A Muslim Passion Play: Key to a Lebanese Village

by EMRYS PETERS

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DURING the late summer of 1952, I had the good fortune to be residing in a Lebanese village during the performance of a religious folk drama which proved to be, for a Western visitor, a moving and significant experience. My good fortune was by no means unique; others, notably Sir Lewis Polly in 1897, have studied the traditional passion plays of the Arabic villages and have used them to illustrate points of Muslim theology. But I was more interested in the sociological aspects.

First, however, it is necessary to account for the religious content of the drama. When the Prophet Mohammed died without male issue in 632, the succession to the leadership of Islam was left in doubt. The early caliphs, who based their claims to the succession on their relationships to the Prophet’s daughters or in-laws, led troubled reigns and perished often enough at the hands of assassins. In time, however, a larger and larger number of Muslims came to recognize Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali as the first true Imam, and they formed a group which eventually became known as the Shiah sect. The Shiites in turn are subdivided according to how many of Ali’s successors they recognize, and thus the Muslims of the village in which I was visiting are called the “Twelvers.”

During the squabbles over the succession, Ali’s younger son, Husein, became a rallying point for those who were discontented with Muawiya and his son Yazid, usurpers of the caliphate. Husein received letters of support from the leaders of a number of powerful factions, and he decided to seek in Iraq an army with which he could challenge Yazid on the battlefield. He proposed to rely, first, on the support of the citizens of Kufa. When he had approached Kufa with his small band of followers, he sent his cousin Muslim to sound out opinion within the city, but Muslim was promptly caught and beheaded. Dismayed and unwilling to risk entering the city, Husein and his followers withdrew a short distance to the west and encamped, but the governor of Kufa, Ubaid Allah Ibn Ziyad, who had recently been appointed by Yazid, believed that Husein’s presence was a threat to established authority and quickly sent out forces to deal with him.

The first group was led by a certain el-Hurr Ibn Yazid el-Tamimi who transmitted to Husein the order that he return immediately to Mecca but at the same time privately warned him against the governor’s intended ambush on the road. Husein stood his ground. Next the governor dispatched an army under Omar Ibn Sad. Outnumbered, Husein retreated to Karbala, which is now a celebrated Shiah shrine. Although he was unable to persuade Husein to surrender, Omar Ibn Sad was nevertheless reluctant to attack the Prophet’s grandson. Therefore the Caliph Yazid ordered another detachment, under a certain Shimr, who was given express orders to end the affair. The battle of Karbala (680) was the result. Husein’s outnumbered band was cut to pieces and Husein himself was slain. His head was taken to the caliph in Damascus.

Husein’s fate is ritually re-enacted each year by Shiah Muslims throughout the Arab World. It is a drama of the deepest religious and cultural significanoe, and at the same time it provides an important clue to the social structure of life in a rural Arabic community.

But in order to understand the sociological aspect of the drama, one must first know something about the organization of an Arab village.

In terms of religious geography, the village which I visited lies on a border; Shiah Muslims predominate in the area and in the region which extends southward to the Israeli border; immediately northward lie the communities of the Lebanese Christians; to the northeast are the strongholds of the Druze. No Sunni, as opposed to Shiah, Muslims reside permanently in the village.

Of the 1,362 villagers, thirty-live are Christian; the rest are Shiah Muslims. The Shiites are divided into two large groups, those who are authorities on religion and the lay-folk who are unenlightened. The authorities are in turn subdivided into the Sayyids and the Sheikhs. The Sayyids, who claim lineal descent from the Prophet, are thought to possess an innate religious power which gives them the right to bless; traditionally they pray for the sick and the dead, write amulets, attend funerals and marriages, and bless the ceremonial occasions of the village. The Sheikhs, on the other hand, who are nondescendants, have won their authority by their own studies of Shiah dogma, religious ritual, and the law; they are particularly expert in the laws governing marriage and land tenure. They act as witnesses, conduct marriage ceremonies, and give advice in cases of divorce. They also lead public prayers at festivals and funerals and are generally in charge of teaching religious knowledge to qualified young people.

The forty-five Sayyids in the village compose one homogeneous family group, but the Sheikhs are of two families. In fact, of the 226 Sheikhs, only 183 are traditional Sheikhs as I have just described them. The other forty-three, recently humble folk, have acquired Sheikhly status by accumulating wealth and giving their children a European type of education. To distinguish them, it is convenient to call them “secular” Sheikhs.

The remaining majority of the villagers, 1,056 in all, are technically ignorant of religious matters. However, 207 of them are petty traders who have a higher literacy than the 819 peasants.

