Facing the Comparison

What do we learn by comparing two traditions of religious drama, the “mystery plays” (not the best term, but commonly used) of medieval England and ta_ʿziyeh-khani, the Iranian Twelver Shi_ʿi drama focused on the martyrdom of Husain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the battle of Karbala?Footnote ¹ Western visitors to Iran, including 19th-century British and Russian diplomats with colonial viewpoints, likened the traditions to each other; in the 20th century, Peter Brook described ta_ʿziyeh (also known as shabih-khani) as the “most living form of mystery play that still exists” (1979:51). The comparison is logical: like ta_ʿziyeh, the mystery plays were large-scale, episodic community events that centered on a violent death—Christ’s crucifixion. The two traditions also share dramaturgical features as they endeavor to bring the divine into the realm of the profane.

Despite oft-remarked resemblances, there is no detailed study comparing the ta_ʿziyeh and the mystery plays. Perhaps that is because despite intriguing parallels this transhistorical and transcultural comparison is fraught with pitfalls. In a comparison so potentially grand in nature (spanning continents and more than half a millennium) there can be claims of “universal patterns” or traces of the “diffusion of certain traits” from one group to another (Lincoln Reference Lincoln2018:26). Moreover, given our situatedness as European scholars, there is the danger of inadvertent orientalism from linking our past to their present.Footnote ² Then there are the obvious differences between the traditions. Indeed, we understand ta_ʿziyeh to be an indigenous Iranian tradition, rather than one causally related to Christian drama, which was both geographically and historically remote from it.Footnote ³ Avoiding the grand, we examine the use in performance of masks and other face coverings as a particular point of comparison between the two traditions. Focusing on masks and face coverings reveals similar anxieties and impulses in relation to visualizing the holy. Face coverings, common in both traditions, are of three main types: linen or gauze veils hung over the faces of performers; paint covering the face entirely with one block of color; and masks (usually of leather, clay, fabric, and other organic materials) giving the performers other faces and sometimes also transforming the shape of their heads. Across the two traditions the characters whose faces are covered or transformed fall into four categories; three are shared, one exclusive to ta_ʿziyeh. The shared categories are characters at the extremes of good and evil, the divine and the diabolical;Footnote ⁴ characters of African descent; and nonhuman characters (birds, animals, and mythical creatures).

Although in both traditions adult female characters are played by men, an important difference is that in the mysteries the performers had their faces uncovered while in the ta_ʿziyeh they wear full face veils.Footnote ⁵ This difference is likely to be functional. Neither genre is realistic, but mimesis is a feature of both. In medieval England, being clean shaven was associated with purity, and therefore the men performing the female roles are unlikely to have had facial hair; furthermore, it is possible, though not certain, that women’s roles were performed by prepubescent boys, rather than adult males, so that even when facial hair became fashionable among men, the performers in female roles were beardless.Footnote ⁶ By contrast, the Muslim men who performed the roles of female characters in the period when ta_ʿziyeh took shape usually had beards—but women in early modern Iran generally wore veils in public so male performers playing women could easily adopt this practice, hiding the incongruous presence of beards.

Masking styles when representing the diabolical are similar in the two traditions. For Satan, demons, and devils in the mysteries; and Satan, divs (demons), and jinn (genies) in the ta_ʿziyeh (jinn being potentially good or evil), we find an impressive host of beastly countenances, often horned, with extensions to the teeth, nose, and ears, and distortions of the mouth and eyes. The features of the wicked faces imagined and brought to life by the performers were clearly inspired by the visual arts and painting styles of their environments.Footnote ⁷

However, it is the masking of the divine that allows us to get at the most important issue with which the participants in both traditions have wrangled: how to represent the holy—balancing concerns over reverence with the desire to portray divine resplendence. In the ta_ʿziyeh we evidence a trend in the 21st century toward obscuring the faces of holy characters. This evolution takes place in the context of the debate over the propriety of representing Islam’s most revered figures; yet the comparison with the earlier Christian tradition affords a nuanced understanding of this costuming development.

What can, and what must not, be shown of divinity?

Comparing the dramaturgical devices by which the mystery plays and the ta_ʿziyeh represent divine resplendence reveals practitioners’ creative responses to material constraints and to changing political currents. At the same time, it suggests ways in which differences of custom and belief in the milieux in which the traditions developed became manifest in contrasting conventions.

Figure 1.

Local performers in roles of (from left) Imam Husain, children of Husain’s House, and (from behind) _ʿAbbas ibn _ʿAli, Tekyeh-ye Husaini-ye _ʿAzam. Armaghankhaneh, Zanjan, Iran. 7 Muharram 1439 AH (28 September 2017). (Photo by Lucy Deacon)

Figure 1 Long description

A group of local performers dressed in traditional attire, portraying historical figures. From left, one performer is seated, dressed as Imam Husain, wearing a long robe and a head covering. Next to him, performers dressed as children of Husain's House are seated on the ground, wearing green robes and head coverings. Behind them, a performer dressed as Abbas ibn Ali is visible, adorned with a green feathered headdress. The setting appears to be a cultural or religious event, with an audience seated in the background, observing the performance.

A major difference between the ta_ʿziyeh and mystery plays is that while in the mystery plays both Jesus Christ—God the Son and God “made man”—and God the FatherFootnote ⁸ appear as characters, in the ta_ʿziyeh Allah is not shown. This is not peculiar to drama; Islam does not represent Allah in bodily form. Thus when considering divine resplendence as a marker of holiness, and the endeavor to display this across the two traditions, we are considering the representation of God and Christ in the mystery plays; but in the ta_ʿziyeh the discussion is of the Prophet Muhammad, his family, including the Twelve Imams (his son-in-law, and certain descendants), and other prophets prior to Muhammad.

