Pilgrimages of the Heart: Remote Ziyara and the Articulation of Interiority in Twelver Shi'i Devotion
The practice of remote ziy膩ra, whereby a devotee visits an im膩m鈥檚 tomb not through physical pilgrimage but by reciting a pilgrimage litany, appears in the earliest Twelver literature on ziy膩ra.
Conversely, the ritual consequences of this practice, whereby visiting the im膩m can be performed as regularly as any other pious recitation, affixed to daily prayer alongside dhikr, tasb墨岣� and du士膩示, are only gradually realised over many centuries. This lecture will offer a historical outline of this development, and in so doing will explore the profound changes it signals in Twelver devotional life. The entrenchment of remote ziy膩ra anchored fealty to the im膩m in personal devotion rather than societal action, and this required new kinds of spiritual guidance from the fuqah膩示 who regulated such matters. As well as delineating remote ziy膩ra as a ritual form, scholars increasingly sought to direct the emotional and imaginative states by which these encounters with the im膩m should be accompanied.
