying by the Prophet or an Imam) that relates that Sayyida Zaynab cut her head with a spear in distress over Husayn's death following the Battle of Karbala.Footnote ⁵⁰ Moreover, they argue that Zaynab's minor infallibility constitutes sufficient proof of the practice's legitimacy. They list taṭbīr along with other forms of ritualized commemorative mourning, such as dressing in black, crying, and participating in mourning processions, as mustaḥabb, acts of piety that carry divine reward.Footnote ⁵¹ In promoting taṭbīr, the Shirazis derive their own claim to legitimacy as religious authorities from Zaynab and proclaim their loyalty to the ahl al-bayt. Their appropriation of the Karbala narrative tries to preserve and embody Zaynab's “revolutionary” stance (vis-à-vis oppressive and illegitimate rulers) as well as her “salvific” sympathy for the suffering masses.Footnote ⁵² By performing taṭbīr, in Agambian terms, Shiʿa can emulate Zaynab, who exemplifies how to lead a qualified life in the state of exception.

In December 2009, the office of Ayatollah Khameneʾi in Sayyida Zaynab distributed booklets criticizing the practice of taṭbīr. According to Wathiq al-Shammari, the author of the booklet, taṭbīr is not permissible because the hadith wherein Zaynab strikes herself is weak and therefore questionable.Footnote ⁵³ Moreover, al-Shammari argues that even if Zaynab had cut herself, her example is not binding because she is not an infallible but only a semi-infallible saint.Footnote ⁵⁴ He claims that the practice is a recent inventionFootnote ⁵⁵ and that the public performance of taṭbīr portrays Shiʿism negatively and repels Sunni Muslims as well as the world at large.Footnote ⁵⁶

In contrast to Khamene'i, the Shirazis are not worried about what Sunnis think of them. One might speculate that the Shirazis as a marginalized group among Shiʿi elites are more concerned with other Shiʿa than with Sunnis or even the wider world.Footnote ⁵⁷ By encouraging public performances of self-flagellation, they demonstrate to other Shiʿi Muslims their self-sacrificing dedication to Husayn. They portray taṭbīr as having miraculous effects and as a way of connecting with the ahl al-bayt that brings about healing and restoration. They emphasize that taṭbīr is a prophylactic and therapeutic procedure by linking it to cupping (ḥujāma), a method included under al-ṭibb al-nabawī, or prophetic medicine (part of Prophet Muhammad's sunna or habit). The Shirazi seminary bookstore sells books on taṭbīr and ḥujāma that claim legitimacy for the practices by drawing on both Western medical terminology and prophetic hadith.Footnote ⁵⁸ One author, for instance, describes the prophetic, religious, and “traditional” aspects of ḥujāma and, by reviewing reports (akhbār), derives the days and the place on the body that ḥujāma should be performed in order to constitute a citational and thus mustaḥabb (or “liked”) act.Footnote ⁵⁹

In a women's mourning gathering at the Shirazis’ seminary, the khatība (female preacher) narrated a story that not only equated ḥujāma with taṭbīr but also underlined that bleeding is necessary for healing.

Opponents see taṭbīr as unnecessary, useless suffering. In order to make blood flow “useful,” Hizbullah, for example, promotes the practice of donating or contributing blood.Footnote ⁶¹ Proponents, however, argue that there are crucial differences between the practice of taṭbīr and donating blood.Footnote ⁶² Donating blood is a gifting practice, which benefits the community. In contrast, taṭbīr and ḥujāma rid the body of “corrupt” (fāsid, literally rotten, unhealthy) blood and thereby miraculously heal the body of the flagellant. Moreover, through taṭbīr, the body can serve as the ground for political action. For example, following the 2009 Iranian election a group of Shiʿi men participated in the taṭbīr processions in Sayyida Zaynab partly because they were disgusted with the Iranian supreme leader.Footnote ⁶³ By performing taṭbīr, these men ritually inscribed their protest on to their bodies. Taṭbīr allowed them to make a political statement (a sign of a “qualified life”) even while living in a state of exception.

SAINTLY BENEFICENCE

In Formations of the Secular, Talal Asad criticizes the “supposedly universal opposition between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane.’”Footnote ⁶⁴ He writes that the French “word sacré was not part of the language of ordinary Christian life in the Middle Ages and in early modern times.”Footnote ⁶⁵ The more important and popular term, Asad suggests, was sainteté, which implies “a beneficent quality of certain persons and their relics, closely connected to the common people and their ordinary world.”Footnote ⁶⁶ Asad's concept of sainteté is especially helpful when thinking about Sayyida Zaynab as a saint with the abilities to heal (shifāʾ) in this world and intercede (shafāʿa) with God on behalf of her Shiʿa in the next world. According to Mahmoud Ayoub, Zaynab's abilities to heal and to intercede derive from her personal suffering.Footnote ⁶⁷ Leading a virtuous life, especially in the face of adversity and in a state of exception, is thus a saintly ideal, which Shiʿi Muslims seek to both benefit from and emulate.