In Shi_ʿism, the immediate members of Muhammad’s family are vital characters in sacred history. Many Shi_ʿi traditions claim that Muhammad, his daughter Fatimah, her husband (Muhammad’s cousin) _ʿAli, and their sons Hasan and Husain were made by Allah from the light of his own holiness, and created before the heavens and the earth. They are ma _ʿ sum, pure and without fault; their lives offer a lens through which the deeper meaning of existence can be glimpsed (Ayoub Reference Ayoub1978:29–31). These texts describe them in their existence prior to creation as silhouettes of light, or spirits made of light. Furthermore, it is said in a Shi_ʿi hadith (a saying or recorded deed of Muhammad or one of the Twelve Imams) that, telling of his famous “Night Journey” from Mecca to Jerusalem and his celestial ascension (al-Isra_ʾ wa al-Mi_ʿraj), Muhammad reported that at the feet of Allah’s throne he saw twelve lights bearing the names of the Twelve Imams as his legatees (Gruber Reference Gruber2019b:207).Footnote ⁹

Imam Husain’s martyrdom at Karbala, the topic of ta_ʿziyeh’s climactic episode that is anticipated or recalled throughout the repertoire, is of eschatological significance; he is understood to have willingly sacrificed his life in order to become an intercessor for the sins of believers on the Day of Judgment.Footnote ¹⁰ There is a highly suggestive parallel with Christian doctrine concerning Jesus, whose similarly willing self-sacrifice is understood to atone for believers’ sins.Footnote ¹¹ The two traditions are thus faced with the same challenge: when their narratives are dramatized, how can figures of such unsurpassable importance be represented by mere mortal and morally flawed actors? What is permissible when representing the sacred?

The English “Mystery Plays”

“Medieval biblical drama as we know it […] developed in the Western Church, and the heartlands of that drama were France, Germany, Italy, England, and the Low Countries” (Muir Reference Muir1995:6–7). Muir’s statement draws our attention to the biblical drama that has received the most scholarly attention; recent studies have expanded our knowledge of biblical drama across Europe more widely, to include Czech and Polish drama and plays from the Balearics, for example.Footnote ¹² Biblical drama could include many different types of performance: more or less liturgical Latin plays; plays to honor saints’ days (where the saints were biblical, like Paul or Mary Magdalen), perhaps presented by guilds; plays presenting individual biblical episodes, for example Nativity plays presented in convents and occasionally Old Testament stories; and cycles of plays telling a range of biblical material, presented in episodes on days important in the liturgical calendar. Vernacular plays in various genres have been loosely defined by scholars according to criteria such as when they were performed, by whom, and where (in what venue). Passion Plays, Christmas Plays, Easter Plays, and Corpus Christi play cycles all occur across international lines and in various vernaculars.

In England, for example, the biblical mystery cycles seem to have developed from the processional celebrations of the Feast of Corpus Christi and presented the whole of Christian history—from the Fall of the Angels and the Creation of the World to Doomsday and the Last Judgment. They therefore extended well beyond what was actually told in the Bible, and drew on medieval biblical expansions and commentaries developed in theological and popular meditative traditions. In cycles intended for processional performance, like those of Chester and York, the vast narrative was broken down into between 24 and 48 episodes that were each presented in plays of around 20 minutes, often staged by the cities’ guilds: the shipwrights would put on the story of Noah’s Ark, the pinners (who made nails) would present the crucifixion, and so on. Each guild would provide its own small “stage” in the form of a wagon or a scaffold, and each scene would be played several times at different locations in the city streets (either the audience would move or the stages would, if they were wagons).

The great medieval cities like York and Chester each had their own cycles and vied with each other to put on the most spectacular shows, just as within cities the guilds competed to present the best pageant of a cycle. The cycles were huge communal events that were played in the streets and inevitably carried social as well as religious meaning: they expressed community identity in secular as well as religious terms. And, because these large-scale productions occupied city streets and squares, they depended on the cooperation of civic authorities, and as a result could be readily suppressed at the time of the Reformation, in the decades after England’s 1534 break from the Roman Catholic Church, as the nation moved toward Protestantism. In England, at first, scripts were rewritten to present a more reformed theology—and then performances were banned.

In Catholic areas of Europe, Passion Plays continued late into the 17th century, but these too were different from the medieval mysteries. The medieval cycle plays that survive from England are full of humorous episodes and comedic characters, most famously perhaps Noah’s nagging wife. In Europe, comically obscene episodes were purged during the Counter-Reformation (mid-16th to mid-17th centuries) when the Catholic Church, in response to the challenges of Protestantism, underwent a process of reform. A few early traditions of biblical drama survive today, such as the Misteri d’Elx in the Valencian city of Elche, and the German Oberammergau Passion Play (although Oberammergau’s Passion Play only began in the mid-17th century and its script has also been repeatedly and radically rewritten in recent decades in an effort to eschew antisemitism). The English York and Chester cycles were revived in the 20th century in modernized performances.Footnote ¹³

The Ta_ʿziyeh Tradition

Unlike the modern stagings of mystery plays at York and Chester, the ta_ʿziyeh performances of modern Iran are not revivals. They are part of an ongoing tradition that, having adapted to far-reaching

social and political changes, has remained unbroken for more than 300 years. The ta_ʿziyeh repertoire can be seen as a repository for popular wisdom relating to Shi_ʿism’s sacred figures. The religious stories dramatized in the plays often correspond to the details transmitted in the Qur_ʾan and other formal religious sources such as the traditions of the Twelve Imams and reports of historians. But, just as the mystery cycles drew on traditional as well as biblical material, their content goes well beyond this; in addition to the deeds of the prophets that Islam shares with Judaism and Christianity, we find old and little-known stories of the lives of Muhammad and his descendants, of miracles, of angels and jinn, of mendicant dervishes, travelers, and even warrior women. Such stories are the subject of their own plays, but are also woven into the fabric of the central episodes, commemorating the events at Karbala, the repertoire featuring a host of preludes, epilogs, and other short vignettes that can be appended to, or inserted within, the main episodes according to the occasion, the will of the performers, and the appetite of the audience. The repertoire even includes some comedic episodes.

The ta_ʿziyeh tradition began as a practice of the common people, and like any popular practice, its inception is impossible to pinpoint. As part of their promotion of Twelver Shi_ʿism in Iran, the Safavid dynasty (r. 1501–1722 CE) encouraged a plethora of public rituals commemorating the martyrdoms of Imam Husain and his supporters at Karbala during the month of Muharram. There is evidence to suggest that an early form of the ta_ʿziyeh was one of these rituals by the second half of the 17th century,Footnote ¹⁴ with the earliest surviving script dating to 1724.Footnote ¹⁵ While the state promotion of Shi_ʿism under the Safavid shahs provided the conditions under which the tradition began to take shape, it remained largely a practice of the masses until the early 19th century under Qajar reign (1796–1925 CE), when attending performances came into vogue with the elite. There followed a wave of patronage of architecture to house the genre and the emergence of a professional circuit for performers.Footnote ¹⁶ In the early 20th century, elite patronage dwindled and the performers who had relied on the large city venues for work took to touring rural locations where the Imam–zadeh–ha, shrines of the descendants of the Imams, were located, composing new episodes to commemorate them. In the 1930s the ta_ʿziyeh performances and other Muharram rituals were prohibited as part of a program of modernizing-secularizing reforms under Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925–1941 CE). Again, the tradition survived, and ta_ʿziyeh continued to be performed under the second Pahlavi shah, Muhammad Reza (r. 1941–1979 CE),Footnote ¹⁷ albeit on a more modest scale than during the Qajar period.

