Pilgrimage in Contemporary Iran with Interpretive Anthropological Approach: A Field Study of Imam Reza’s Holy Shrine

Pilgrimage benefits from a long history in religious literature around the world, expressing the bonding relation between man and Supreme realm, and as old as the history of mankind. Although pilgrimage was supposedly a homogenous and balanced interaction in the past, today it is turned into a heterogeneous and imbalanced interaction. In this study, we try to use topography and variations of pilgrims in a field study of Imam Reza Holy Shrine. Hence, we tend to find out wether pilgrimage can be examined with the help of modern developments in society. Utilizing the relation between pilgrimage to Imam Reza Shrine and process of Modernism, we study elements like secularization and modernity which may affect pilgrimage and then we introduce three types of pilgrims, namely traditional pilgrim, modern pilgrim, and tourist pilgrim. These categories of pilgrims can be seen through five stereotypes of pilgrimage which we recognize as Event pilgrimage, Distance pilgrimage, Feminine pilgrimage, Metropolitan pilgrimage and Political pilgrimage. The final part of this thesis covers a categorization of Religiosity among Iranian nation introducing dominant, lived and emerging religiosity. Our research approach is interpretive Anthropology, referring to Clifford Geertz ideas. The applied methodology is qualitative and ethnographic, using original data collected from various sources including interviews, travel reports, demand letters, and memoirs. Auto-ethnographic attitudes have been also used to flourish the conclusions.