Category: World Unseen

These sketches are part of an ongoing visual exploration of Shia social memory, ritualistic thought and identity, through investigating miracles, dreams, and super natural encounters from the beyond. Sketch: 10th Muharram 61 AH – Sakina and the blood of Banu Hashim, the Prophet Muhammad’s clan, mixing in the scorching sand of Karbala. Sketch: The tasbeeh…

Among Shia works of the Safavid era, Baqir Majlisi’s writings (his most popular work is the Bihar al Anwar, 10th century collection of Ahadis) on Karbala are characterized by an insistence on the predestinarian quality of Imam Hussain’s sacrifice. In the chapter “The ways in Which God informed his Prophets of the forthcoming martyrdom of…

A shabeeh (replica or mimic) Zuljennah – the horse of Imam Hussain – surrounded by mirrors. Inspired by the tradition from Mubarak Haveli in Mochi Gate Lahore, where each year before the Ashura procession on the eve of 9th Muharram, the horse is shown a mirror in order to reveal the stature or depth of…

Not far from the bank of the Euphrates, a child not older than 12 sits solitary in scorching desert sand with her legs crossed. Her head is uncovered, bare under the orange sky, for the very first time. Behind her, a dozen tents are set ablaze. She can feel the heat on her back –…

Clamor and sweat, commotion and suffocation, uproar and eruption. For the past three years I have found myself among these sensualities in the Mochi Gate area of Lahore, in the late hours of 9th Muharram.  When I was a child and oblivious to the practice of Hussainism, my mother would often bring up the mention…