Since the Revolution of 1978–79, performances have once again become widespread and are large public spectacles. But in the Islamic Republic, while performances are well-attended, the variety of subject matter has been greatly reduced, the plays performed tending to be only those treating martyrdom narratives.

Scriptural Injunctions and their Interpretations

Consideration of scriptural injunctions against image-making in both Christianity and Islam should begin with Judaism, since the Torah is an early source of the religious law that we find in revised forms in the later Abrahamic traditions. In the Torah, God’s second commandment is that “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” However, representational art abounds in both Judaism and Christianity, suggesting that in practice attention was focused on the second part of the commandment: “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them” (graven images) “nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4–5).

Particular concern might surround the representation of God: how should a mere mortal, who has never seen God and indeed cannot look on the face of God and live (Exodus 33:20) present divinity in material form? On the one hand, God is often understood as formless or invisible,Footnote ¹⁸ but on the other, in Judaism and Christianity, God makes man in his image (Genesis 1:26) so there is justification for figuring God as a man. The Old Testament presents a God who walks in gardens, sits on thrones, and uses footstools.Footnote ¹⁹ Christianity goes one step further, identifying Jesus as the incarnation of God-the-Son, thus strengthening a theological justification for presenting divinity in human form.Footnote ²⁰

Evidence suggests that even during classical antiquity the second commandment was not interpreted by all Jews as forbidding art that portrayed the narratives of the Torah. This is demonstrated by the wall friezes of the Dura-Europos synagog that are known to have been completed circa 244/245 CE.

Situated on the banks of the Euphrates River in present day Syria, this site once lay on the fault line between the Roman and Sasanian empires, making it all the more intriguing as an example of how the visual culture of Judaism developed between the domains of the superpowers of classical antiquity. Among the many scenes from the Hebrew Bible depicted in the seven-meter-high tempera wall paintings of the synagog’s main assembly room we find images of the law-giver Moses holding a scroll, and other scenes from the Book of Exodus (see also Fine Reference Fine and Gruber2019; and Fine [Reference Fine2005] 2010:174–85).

Although Jewish biblical art is not as prolific as Christian, there exists a significant trend for illustrated Hebrew manuscripts, produced both in medieval and early modern Europe, with examples also found in 17th-century Iran (Fine Reference Fine and Gruber2019:118–21). Meanwhile, in 17th-century Europe the Jewish dramatic tradition of the purimshpil took shape, plays which celebrated the feast of Purim by presenting the narrative of the book of Esther in which the feast originated. Purimshpil also came to recount other biblical episodes such as the story of Joseph and his brothers, and David and Goliath.Footnote ²¹ Thus in the Jewish tradition, as in the Christian, biblical events have long been presented not just in fine art and illustrated books but also in “quick [living] books”Footnote ²² —that is, dramatic performances.

In Christendom, there have been long periods of history during which the injunction of the second commandment appears to have been interpreted as specific to the prohibition of idol worship. There is no need here to detail the abundance of stained-glass windows, sculptures, frescoes, and other paintings of Christian holy figures and narratives that abound in Christian sacred spaces, attesting to the creation of such a work being considered, in itself, an act of worship—not to mention the proliferation of Christian illuminated manuscripts. Nonetheless, anxieties about the representation of the holy have existed and periodically come to the fore. The Byzantine Emperor Leo III (r. 717–741 CE) condemned the use of images in worship, and for this was, himself, subsequently condemned by Pope Gregory III (r. 731–741 CE). The controversy was settled at the Second Council of Nicaea (787 CE), where a distinction was established between veneration, dulia, made to saints and images, and worship, latria, that was only for God.Footnote ²³ The creation of images then continued, and indeed was encouraged by the use of images as channels of devotion and meditation, in the churches of both the Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire, until the controversy emerged again with the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century. Late in the intervening period the English mystery play tradition flowered.

At the Reformation in Europe, adherence to the second commandment’s injunction against the making of images was central to the anti-Rome polemic of Luther, Calvin, and others; King Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534 saw the controversy reach the British Isles. Despite attempts to defend the use of images and statues, partly on the grounds of their didactic value (learning aids for the illiterate laity), the decades that followed saw a wave of iconoclasm and widespread defacement and destruction of all forms of Christian iconography. In 1548 a royal decree ordered the removal of all images from churches in England.Footnote ²⁴ The mystery play tradition was a casualty of this process, first rewritten and later banned.

Among the three main Abrahamic traditions, Islam has often most strictly proscribed the production of images. According to some, the proscription goes beyond depiction of divine subjects to include all living creatures. Nonetheless, as evidenced by the very existence of ta_ʿziyeh, the use of the representational arts in devotional practice varies greatly across the Muslim world, and is subject to change. In Iran a strong tradition of depicting the Prophet Muhammad and other prophets dates back as far as the early 14th century. Jami _ʿ al-tawarikh (The Compendium of Chronicles), an illustrated work of world history created in Tabriz by Ilkhanid vizier and Jewish convert to Islam Rashid al-Din Fadl-allah Hamdani (ca. 1247–1318 CE), depicts episodes from the lives of prophets prior to Muhammad, and portrays Muhammad himself across a series of paintings.Footnote ²⁵ Indeed, as with Judaism and Christianity, prohibiting idol worship appears to be the crux of the anxiety around depiction, but in Islam pinpointing the scriptural source of the injunction is more complex.

Despite featuring much of the Hebrew Bible’s content, the Qur_ʾan does not specifically reiterate the Ten Commandments, even if it does cite Moses receiving them. Verses Q7:142–45 recall Allah telling Moses on Mount Sinai that he has been chosen as a messenger and writing for him “of everything an admonition, and a distinguishing of everything” onto tablets, which he was instructed to take to the people. The decalog is also mentioned in Q2:83–84, which elaborates briefly on the nature of the commandments, but the prohibition of graven images is noticeably absent.Footnote ²⁶ In fact, a number of scholars have made the point that while the Qur_ʾan explicitly prohibits idol worship, there is no proscription on the creation of visual images (Hodgson Reference Hodgson1964:229; Gruber Reference Gruber and Gruber2019a:14).