This religious division among the villagers is reinforced by an equally sharp economic division. The Sayyids and Sheikhs, despite recent forced sales, are the big landowners. Since their rank prohibits them from engaging in menial labor, their lands are worked exclusively by hired peasants. Income from this source, plus their fees for religious services, enables them to live reasonably well and sometimes to accumulate modest wealth. Formerly the Sayyids received regular religious dues from the peasants in return for writing letters, solemnizing marriages, and saying prayers. But nowadays these services are performed chiefly on the basis of fees.

The plots of the peasants and petty traders are often no more than one hundred yards square, and neither group could live from its land alone. Hence most of the peasants derive their income from working two or three plots for a Sayyid or Sheikh. The shopkeepers augment the income from their land with the speculative gains from trading — speculative because the peasants rarely pay cash but instead draw goods against a percentage of their uncertain harvest. Thus the shopkeepers’ accumulation of capital is very slow, and they are seldom able to relax in a position of assured economic well-being.

A third criterion, that of marriage, can be used to define the social structure of the village. Thus among the Sayyids and Sheikhs a very small proportion, less than two per cent, marry peasants or petty shopkeepers. Most marry within their own family groups; the rest marry into similai family groups in other villages. Less than half of the peasants and shopkeepers, on the other hand, marry into their family groups; they intermarry much more readily with other families and turn often to other villages for their marriage partners. But very rarely does a peasant or shopkeeper elevate himself through marriage to be a Sayyid or Sheikh.

The small number of Christians in the village share the economic footing of the Shiah peasants. They own small plots of land and in addition they are blacksmiths and coppersmiths — professions considered undignified by the Muslims. The Muslims, of course, hold that Christians are ritually polluting; intermarriage and even interdining are strictly banned. Yet at ceremonies the Christians are paid deference, and at funerals, for instance, they walk at the head of the cortege with the more notable Sheikhs. The Christians participate not only in the secular but in many of the religious affairs of the village.

Thus we see a village in which, so far, modern or Western notions have made very little progress. Century-old religious and cultural habits prevail almost exclusively, blended in a purely native tradition. Long it has been since such a complete identification of religious, economic, and social sanctions has occurred in Christian society.

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ALTHOUGH the form of the Husein miracle play differs somewhat in different localities, it is always associated with the first day of Muharram, the Muslim New Year. In the village I visited, the drama itself came on the tenth day and provided a climax to a crescendo of ceremonial mourning.

The mourning began with ceremonial sittings, held each night in eight houses and preceded by coffee or, if the host were wealthy, tea. Separate sittings were held for women. Each sitting began with a twenly-minute address, intoned by a Sheikh; his subject might be the lives of the first three Shiah Imams or, more often, a graphic description of the battle of Karbala. Invariably toward the end of his recitation the speaker developed a more and more emotional tone, and his hearers burst into loud sobbing, beating their foreheads.

Apart from their religious content, these sittings were used politically. The two Sheikhly candidates for mayor, who were to meet in an election a few weeks later, were particularly generous hosts. One even hired two Sheikhs to speak at each sitting. The guests, of course, carefully compared the hospitality offered them by their different hosts, and they were quick to praise those who provided a second round of coffee or tea and added cigarettes or sweets. To confer honor on the host, guests would invariably ask the congregation to repeat the opening sura of the Koran in honor of the dead of his family.

On the seventh night, the sittings were replaced by a procession through the village. First, a band of men, stripped to the waist, beat their chests as they marched. Next came the village poet,followed by a group of men who shouted the couplets he had composed in honor of Husein. Then about fifty half-naked boys thumped their chests like the adults, calling out, “Oh Husein! Oh Abbas! Oh Thirsty One!" The rest of the men simply marched behind.

In the next night’s procession, those who had beaten their chests now flailed their backs with chains, bruising the flesh through rectangular holes cut in their thin black tunics. Behind them marched a new group of chest-beaters, followed by the poet and his chorus, the small boys, and the miscellaneous men.

On the ninth night, the first group appeared equipped with swords. Clothed now in shrouds, the men beat their foreheads with the sword blades. The chest-beaters of the previous night flailed their backs, and a new group took up the chest-beating.

The emotion of grief, on this ninth night, rose to a pitch of utter abandon. The procession, led by one of the Sheikhs who had previously addressed the ceremonial meetings, marched to and, if possible, through the houses where the sittings had been held. At each, the procession halted while the Sheikh intoned a particularly moving passage, and the beholders sobbed, “Tomorrow Husein will die,”and beat their foreheads in near-hysteria.

The occupants of houses along the route wept unrestrainedly as the procession passed, the women waving black rags, as at funerals.

