Taʿzia khani, also known as shabih khani, is a Shi˓ite form of devotional theatre. The performances, ongoing in the present day, are fundamentally rituals of lament, and centre around commemoration of the martyrdom of the Third Imam of Shi˓i Islam and grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, Hosayn ibn ˓Ali ibn Abi Taleb, born c.AH 6 (AD 627). The taʿzia repertoire includes a largely anonymous cycle of plays, the central corpus of which portray the siege and slaughter of Hosayn and seventy-two of his companions on the plain of Karbala in the Islamic month of Moharram in the year AH 61 (AD 680). As a genre of drama, taʿzia has undergone its maximum development in the Iranian context, although the same events are commemorated amongst Shi˓i communities internationally through a wide variety of performance forms.

The aims of this article are twofold. First, to introduce this tradition in its Persian context, hoping to encourage a comparative analysis discourse with current scholars of European varieties of early theatre (religious and otherwise). Secondly, I aim to contribute to the existing understanding of the process of the emergence of this devotional theatre form. Indeed, large annual Moharram commemorations for Hosayn have been documented on the Iranian plateau from the tenth century AH (sixteenth century AD), when Shi˓ism became the official religion of state under the Safavid dynasty, AH 907–1135 (AD 1501–1722). During this period public lamentations took a variety of forms, yet in urban contexts they appear to have been largely split between processional rituals and rousing public recitations of the Karbala narrative and life of Hosayn, a practice known as rawza khani. Despite some debate, the prevailing scholarly theory has been that the first taʿzia plays were generated around the mid-eighteenth century AD through the fusing of the visual elements of the ambulatory lament rituals for Hosayn with the narratives recounted in the rawza khani recitals. In light of new evidence suggesting that the tradition began somewhat earlier, I propose an alternative theory of how it emerged.

As suggested by the existing theory, the processional rituals of the late eleventh century AH (seventeenth century AD) and early twelfth century AH (eighteenth century AD) became increasingly theatrical in nature. Likewise, the influence of the literature used in the Safavid-era rawza khani recitals (for which see below) on the content of the main episodes of the taʿzia cycle is clear.