Christiane Gruber (Reference Gruber and Gruber2019a) scrutinizes references to the representational arts within the Qur_ʾan and the Sunni hadiths (in this case the collected words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad only) in search of the precise concerns around them. Her close reading of the wording of Moses’s rebuke of the Israelites during the incident of the Golden Calf (Q2:54) strongly suggests that it is the veneration of the statue that is forbidden, not the volumetric and/or material construction of the beast’s likeness. As a further example of the permissibility of statues, she cites the Qur_ʾan’s praise for King Solomon’s ability to control the elements and all manner of Allah’s creatures, including having the jinn make for him “whatever he wished of sanctuaries, and statues (tamathil)” (Q34:13; Gruber Reference Gruber and Gruber2019a:11). Far from being condemned, these objects affirm Solomon’s status as supreme monarch.

In the hadith corpus Gruber finds what is likely to be the main source of the taboo around image production in Islam. Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870 CE) and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (c. 822–875 CE), two principal transmitters of hadith, whose corpora of traditions are broadly accepted amongst Sunni Muslims as reliable, report Muhammad warning that punishment awaits image-makers at The Resurrection, when Allah will challenge them to breathe life into their works. They also report Muhammad prohibiting the hanging of an illustrated curtain, the pendant images’ potential to appear “enlivened” appearing to be the crux of the problem (Gruber Reference Gruber and Gruber2019a:19).Footnote ²⁷

So, where does that leave the ta_ʿziyeh tradition, in which the performers go to the extent of playing the likeness of Muhammad and the Twelve Imams? Of course, al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj are Sunni transmitters of hadith, and unease over image-making tends to be strongest in Sunni spheres, while ta_ʿziyeh is a Shi_ʿi practice. Even so, their hadith collections carry weight throughout the Islamic world, a point to which we will return. Concerns regarding representations of the holy by dramatists and performers have likewise played out in the Christian context where even God appears as a character.

Accepting and Regulating the Dramatic Presentation of the Holy

Because each episode of a mystery cycle was performed by a different guild, the roles of God and Jesus were performed by several different actors within each cycle, and civic records indicate that the actors in question—indeed, all actors presenting supernatural characters—were generally masked. The masking would have facilitated audience identification of the character across the different episodes, but would also have served, perhaps, to distance the actor from the role in his own mind and that of his audience, as well as to create a certain remoteness of the masked characters from the spectators, and probably also from the other characters sharing a scene with them.

But there were, nonetheless, anxieties in medieval England about graven images and about the propriety of humans representing divinity. These are perhaps most famously articulated, for theatre historians at least, in the early 15th-century Treatise of Miracles Playing. The Treatise’s author objects especially to theatrical performance of Christ’s Passion, which is the focus of cycle plays. He is troubled because actors present “in play” miracles that God performed “in earnest,” and in the process they reduce religious mysteries to the “familiar,” undermining proper respect for God (in Walker Reference Walker2000:196 lines 4–5, and 197 lines 7–9). A century and a half after the Treatise was written, its concerns were echoed in Reformist ideas that combined with social and political concerns and led to the suppression of the mystery plays in 16th-century England. The Chester plays were revised in efforts to align their theology with reformation ideas, and the post-Reformation Chester banns point out the impossibility, for unsophisticated tradesmen, of presenting onstage the mysterious and invisible divinity. Humble craftsmen, playing in front of common people, cannot begin to devise appropriate ways to present God (see Walker Reference Walker2000:201–05).

The Tudor monarchs, meanwhile, legislated against plays that might provoke sectarian unrest. Henry VIII urged justices of the peace in York to watch out for “papists” performing interludes or any portion of the Bible in language likely to provoke a breach of the peace; Mary I, who wanted to bring plays back in the service of Catholicism, found that dramatic activity provoked her Protestant enemies and so eventually forbade all material “in the England tongue […] touching the high points and mysteries of Christian religion” (in Gildersleeve Reference Gildersleeve1908:10–11); Elizabeth I forbade plays “wherein either matters of religion or the governance of the estate of the commonwealth shall be handled or treated” (in Fowell and Palmer Reference Fowell and Palmer1913:14–15). The combination of Reformist concerns about the propriety of religious drama with political concerns to keep the peace culminated in 1576 in the Privy Council banning plays in which “the Majesty of God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost be counterfeited or represented.”Footnote ²⁸ The prohibition on the dramatic presentation of divinity remained in place until the Theatres Act of 1968 abolished censorship on the British stage.

In the Persian context, to our knowledge, there has never been a prohibition on the dramatic presentation of divinity as such, and, as stated above, Islam does not represent Allah in bodily form. In 2007 the Islamic Republic issued a prohibition on depiction of the Prophet Muhammad and Shi_ʿi Imams, but the creation and display of such images is so deeply engrained in local devotional practice that a prohibition could do nothing to erase their presence in private spaces (Pak-Shiraz Reference Pak-Shiraz2024:28). Notably the injunction did not curtail the representation of these figures in ta_ʿziyeh. The significance of this exemption would require a separate discussion, but the fact that modern-day ta_ʿziyeh is most popular among religiously conservative people of humble economic means—the Islamic Republic’s traditional support base—speaks volumes.

Indeed, a popular tradition of depicting Husain and the events at Karbala predates the emergence of the ta_ʿziyeh tradition and has continued to develop alongside it. From the Safavid period, storytellers (pardeh-daran) used canvases painted with scenes from the battle of Karbala from which they narrated the sufferings and triumphs of the ahl al-bait (Prophet Muhammad’s family) and their supporters.Footnote ²⁹ From the 1840s, a genre of illustrated religious lithographed books emerged, imagery of the Shi_ʿism’s revered figures filling their pages (see Marzolph 2011). During the 18th and 19th centuries, murals and elaborate tile friezes featuring this same content were created on the walls of Iran’s religious gathering places and shrines.Footnote ³⁰ Their imagery was influenced by ta_ʿziyeh’s costuming practices; for example, face veils, not used in earlier depictions of female figures, were used for all women, reflecting the face veils worn by the male performers playing female roles (Peterson Reference Peterson and Chelkowski1979:79). While the decorative schemes of many of the shrines are still in place, there are new trends notable in the more recent depictions of Muhammad and the Imams displayed in public places and media.

Figure 2.