These processions, lit fitfully by flickering oil lamps, accompanied by dolorous chants of death and thirst and by the thuds of the flagellants, mounted each night in emotional intensity as they re-enacted the three-day prelude to the battle of Karbala and Husein’s death. On the ninth night, the shrouded figures lent an added note of somberness to the frenzied proceedings.

Then, till the early hours of the tenth morning, a book on Husein’s life and death was read aloud from cover to cover at various Sheikhly houses. Anyone was allowed to read, new readers replacing those who tired. Not a word was said by the listeners. At the end, the audiences were led in special prayer; at one point, as Muslims, all faced south to Mecca, and at another, as Shiites, they bowed toward Karbala in the east.

At about eight o’clock on the morning of the tenth day, a crowd of several thousand assembled on the village common ground. Another procession formed and began to circle the common — first, men from the village, led by the poet and standardbearers carrying the furled flag of the village and the black mourning-flag; then came delegations from ten other villages, equipped with similar flags. The men called out the names of the heroes of Karbala and repeated the poet’s couplet:

On the day of the battle of Karbala
The earth and the sky wept.

Hundreds of people gathered from the surrounding region, some permanent villagers, others summer visitors, until most of the Shiah villages in that part of the country were represented.

The audience, too busy greeting friends and finding comfortable places under the fig trees, took slight interest in these preliminaries. Pushcart traders did a brisk business in sweetmeats; an openair coffeehouse was crowded. The sun was still low, the air pleasantly cool, the children not yet restive. For half an hour a younger Sheikh had been holding forth again on Husein’s life — a theme beginning to pall after nine days’ repetition — when suddenly, clad in earthy brown and with green turbans (the colors of heaven), Husein and his band marched onto the field. The play had begun.

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FIRST came el-Hurr, with a handful of soldiers. After trying vainly to send Husein back to Mecca, he went over to Husein’s cause — later to die fighting at his side. I was a little surprised by the unnecessary prominence given his part until a member of the most important Sheikh family told me with pride that el-Hurr was one of his ancestors.

Next, to the loud drumming and discordant music of the local band, Omar Ibn Sad’s forces galloped on to the field, heavily armed and clad in pink, a color of hell, though not the deepest. Lengthy parleys to reach a compromise proved, of course, fruitless.

Distant drums and rather jaunty music announced the next detachment. As it rode on, the drums went wild and the instrumentalists blew for all they were worth, regardless of the notes. Gurgling camels, neighing horses, wailing women, screaming children, and the cries of the new warriors created a furor, for these were Shimr’s men who would kill Husein and ride their horses over his bleeding body. They were clad in deepest and most hellish scarlet, and heavily armed. Shimr, in a tunic of chain mail, had a helmet whose sidepieces almost hid his face, while a scarf was wrapped around his chin and his eyes were concealed by dark spectacles. The hope was that this would conceal the identity of the actor — but his voice soon gave him away. All asked one another, “Who is taking Shimr’s part?" but no one answered, since to be identified as Shimr would be the worst of Shiah insults.

The pandemonium hushed while Shimr announced his intention to slay Husein. Now several incidents brought angry cries from the crowd. In one, Husein and his band, though gathered for noonday prayers, were assailed by a shower of arrows. In another, Husein’s half-brother Abbas fought his way to the river Furat, sole source of water, which had been cut off by the enemy. Unwilling to drink while women and children were thirsty, he filled a vessel to carry back, but troops intercepted him and smashed the water jug. Abbas slew several but lost his right hand; undaunted, he continued to fight left-handed. This hand also was cut off, and he dexterously seized the sword in his teeth, only to perish in the last rush. Even more touching was the scene in which Husein carried his infant son to the river for water. The enemy offered to give the child water themselves, but instead treacherously killed him.

Next, a Christian, who happened by, brought a momentary cheer, for, impressed by Husein’s sad tale, he generously embraced his cause But though he fought valiantly, he too was killed. Husein’s moment had come. Left almost alone, he slew many enemies and braced himself, bleeding from his wounds, for his last thrust. Crying out that the religion of the Prophet Mohammed should never perish, he battled until, exhausted, he sank to the ground. An enemy soldier, come to behead him, fell back when Husein opened his eyes. A second was repulsed in the same way. Then the blasphemous Shimr himself came forward; faced with Husein’s stare, he too wavered, but finally delivered the fatal blow.

Though Husein’s death ended the play proper, the carrying of the survivors into captivity in Damascus was symbolized by a procession to the market place. In front rode an enemy soldier carrying on a pike an effigy of Husein’s head — “such a beautiful face, washed in blood.”Behind the captives came all those who had played parts on the enemy side; they wore shrouds, and their faces streamed with blood from foreheads cut open by the village butcher.

