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ABSTRACT
Post-socialist urban dynamics in the Caucasus have been characterized by uneven processes of rebuilding and reclaiming of sacred spaces. Exploring re-emerging Shia Muslim lifestyles in post-conflict Armenia around Yerevan's Blue Mosque, I examine how a religious place is perceived and used in everyday life. Built at the end of the eighteenth century in a multi-religious environment, today the Blue Mosque is associated with the political body symbolizing the recent Iranian–Armenian friendship and with Iran's soft-power policy in the Caucasus. The ethnographic research reveals that the mosque complex is not an isolated sacred site emphasizing differences between Iranian migrants and Armenian locals, worshippers, and non-worshippers, but a spatial expression of the coming together of groups from different backgrounds and of the vernacular hybridity that existed in Yerevan in the past. In spite of the invisibility and the silence of the Blue Mosque's past from the point of view of government officials, the physical restoration of the mosque is triggering unembodied memories of people in conscious and unconscious reconstructions of the multi-religious past. The question, is to what extent does the Blue Mosque contribute to a visible rediversification of religious and ethnic life in Armenia?
Acknowledgement
The research for this article was based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in Armenia (November 2010–April 2011), supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and assisted by Satenik Mkrtchyan, at that time a doctoral student at the National Academy of Sciences and Ivane Javakhishvili State University in Tbilisi, and by Anahit Meliksetian, a student at Yerevan State University. Part of this research was discussed in a previous publication (T. Darieva, 2012, ‘Placing a Mosque in Yerevan: Invisible Place, Multiple Names', in Die postsowjetische Stadt: Urbane Aushandlungsprozesse im Südkaukasus, special issue of Berliner Blätter: Ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge 59: 54–73). I was able to go deeper into this topic within the ongoing research project, Transformation of Sacred Spaces in the post-Soviet Caucasus (2013–2016), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena. I am grateful to my field assistants, in particular to Satenik Mkrtchyan, to the editor of this special issue, and to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Until the Russian–Persian war, 1826–1828, the territory of modern Armenia was under the control of the Persian Empire.
2. The concept of soft power is based on attracting others and co-opting, people rather than coercing them, by emphasizing cultural values and cultural diplomacy as means to reach that outcome (Nye Citation2005).
3. According to the Armenian constitution the centrality of the Armenian Apostolic Church is protected by Armenian Law. One can say that over the twentieth century the institution of the Armenian Church has been transformed into a kind of ‘cultural Christianity’, which emphasises the link between the ethnic group and its religion. In the Armenian experience, the mainstream religion was actually present and visible in different spheres of social and cultural life during the socialist period.
4. The rapid rise of the Armenian population in the city was due to forced migration from the territory of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth century (Bournoutian Citation1982, 61–77).
5. Yeghishe Charents (1897–1937) was an Armenian writer and public activist, a member of the Bolshevik party, who was persecuted and killed during Stalin's Big Purge; Axel Bakunts (1899–1937), a writer of short stories and a member of the Armenian Association of Proletarian Writers, was also killed in the purge; Gabriel Gyurjan (1892–1987) was an Armenian painter, professor at Yerevan's Institute of Fine Arts, and leader of the Armenian Union of Artists; Martiros Saryan (1880–1972), a Soviet Armenian painter famous for his impressionist pictures of Armenian and Middle East landscapes, designed the coat of arms for the Armenian SSR.
6. Community of Art Workers (1924–1930) – played an important role for Armenian painters, artists, poets, and writers.
7. In 1990, the small Shia mosque on Vardanats Street was bulldozed by young Armenian nationalists. According to the British journalist Thomas de Waal (Citation2003, 79), ‘The Armenians didn't harm the Blue Mosque, because it was known as a museum of history of Yerevan, as the Armenian Cultural Centre, and moreover, it became known as a “Persian mosque”.'
8. Muehir is the Persian word for ‘sign’ or ‘stamp’, analogue to turbah, a term for the Shia sand stone used to pray on. It is considered that the sand stone (clay or mud) symbolizes the earth from sacred Kerbela, the pilgrimage site for Shia Muslims.
9. Sardar is the Persian equivalent for ‘governor’ or ‘ruler’ of a settlement.
10. Though the Blue Mosque operates as a mosque and functions as a public place for prayer, there is no officially registered Muslim religious minority in Armenia.
11. This type of migrant is not new for Armenian–Iranian relationships as this migration goes back to the Soviet period. A group of leftist Armenians from Iran received special permission to enter Soviet Armenia to study.
12. Matagh, the Armenian tradition of giving alms to the poor and asking for health or prosperity, includes the ritual of offering a slaughtered rooster or lamb to God in front of the church. It is considered a ritual that involves a local synthesis of pagan and Christian beliefs. See for example Abrahamian (Citation2006), Manning and Meneley (Citation2008), and Tuite (Citation2011).