Imam Husain depicted on the day of his martyrdom with flaming aureole and face veil, 19th-century wall painting, shrine of Imam-zadeh Shah Zaid, Isfahan. (Photo by Lucy Deacon)

The change concerns the visibility, or, rather, the invisibility of the face. Whereas the visual art forms above vividly depict the faces of holy figures, in a significant number of modern paintings of the Prophet, the Imams, and members of the ahl al-bait, the subject’s countenance is either covered with a white face veil, or rendered invisible by the radiance of the white light that it exudes. Veiling the faces of prophetic figures is by no means new in Persian devotional art—scattered examples of the face veil as one of the markers of prophethood or imamate can be found among the tile friezes and lithograph illustrations, and are most especially common in illustrated manuscripts of the Safavid period.Footnote ³¹ And, indeed, in the latter context, they have the additional function of containing divine resplendence (Gruber Reference Gruber2019b:201).

What is remarkable about the recent trend is that the faces of holy figures openly displayed in their original format are whited out in modern reproductions. A mural featuring the Prophet Muhammad’s Mi_ʿraj on a prominent building in Tehran in 2008 is a specific example—his facial features are left blank, in contrast to the painting from a 15th-century manuscript that provided the template for the illustration. Gruber identifies both the mural’s content and commissioning as heavily influenced by the debates over Islamic sacred images that followed the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005–2006 (sparked by the publication of satirical cartoons portraying Prophet Muhammad in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten); the mural reclaims Muhammad’s “blessed beauty” for the Muslim community after the foreign ridicule (2013:5). Gruber interprets the invisibility of his face in the mural as “a reinversion of prophetic iconography”; in response to the unpleasant portrayal of the Prophet’s features in the cartoons, the mural literally has him “‘defaced’ and rendered too brilliant to behold,” thus restoring his “transcendental splendor” (26). Importantly, it appears that the modern-day ta_ʿziyeh tradition is responding to this trend of divine invisibility.

Figure 3.

Local performers in roles of (from left) ʿAli Akbar (son of Imam Husain) and Umm Laila (Akbar’s mother). Tekyeh-ye Husaini-ye ʿAzam, Armaghankhaneh, Zanjan, Iran. 8 Muharram 1439 AH (29 September 2017). (Photo by Lucy Deacon)

While in pictorial representations of the Prophet’s family halos or flaming aureoles are commonly used to show resplendence, no such custom exists in the ta_ʿziyeh. So what measures are taken to show a character’s connection to the divine? The real practical question here is whether the face of the performer is obscured. In modern-day Iran, the picture is complex: while performers playing Husain, members of the ahl al-bait, prophets, and the other Shi_ʿi Imams are consistently veiled when they appear in visions or scenes of visitation from the afterlife, whether or not they are veiled when portraying events from these characters’ earthly lives appears to depend on the devotional-artistic inclinations of the particular troupe of performers, and may vary by locality.

Attending ta_ʿziyeh performances in 2017 (during Muharram of 1439 AH) Lucy Deacon observed that the performers in Baraghan, a village in the Alborz region with a long established local ta_ʿziyeh performance tradition, did not wear face veils when portraying the life events of Husain or other members of his family: neither did those performing in Tehran’s Tajrish bazaar; the performers at a tekyeh (venue for Muharram commemorations) in the city’s Gomrok neighborhood; or the performers at an outdoor event in the village of Garmaseh, near Isfahan. However, the performers of Armaghankhaneh, again a village boasting a long-established local tradition, this time in Zanjan province, wore face veils made of gauze when playing Husain and all members of his family (except children).Footnote ³²

In addition to the veils of the Armaghankhaneh performers, many recent news articles reporting on ta_ʿziyeh performances show the use of face veils of varying color and transparency by the Imam-khan (a performer who plays Husain), during moments of stage action that are clearly scenes from his earthly life, not visions or visitations. In the images accompanying a report on a 2023 performance in the village of Kahak in Razavi Khorasan province, the face veil worn by the Imam-khan is white but slightly translucent.Footnote ³³ A report from Ahvaz in 2019 shows the Imam-khan wearing an opaque white face veil;Footnote ³⁴ as does a 2023 report on a ta_ʿziyeh performance in Urmia, West Azerbaijan province.Footnote ³⁵ Meanwhile, a report from the city of Jahrom in Fars province in 2019 shows the Imam-khan in mid-battlefield action wearing an opaque green face veil (green being associated with the holiness of the Prophet and his family),Footnote ³⁶ as does an article reporting on a performance in the city of Gorgan, Golestan province, in 2020.Footnote ³⁷

All of this speaks to a significant trend of face veils being worn by Imam-khans over the last decade, but it also speaks to diversity within the tradition.Footnote ³⁸ It is likely that heterogeneity of practice was always a feature of ta_ʿziyeh. With this in mind, and considering the presence of the face veil in the depiction of holy figures in certain visual art forms from the Safavid period, can we be sure that the veiling of holy figures in ta_ʿziyeh does not reflect a longstanding historical practice? If it does not, then the constellation of factors influencing this development (social, technological, and even political) must be explored. But first, putting 21st-century considerations and the evolution of the impulse to veil Husain and others aside, comparison with the earlier tradition, the mystery plays of medieval and early modern England, offers an intriguing parallel. This may inform our understanding of the impulse itself, through measures taken to alter the faces of performers when displaying divine resplendence: the use of gold or gold paint to transform or cover the face of the actor.

Divine Resplendence

Divine Resplendence in Ta_ʿziyeh

Veiling the Imam—A Historical Practice?

In addressing the question of whether the veiling of holy figures in ta_ʿziyeh reflects a longstanding historical practice, we have drawn evidence from the accounts of witnesses to performances in various periods, but begin with a brief assessment of the practical requirements of ta_ʿziyeh roles, and of material evidence. At the outset, it must be said that the technical requirements of such roles, in particular that of Imam Husain, would suggest that veiling was not customary. The protagonists of ta_ʿziyeh deliver their lines using a very particular range of semi-operatic vocal techniques. In playing male warriors, this is often in combination with performing vigorous equestrian choreographies. Anxieties over reverence, or desires to display, or shield, resplendence aside, managing the triad of song, horse, and (opaque) face veil is an unlikely obligation to place on the lead performer.Footnote ³⁹

Figure 4.