At the market, Husein’s son, Ali the Younger, captured because he was too ill to fight, sat astride a camel and stirred the throng with a prophetic and eloquent announcement to the victors that Husein’s struggle had not been in vain. All lamented loudly, women waved black rags, sobbing men beat their heads in despair. “Look at them now,” said a Sayyid, pointing to the victors. “They are the ones who killed Husein. Their grief is so great that they would prefer to die themselves.” He added, indicating the young man on the camel, that his own family was descended from Ali the Younger.

The procession wound slowly round the edge of the square, so that all the onlookers could take to heart its plain moral. And the people remained in mourning for the rest of the day.

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THE drama of Husein’s passion is of primary importance in Muslim theology and offers as well an interesting specimen to students of comparative religion. But it has other points of interest too. It is one of the most intense and genuine folk ceremonials still being performed in the world, and one wonders, of course, how much longer it can resist the crasser temper of our times. (Already the tradition is weakening: during the performance which I witnessed, several of the more thoughtless young men in the village spent the day in the coffeehouse, listening to the village’s only radio.) Moreover, the play affords us a valuable insight into the social dynamics of village life.

For instance, the traditional, as opposed to the “secular,” Sheikhs of the village control the script, choose the costumes, and rehearse the actors; above all they cast the parts in such a way as to symbolize and reinforce the distinctions between classes and groups in the village. In the performance which I saw, the parts of Husein and his prominent followers, including women, were taken by Sayyids and Sheikhs. If a few peasants were recruited us rankand-file followers, it was only because there were not enough Sayyids and Sheikhs to go around. Husein himself was acted by a namesake, the Sheikh who was considered the ablest speaker at the mourning ceremonies. Abbas was played by a well-respected Sayyid. Husein’s sisters and Ali the Younger were played by traditional Sheikhs. No petty trader was included on the hero’s side, and the secular Sheikhs were not allowed to participate at all. Even the Christian was acted by a sophisticated, traditional Sheikh.

On t he far more numerous enemy side, however, there was not a single Sayyid or Sheikh, but only petty traders and peasants. Omar Ibn Sad, for instance, was played by the village muezzin, who gives the calls to prayer and washes the bodies of the dead — a kindly person, one who was reasonably well informed on religious matters, but still a peasant. Shimr’s army, all peasants, included the village’s worst citizens, men who idled away their time at cards in the coffeehouse. The “accursed" role of Shimr was taken by an empty-headed and very unsavory character who had been jailed for stealing a friend’s donkey. Even he would have refused the role had he not been paid for it.

Hence the social structure of the village was built into the play itself, acquiring thereby all the religious overtones of the age-old tradition. That structure, unmistakable in the content of the play, was given, in fact, a truly mystical significance, and the play itself argued eloquently though covertly for the continuance of the social status quo.

The villagers saw in Husein’s struggle not an effort to win the caliphate but a fight against evil. The Sayyids and traditional Sheikhs, who claim, many of them, direct descent from Husein and his followers and who arrogate to themselves those roles in the passion play, identify themselves with the forces of good in the drama. Similarly, in real life it is they who pray regularly, who tend the sick, say prayers over new graves, regularize marriages, and in general are the bearers of Shiah culture. In terms of the values accepted by the village, they arc good. The peasants and petty traders, on the other hand, those who play the forces of evil in the drama, often in real life flout the religious rules, through ignorance if not through intentional culpability, Without Sheikhly control, they might pass off their irregular unions as marriages or commit other grave offenses. Because the peasants and shopkeepers are ignorant, they are forgiven their sins; they blaspheme, they play cards openly for money, they are lax in their prayers, they drink, and so on. The play, reinforcing the role of the Sayyids and Sheikhs as the ones who maintain order and virtue in the village, casts the peasants and shopkeepers in their real character as the irresponsibles.

In the processions, it was the peasants who punished themselves, the Sayyids and Sheikhs who looked on and mourned. And after the hollow triumph on the theatrical battlefield, the peasants learned the true nature of their moral defeat in the village square, where the eternal validity of Shiism and the position of the Sayyids and Sheikhs as keepers of the true way of life were announced in one stirring and symbolic recitation. The lesson could not be plainer.

But it the passion play is an annual promulgation of social and economic law, it must not be forgotten that it is also a recurrent experience of the deepest religious, cultural, and aesthetic meaning for the inhabitants of the village, high and low alike. It makes them true participants in their own history, it gives their lives a continuing element of symbolic pageantry. How shall these profoundly necessary spiritual and cultural values be preserved while at the same time the social and economic structure of the Lebanese village is transformed, as it inevitably must be? This, in essence, is one of the fundamental problems which Arabs face today.