David Pinault writes that some Shiʿa partake in self-flagellation during Muharram as acts of atonement.Footnote ⁶⁸ Others perform self-flagellation as part of a religious vow, the practice of nadhr.Footnote ⁶⁹ In both cases, Shiʿa relate to the ahl al-bayt, the saints, through a reciprocal process whereby devotees gain both this-worldly and other-worldly benefits.Footnote ⁷⁰ The practices of nadhr and taṭbīr acknowledge both wilāya and walāya and constitute pleas for intercession (shafāʿa) and for healing and restoration (shifāʾ).

The practice of nadhr does not require individuals to live in normal states. Even in states of exception, the Shiʿa can make vows, relate to the ahl al-bayt, and attain shifāʾ, healing and restoration, in health, school, work, or in family life. A common form of nadhr is to hold a sufra or majlis (ritual gathering). In Sayyida Zaynab, sufra gatherings are often dedicated to Zaynab. When making a vow, a woman hosts two sufra on consecutive Tuesdays either at her home or at a seminary or ḥusayniyya. The sufra requires a reader, an audience, specific food items, and candles. The ritual begins with a prayer and then launches into a retelling of the story of bībī thulathāʾ (the three ladies). According to female students at the Zaynabiyya Seminary, the same basic story is retold at every sufra among Arabic-speaking Shiʿa in Sayyida Zaynab (though the descriptive details of the story may differ slightly):

At this point, the audience responds to the storyteller with a ritual greeting: “Allāhuma ṣalli ʿalā Muhammad wa-āl Muhammad!”

According to seminary colleagues who regularly attended sufra meetings in Sayyida Zaynab, women make vows in times of crisis. While men do not attend the sufra, breaking a nadhr and not fulfilling it harms the men of the family and/or those who stand in the way of the sufra. Toward the end of the sufra, sandwiches made of something green (usually parsley) and something white (e.g., some kind of spreadable cheese or strained yogurt) are distributed to all those present, along with spoonfuls of a thick cooked sweet paste. Once the sufra is officially over, women fight over the remaining candles, which they blow out while making new vows.Footnote ⁷² If the vow maker does not get what she asks for, the third sufra is deferred, though she may make a new vow.

There are a handful of bookshops in the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab selling religious literature that prescribes how Shiʿi devotees should relate to the ahl al-bayt. For example, the Shiʿi author Haydar Bilal's book Sufrat al-Sayyida Zaynab: Karamatuha Muʿajizatuha, which is available at the bookstore affiliated with the Shirazis, addresses the practice of relating to Zaynab through the sufra.Footnote ⁷³ Sayyid Husayn Najib Muhammad's and Sayyid Hashim al-Naji al-Musawi al-Jizaʾiri's books, which were also present at the Shirazi bookstore, discuss more generally how ritually enacted relationships leave traces (athār) and bring this-worldly as well as next-worldly blessings (barakāt).Footnote ⁷⁴ Sayyid Muhammad writes: “In contemplating the benefits, traces, and blessings of mourning gatherings [fawāʾid wa-athār wa-barakāt al-majālis], we find that they leave beneficial traces [athār ijābiyya] on individuals and societies, and these are: the remembrance of God.”Footnote ⁷⁵ These blessings, traces, and benefits further encompass the revitalization of the amr (order or decree, authority) of the ahl al-bayt, the revival and softening of hearts, and the forgiveness of sins.Footnote ⁷⁶ Mediating between his discussions of the spiritual and of the physical and social benefits, Sayyid Muhammad explains that majālis invite the mercy of God and the metaphysical presence of the ahl al-bayt and angels.Footnote ⁷⁷ What makes members of the ahl al-bayt saints in this literature is their beneficence, their sympathy for their followers, and their exemplary virtues. Emulating and relating to these saints through performing self-flagellation and making religious vows allows Twelver Shiʿa to live virtuous and politically relevant lives even in states of exception.Footnote ⁷⁸

If one were to use Agamben's framework, Shiʿi saints would resemble homo sacer, who is “under the ban of the sovereign.” Homo sacer must live outside the community and does not enjoy its protection. He “is situated at the intersection of a capacity to be killed and yet not sacrificed, outside both human and divine law.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Of course Twelver Shiʿa, such as the teachers at the Zaynabiyya Seminary, are careful to point out how Zaynab and the other members of the ahl al-bayt always acted in accordance with the divine law—even at the Battle of Karbala.Footnote ⁸⁰ However, similarly to homo sacer, Husayn and his group were left without protection. Prior to the Battle of Karbala, the people of Kufa had asked Husayn to come and lead their rebellion against Yazid, the Umayyad caliph. But when Yazid threatened the Kufans, they withdrew their support for Husayn. Translated into Agamben's terms, Shiʿi narratives emphasize that the Battle of Karbala established the sovereignty of the Umayyad caliph by demarcating the members of the Prophet's family, the ahl al-bayt, as “killable,” as homo sacer.Footnote ⁸¹ The ahl al-bayt became killable because Imam al-Husayn refused to pay allegiance to the Umayyad caliph. Husayn and his family posed a threat because of their religious authority and their claim to political power. From the time of the death of the Prophet until the occultation of the Mahdi, according to Shiʿi narratives, the ahl al-bayt's rights to power, lands, wealth, and speech were circumscribed and, at times, even eliminated. As noted previously, Agamben writes that the ancient Greeks conceived of two forms of life. There was bios, the qualified good (and political) life of free men, and there was zoē, the bare life of animals.Footnote ⁸² At Karbala the ahl al-bayt was reduced to zoē or bare life and, according to many Shiʿa in Sayyida Zaynab, the followers of the ahl al-bayt have also been reduced to bare life, or humans with no rights, through oppression, war, displacement, and exile. Yet the ahl al-bayt's dispossession, oppression, and lack of protection from being killed also became central conditions for their attainment of an exemplary, saintly status. Their suffering became proof of their piety and their “sacredness,” the means by which they gained their powers of healing and intercession, whereby they gained the ability to help their followers to lead good lives in states of exception.Footnote ⁸³