“Little God” (Matthew Lamb) with gilded face, from the 1983 staging of The Purification, and Christ among the Doctors (plays of the Chester cycle) by the Joculatores Lancastrienses, directed by Meg Twycross. Chester, England. (Photo by Meg Twycross)

In terms of material evidence, some more elaborate elements of costume, such as suits of armor and masks used in earlier periods, have survived, but these masks are not for the holy characters; something as simple as a fabric face veil is more difficult to find. Manuscripts of the plays constitute much of the remaining material. These texts do not usually include stage directions or notes on costume, but do offer clues. A significant number of scripts describe characters when they appear from beyond the grave as neqab-dar (veiled), suggesting that at other times they were not veiled.Footnote ⁴⁰

The historical accounts of witnesses to ta_ʿziyeh performances of centuries past offer invaluable evidence of the visual, material, and broader sensory aspects of these events. Those of foreign visitors to Iran are often particularly valuable and detailed because they are directed to readers entirely uninitiated in the tradition, and thus in need of vivid description. Of course, we must keep the positionality of the narrators in mind, and, with respect to certain topics, read their travelogs against the grain in order to form a realistic impression of what they witnessed. Foreigners attended Muharram rituals, including ta_ʿziyeh, as the guests of local dignitaries with whom they were acquainted through their business in Iran, be it trade, military matters, diplomacy, or often a combination of the three. What they witnessed was the more grandiose end of the tradition, the large public spectacles in urban centers. They were unlikely to experience the more rural, backstreet, or intimate religious gatherings in private spaces, including the women-only sessions, and those of ascetics.

Regarding the use of masks and face coverings, the travelogs strongly suggest that the Shi_ʿi saints were not veiled in the ta_ʿziyeh performances of centuries past. In assessing what was customary it is worth considering the environment in which ta_ʿziyeh emerged. The large public Muharram commemorations of the Safavid period featured elaborate pageants that included representations of the martyrs of Karbala, played by live performers atop wagons. By the 16th century this included representations of individual figures, sometimes their likeness in life being portrayed, and sometimes performers simulating their wounded corpses carried atop biers; by the early 18th century complex tableaux vivant were included, showing scenes from the Karbala massacre.Footnote ⁴¹ It is noteworthy that among the dozens of accounts of these processions given by foreigners, there is not a single mention of a face covering used in representing the Imams or ahl al-bait. On the contrary, many accounts, for example those of Antonio de Gouvea from Shiraz of 1602–04, Evliyá Çelebi from Tabriz of 1647 and 1655, and Jean Chardin from Isfahan of 1667 recall the elaborate efforts made to achieve a naturalistic representation of the martyrs, the Karbala captives, and the injuries that they suffered.Footnote ⁴² At the same time many travelers noted that other procession participants deliberately altered their countenances. Pietro Della Valle, who visited Isfahan in 1618–19, Adam Olearius, who visited Ardabil in 1637, and J. Thévenot, who visited Shiraz in 1665, all remark that some penitents in the Muharram processions colored their faces and bodies with black or red paint.Footnote ⁴³ Anxiety around, or a metaphorical approach to, the representation of holy figures by live performers does not appear to be a feature of the Safavid period.

Moving to some of the earliest reports of ta_ʿziyeh, we find no mention of veiling saintly figures. On the contrary, the wording of certain accounts strongly suggests that they were not veiled. For example, the German cartographer Carsten Niebuhr, witnessing a ta_ʿziyeh on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf in 1765, specifically mentions the faces of the performers showing the desperation of Husain and his supporters when defending themselves against a ferocious enemy attack (1778:198). The same impression is given by English army officer William Francklin in his account of a series of ta_ʿziyeh episodes portraying the martyrdoms at Karbala performed over several days in Shiraz in Muharram of 1787. He makes no mention of face coverings and instead comments that “Each day some particular action of the story is represented by people selected for the purpose of personating those concerned in it.” Francklin’s note that the appearance of the performer is important indicates that their faces are visible (1788:100–01).

In the Qajar period, during which ta_ʿziyeh enjoyed more than half a century of sustained elite patronage, there are dozens of accounts of performances in the travelogs of Europeans and others. None record the use of a face veil by performers playing Husain while he was alive. However, some pay particular attention to costuming, shedding light on how face coverings were used: to show characters appearing in visions and visitations. Describing a series of ta_ʿziyeh performances at the tekyeh of Hajji Mirza Aqasi in Tehran in 1843, Russian orientalist Ilya Nikolayevich Bérézine gives great detail regarding Husain’s attire. He recounts that in the performance of The Martyrdom of Hurr, Husain wears a magnificent white djoubba (long loose garment) and a green cashmere shawl and turban (in Bérézine Reference Bérézine2011:242). Then, in The Martyrdom of _ʿ Abbas, Husain wears a turban made of a brown cashmere shawl (245). In the Martyrdom of _ʿ Ali Akbar Husain again wears a green turban (248). Then, in an episode set in Damascus after Husain’s martyrdom, Husain appears as a spirit (ombre) wearing the same costume as he does in the Martyrdom of _ʿ Ali Akbar but with a muslin over his face (256).

In the same vein, Bérézine tells of a scene in The Martyrdom of _ʿ Abbas in which _ʿAli and Fatimah, Husain’s parents, come from paradise to Karbala and lament the fate awaiting their offspring. Bérézine describes _ʿAli as wearing a veil of brilliant blue, and Fatimah in black veils. Fatimah being veiled is to be expected as she is a woman; but the veiling of _ʿAli is more evidence of veiling holy figures in apparitions. In the same play, Bérézine also describes Gabriel as wearing white cashmere veils (245–46). Angels, like the apparitions, come from the ghaib, the unseen world, or the world beyond; thus, there is a logic in their sharing this aspect of physical representation.

The impression of ta_ʿziyeh veiling conventions given by Bérézine’s observations is confirmed by the account of Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin, an American journalist and diplomat who attended ta_ʿziyeh performances in Tehran between 1882 and 1885, some 40 years later. He recalls that “Hossein was represented by an actor named Mollah Hossein, who was draped in massive robes of green and cashmere wrought with gold; his head was covered with a large Arabian turban” (1887:390). In contrast, he describes the performer playing Husain’s sister, Zainab, as “shrouded in a thick mantle” (391). That Benjamin pays close attention to the performer’s identity and does not describe Husain as “shrouded” suggests that he is not veiled. Yet, like Bérézine’s account, Benjamin’s again suggests that veils were used for appearances from the ghaib. Benjamin witnessed the same scene, mentioned above, in which _ʿAli and Fatimah come to Karbala from paradise and lament over the sleeping family before the beginning of the battle, and described them as “two figures shrouded in the cerements of the tomb conversing in sepulchral accents” (395), again indicating that the performers’ faces were covered.

While we cannot discount the possibility of some performers historically using face veils when playing the living Imam Husain and his family, the Qajar period witness accounts, too numerous to detail here,Footnote ⁴⁴ allow us to conclude that in the large public performances in urban centers the veil was not used, just as it is not used by many ta_ʿziyeh performers in present-day Iran. Supporting this conclusion, the photographs of ta_ʿziyeh performances of the 1890s also show the Imam and male members of the ahl al-bait unveiled,Footnote ⁴⁵ as do photographs of ta_ʿziyeh performances in the early 1970s (Homayuni 1353 SH:60; and [1368] 1380 SH:369–78, 384). Furthermore, William Beeman, who spent considerable time working with ta_ʿziyeh performers from the 1970s to the early 2000s, writes that face veils were used by actors playing female characters, angels, jinn, and male characters such as the Prophet Muhammad when they appear in dreams (2011:228).

In sum, it is clear that the use of veils for holy figures was traditionally reserved to denote their appearance from the hereafter. The use of face veils when portraying events from Husain’s earthly life among modern-day performers is then a new trend: what is its significance? But first: what is the purpose of the veil in visions and visitations?

Veils in Visions and Visitations

Indeed, it is worth holding onto the idea of the white (or sometimes colored) face veil as a symbol of divine luminescence traditionally used by ta_ʿziyeh performers showing saintly figures only when these figures appear after their earthly lives. Is the function to represent the “veil” between the dead and the living? This is possible, but in ta_ʿziyeh the temporal frame is an eternal time; to think of a member of the ahl al-bait as dead is incongruous. Divine resplendence offers a different way of understanding this costuming choice. Could it be that the figures visiting the living from paradise are resplendent because of having been in the presence of Allah? In the Judeo-Christian tradition, when Moses descends from Mount Sinai after receiving the Ten Commandments, his face is radiant because he has been in the presence of God. After telling the Israelites of his encounter with God he puts on a veil, which he removes only when he again enters the presence of God (Exodus 34:29–34). The Qur_ʾan does not mention Moses’s radiance, but it does include the suggestion that believers will see Allah in the afterlife, upon which their faces will become radiant (Q75:22–23). We cannot know for certain what drove the costuming choices of centuries past, but the idea expressed here, of divine resplendence leaving a glow upon those witnessing it, is intriguing.

The mystery plays do not include many apparitions from beyond the grave, but other scenes of vision and visitation raise interesting questions. For example, at the Annunciation might not the Angel Gabriel, as a supernatural figure, be masked, while Mary, as a human one, is not? This could create striking contrasts of acting styles between the masked and unmasked performers and might affect the audience’s experience of the different characters: would they more readily identify with an unmasked Mary than a masked Gabriel? However, in the N. Town Annunciation, Mary is troubled by the fact that this angelic visitation is different from others that she has regularly experienced: “Aungelys dayly to me doth aper,/But not in þe lyknes of man þat is my fer” (Angels appear to me daily, but not in the likeness of man that is my equal).Footnote ⁴⁶ The implication seems to be that Gabriel has, for the first time, appeared to Mary unmasked, in fully human form. This makes particularly pointed the humor of Joseph’s conviction, portrayed in several cycles, that his wife’s visitor has in fact been an angelically beautiful but totally earthly man.Footnote ⁴⁷

The revenant Christ features in two scenes in mystery plays in which he is not immediately recognized: his appearances to Mary Magdalen and to the pilgrims on the road to Emmaus. In what seems a curious congruence, in ta_ʿziyeh plays when a figure appears from beyond the grave they are initially not recognized by the other characters,Footnote ⁴⁸ a delay that we can understand as aided by the veil. Could the resurrected Christ in these scenes be masked, while the incarnate Christ was not? But this would hardly explain why Mary Magdalen mistakes him for the gardener—and would not the pilgrims have recognized a masked figure as supernatural?Footnote ⁴⁹ The lack of recognition in these cases simply follows the biblical narrative, and so may be as elusive and unexplained in performance as it is in the gospels.Footnote ⁵⁰ But it is worth asking how other characters onstage react to such markers of the supernatural as masks and face paint. Do they notice them, or do they not? Do they function as signals primarily or even exclusively to the audience?

At least in the Chester plays, and possibly in others, the child Jesus in the “Christ among the Doctors” episode has a gilded face. But none of the doctors seems to notice this, or at least, none of them comments: the face paint is an extradiegetic signal to the audience. In N. Town one of the doctors does remark directly on Jesus’s face; he comments not that it is painted or radiant but that it is the face of a child:

By contrast, at the Transfiguration, the miraculous event by which Jesus’s divinity is revealed as he appears on a mountain top talking to Moses and Elijah,Footnote ⁵² in the York plays, the disciples do comment on Christ’s radiant beauty and shining face:

But they are aware that this is an exceptional state of affairs (“never als he is nowe”); that the Transfiguration gives them a unique glimpse of divine radiance: the shining face is inherent to the scriptural account on which the play is based. The disciples receive an otherworldly vision of Christ as he is in heaven, not as he is on earth.

Modern Trends of Ta_ʿziyeh Veiling

Comparison, Continuity, and Change

In comparing masking practice in mystery plays and ta_ʿziyeh, we do not claim any direct influence. But we note similar dramaturgical concerns and strategies in representing the divine. The problems faced by performers in the two traditions, and the devices by which they have sought to overcome them, illuminate practices both historical and contemporary.

The gilded mask of the medieval actor presenting God obscures the actor’s features and at the same time hints, through its shining, at the radiance of the divine. Radiance may itself obscure, blurring the features of the “little God” whose face is painted gold; at the same time, it reveals the divinity of the character represented. Studying medieval tradition alongside the practices of ta_ʿziyeh leads to new questions and observations about these performances, much as staging a play does.

An academic generalization such as “supernatural characters wear masks in medieval mystery plays” becomes richer and more complicated by particular examples such as the angel of the N. Town Annunciation who is “in the likeness of a man,” or the question of whether other characters onstage see the mask on another actor, or whether it is primarily a signal to the audience. The ta_ʿziyeh tradition has particular affordances because it is a living tradition, by contrast with the mystery plays that when performed today are inevitably revivalist. Observations that can be made about the changes that have taken place in the ta_ʿziyeh tradition remind us to consider the changes that might have taken place in the mystery plays before their scripts were actually set down.

In examining the history of ta_ʿziyeh’s representational conventions, we have seen that it was not customary for performers to wear a face veil when portraying Imam Husain or other (male) holy figures during their earthly lives. The recent trend of veiling by some—but not all—performers when playing such roles is testament to a tradition that is neither homogenous nor static. Diversity within the tradition makes it impossible to pinpoint when this practice began, but it shows every sign of being specific to the environment of the 21st century. The comparison with the older tradition, the mystery plays, nuances our understanding of this turn. Whereas we could read the veiling of holy figures in the ta_ʿziyeh as restrictive, it helps us to see another potential level of significance: the veil as a symbol of resplendence, shading the light of the sacred that shines through. Nonetheless, we have also seen unease about humans representing the divine in both traditions, and the social and political changes related to this.

Indeed, the new veiling of some performers in the last two decades occurs in the context of international contention surrounding the permissibility of depicting the Prophet Muhammad. This comes in the wake of the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005–2006 as well as the violent attacks on the staff of the French satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine between 2011 and 2015 in response to their publication of illustrations deemed offensive to Islam.Footnote ⁵⁷ The Iranian government’s 2007 prohibition on depicting the Prophet and Shi_ʿi Imams was imposed in response to this controversy. It is not unlikely that the highly charged nature of the debate has weighed on some ta_ʿziyeh performers, directors, and those commissioning ta_ʿziyeh performances, with recent questioning of reverence in representation driving a revision of costuming conventions.

Furthermore, we wonder whether a new self-consciousness around the direct representation of holy figures might be influenced by the globalized nature of modern-day Islam, and the fact that such representation is more problematic within Sunni culture. Learning about the restrictions placed on the mystery plays by the Tudor monarchs in Reformation England, who legislated against plays that might provoke sectarian strife, makes this seem more likely, the contemporary as well as historical concern being not just to avoid blasphemy but also to foster political unity. In today’s case, the unity would be with the wider ummah, the Muslim community, beyond Iran’s borders.

Indeed, in discussing the making of Muhammad: The Messenger of God, Pak-Shiraz highlights the efforts made by director Majidi to neutralize the potentially controversial nature of the film by building a consensus between Sunni and Shi_ʿa clerics internationally on how the story should be told and shown. Yet still the film, sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, received various condemnations from senior religious scholars of al-Azhar Mosque and University in Cairo, Indian Muslim organizations, and Saudi religious authorities. Fatwas were issued against Majidi and A.R. Rahman, the composer of the soundtrack (Pak-Shiraz Reference Pak-Shiraz2024:11–12; Child Reference Child2015). While ta_ʿziyeh performances are delivered to a domestic audience, the potential for their fast and broad diffusion to online global viewers complicates the question of representation beyond longstanding local tradition.

We have seen that within Persian visual art, the face veil existed historically as a marker of the holy, shielding divine resplendence (Gruber Reference Gruber2019b:201). But perhaps more significantly, within ta_ʿziyeh’s own established practice it has long been customary for holy figures to wear face veils when visiting the living from paradise, perhaps because they bring with them the luminescence of having been in proximity to Allah. If this reading is correct, then the veil as a symbol of divine resplendence already exists within the visual language of ta_ʿziyeh and can be used to deal with the modern conundrum without diverging (greatly) from convention.

Coda: Affordances and Challenges of the Transhistorical

What does our study tell us about transhistorical comparison itself? The process of comparing a particular dramaturgical detail of traditions that are independent of each other suggests that questions about sources and transmission are not the only questions that scholars can usefully ask. Studying a living tradition may have particular value for the study of a historical one, not least in reminding us that historical traditions were not unchanging while “alive.” At the same time, study of a historical tradition may help scholars of a living one to remember that, whether we notice it or not, the time and place of the scholar will always affect the interpretation of signs.

We will conclude by illustrating the importance of attention to scholarly situatedness, and its particular significance for performance research. An example already briefly mentioned is the staging of perhaps the most important Old Testament instance of a shining countenance: Moses’s return after receiving the Commandments with his face qaran, reflecting the radiance of the divinity he has encountered. The Hebrew term refers to “horns of light,” but in the Latin Vulgate the term is translated as “cornuta,” meaning literally “horned,” and, as a result, in medieval and early modern European images Moses generally sports actual horns. We do not know for certain how Moses was presented on the medieval English stage, but N. Town, Towneley, and Chester plays include scenes in which he presents the Ten Commandments.Footnote ⁵⁸ It seems probable that in these scenes at least he would be horned, to accord with the iconographic conventions, and indeed continental practice.Footnote ⁵⁹ However, nobody comments on his horns. In one variant of the Chester Moses play, the Prince of the Synagog describes the light that emanates from God that is so great that no one may look on Him; speaking for the people, pro populo, he declares that they will speak instead to Moses:

The lines seem to identify Moses as an intermediary between the human and the divine light, which might accord with the idea that he bears some of the reflected light of God—but nothing is made explicit. Nonetheless, the iconographic convention is so strong that it is difficult to imagine that he is not horned.

It is clear that in some cases these horns became associated with antisemitic stereotypes, feeding medieval antisemitism through the association of Moses with the old law that should be superseded by the new law of Christ (Bertman Reference Bertman2009). But this makes it all the more curious that Moses, a figure vital to Christianity as well as to Judaism, should be presented in this—to us—undignified way; until we consider that, according to a different set of iconographic conventions, horns are for heroes. Alexander the Great is often represented with horns, the horns of Ammon, which reflect his semi-divine status as son of Zeus Ammon, the ram-headed god. This tradition continued in depictions of Alexander in both Christian and Islamic tradition: in the Christian Syriac Alexander legend God gives the ruler two horns “so that I may gore with them the kingdoms of the world” in order to glorify God (Budge Reference Budge1889:257).Footnote ⁶¹

The King James and later translations render qaran as “shining,” and later images show rays of light. As a result, the horned Moses perhaps becomes even more unfamiliar and bizarre to a modern viewer in an anglophone, Judeo-Christian tradition: to the uninitiated, the dominant effect of the early images may be that, in them, the horns deprive Moses of dignity, suggesting an animal baseness, or even recalling jibes about cuckolds. Should not more contextual knowledge make us suspicious of the antisemitic stereotypes that might be activated in us, as it seems they were in medieval viewers? We cannot know how the various potential significations of Moses’s horns interacted for medieval viewers: possibly some saw them as indeed horns of light reflecting divine radiance. If a theatre company stages today one of the medieval plays in which Moses presents the Ten Commandments, would it be right to give the Moses actor horns, or would this risk provoking a negative response?

Looking at the ta_ʿziyeh of the 21st century has afforded a glimpse of a living devotional performance in the process of adapting to the developing sensitivities of the day, heightened by transnational debate, and responding to changes brought about by technological advances, as its narrative is treated in new traditions such as film and VR. The potential controversies that attend these traditions indicate that, while an audience as well as a performance must be “situated,” the audiences of the present are heterogenous, just as were audiences of the past.