Along with religious institutions, such as seminaries and ḥusayniyyāt, humanitarian organizations in Syria, such as various United Nations agencies, want to help people live good lives. They offer “practical” help, including sewing courses to women, school uniforms to children, and heavily subsidized medical services to the needy.Footnote ⁸⁴ U.N. agencies work with the Syrian government in order to ensure that refugees are granted protection, have the right to attend schools, and have access to basic medical care. In Agambian terms, aid agencies aim to lessen the impact of living in a state of exception. In contrast, Shiʿi institutions such as seminaries and ḥusayniyyāt aim to make it possible for Shiʿi refugees to live “qualified lives” even in states of exception by providing spaces for Shiʿa to learn and talk about what constitutes a virtuous and qualified life. For example, the female preacher Um ʿAli regularly reminded her audience that the ahl al-bayt were politically oppressed but that they nevertheless dedicated themselves to educating their children and others about how to live good lives.Footnote ⁸⁵

Um ʿAdnan, a Shiʿi woman from Baghdad in her mid-forties, came to Syria with her children after her Sunni husband was killed in Iraq. She did not tell anyone (except for the author) that her husband had been Sunni. She attended classes at one of the smaller seminaries for a year while waiting for the U.N. refugee agency to recognize her as a refugee and resettle her abroad. Having come to Sayyida Zaynab as a widow seeking asylum, Um ʿAdnan said that she became more religious through attending seminaries, ḥusayniyyāt, and by simply living in a shrine town. At the same time, Um ʿAdnan continued to listen to music, which her seminary teachers denounced, and she occasionally challenged her teachers at the seminary by defending the Sunni position on any given topic, which she did not consider to be impious.Footnote ⁸⁶ By consciously not submitting fully to the pious norms, which are set by scholars such as ayatollahs Khameneʾi and Shirazi and which are promulgated at the seminaries in Sayyida Zaynab, she avoided becoming what Saba Mahmood has called a “docile” subject.Footnote ⁸⁷ Instead, Um ʿAdnan felt that her questioning but participatory piety allowed her to overcome the pain of losing her husband and her home. In Agamben's terms, becoming pious helped her lead a good life in exile, in a state of exception.

Um Hasan, another Iraqi Shiʿi seminary student, wife, and mother of three, argued that a good life (al-ḥayā al-jayyida) is only possible when living close to others and under the protection of the ʿashīra, the men of the tribe.Footnote ⁸⁸ For her, the good life is attainable only in the company of loved ones within a particular peaceful and familiar framework, outside the state of exception. At weekly mourning gatherings (majālis ʿazāʾ), Um Hasan mourned losing a good life, her ʿashīra, as well as the ʿashīra of Zaynab, who lost her male relatives at the Battle of Karbala. At the same time, Um Hasan was studying the art of leading mourning gatherings, in order to serve Sayyida Zaynab and to benefit from her abilities to heal and intercede.

In sum, the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab can be described as a state of exception, as theorized by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, because it was founded as a refugee camp in 1948 and because it has continued to absorb new refugees, who are subject to different legal regimes. The saintly figure of Sayyida Zaynab, along with her infallible family members, resembles Agamben's homo sacer who lived without protection in a state of exception, and who could be killed without reprisal but not sacrificed. Some Iraqi Shiʿi women in Sayyida Zaynab compared themselves to Sayyida Zaynab, pointing out that many of them had lost loved ones and live in exile without the protection of male family members.Footnote ⁸⁹ At the same time, this article has argued that Twelver Shiʿa in Sayyida Zaynab are not necessarily bound to resemble the figure of homo sacer and to lead “bare lives” in a state of exception. According to Ayatollah Muhammad Shirazi, Shiʿa can lead qualified, good lives through participating in Muharram self-flagellation practices. Moreover, Twelver Shiʿi women seek to relate to Sayyida Zaynab, as well as to other saints or members of the ahl al-bayt, by making religious vows and attending mourning gatherings. By taking seriously the position of the Shirazis and by drawing on Vincent Cornell's dual theory of sainthood, as well as Talal Asad's emphasis on saintly beneficence, this article counters Agamben's view that individuals living in the state of exception inevitably lack all form of agency. Instead, by focusing on Zaynab's intercessory and healing power, the article shows how Shiʿi Muslims can lead “qualified lives” even in the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab.