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M. ZIMNEY 695
INTRODUCTION
The shrine of Sayyida Zaynab just south of Damascus, Syria is, like most
pilgrimage sites, steeped in long history and tradition. Neither born in bilad al-
sham, nor particularly welcomed by the Umayyad caliph Yazid, Zaynab bint
Ali ibn Abi Talib (or Sayyida Zaynab) found herself in Damascus in 680 AD
(61 AH), a prisoner of the caliphs army following her brother Husseins de-
feat at Karbala. In the standard Shii narrative, Zaynab and the other women
and children who survived the battle were paraded, along with the heads of
Hussein and his soldiers, through northern Iraq and Syria as boast and warning
to those who would oppose Yazids rule. After a short captivity, Zaynab was
released to Medina, then returned a few months later to Damascus with her
husband where she died and was buried. What was presumably a modest
burial site for over a millennium has become in the last forty years a spectacu-
lar complex of religious, administrative, economic, and social spaces. Its blue-
tiled exterior and massive gold dome, funded by donations from interested
faithful, welcome upwards of two million pilgrims, mostly Shia, from all cor-
ners of the Islamic world annually. They come to pray, cry, and ask for
Zaynabs help with problems in their daily lives. During Ashura, masses
reenact the Battle of Karbala outside the shrine, ritually beating themselves
and often drawing blood. All this, despite the openly debated improbability
that she is actually interred there.
The controversy is rooted in the fact that in a city proud to claim itself the
longest continuously inhabited city in the world, and one that was once the
Umayyad capital, written evidence of the tombs existence prior to the 19th
century is scant. Further complicating the issue is the presence of another large
and popular shrine to Zaynab in Cairo that hosts a massive public moulid cel-
ebration annually and draws pilgrims of its own. In this context, making the
case that Zaynab is in fact buried in Syria presents a formidable challenge, one
with which all involved have wrestled in earnest. The solution that has
emerged is part scholarly debate, part Hollywood production. On the latter
point, much of the success Sayyida Zaynabs shrine in Damascus can be cred-
ited to the production of material culture that has been built around it in the
HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS
1
For example Al-Waqfiya al-Taarikhiya li-Maqaam al-Sayyida Zaynab, Al-Mawsem, no.
25 (1996): 16-29.
2
Ibid., 24.
3Cited in Muhsin al-Amin, Ayaan al-Shia, vol. 7 (Beirut: Dar al-Taaruf lil-Matbouaat),
136.
Zaynab took ill and passed away in Rawiya where she remains buried to this
day.6
A competing account of her last days by those believing Cairo is her resting
place points to her political activities in Medina, not the famine, as the reason
for her forced departure from the city. In this scenario, she fled to Cairo where
she was welcomed with respect and condolences, and even given lodging in
the home of the governor Maslima bin Mukhalid. He subsequently buried her
in one of the rooms when she died less than a year later.7 That room reportedly
now stands at the heart of her mausoleum in Cairo where Zaynab is generally
considered the patron saint of the city. Some also cite as supporting evidence
for this story that Zaynab was traveling not with her husband, but with her sis-
ters Zaynab and Ruqayya and her grand-niece Nafisa. Today there are shrines
to both Ruqayya and Nafisa in Cairo, making Zaynabs presence there at some
point in time at least plausible.
In the ongoing debate, supporters of both sides quote historians and popular
traditions to make their cases. Al-Maqrizi is often reported as saying no mem-
ber of the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) entered Cairo before 762AD/
145AH making it impossible for Zaynab to have lived there. On the other
hand, al-Tabari is invoked for having stated flatly that the real burial site is in
Cairo. The debate has taken form in academic journals, popular literature and
even online chat boards.
Short of exhumation and DNA testing on whatever bodies are buried at
these two sites, no definitive judgment can or will ever be reached. For many,
it frankly doesnt matter. Ones intention, they say, to pay respect and pray for
Zaynab is what is important. Indeed, many pilgrims and residents around the
shrine in Damascus have no delusions that Zaynab is actually buried there, but
still visit it regularly simply as a means to feel close to her.
That said, there remain many who are concerned with establishing Zaynabs
true fate and thus the legitimacy of one shrine over the other. Just how this le-
gitimacy has been accomplished in the case of Sayyida Zaynabs shrine in
Damascus is the subject of the remaining part of this paper.
Many events have marked the last 55 years at the shrine. The focus here is
on two broad categories of development. One is the physical space of the
6
This argument has been made by many. One example is Sheikh Hussein Shahadeh, Lamha
Aama min al-Mustanidaat al-Taarikhiyya li-Madfan al-Sayyida Zaynab fi al-Shaam, Al-
Mawsem, No. 25 (1996): 315.
7
Again this story appears in several iterations. Here I draw upon a narrative presented in
Youssef al-Qaid, Idha Nasinaa fa Udhkuri Anti Umm Haashim, Wajhaat Nathr, no. 35
(December 2001): 60.
shrine, its infrastructure and a network of smaller shrines around it. The sec-
ond is the emotional or sentimental space of these same places.
The most recent chapter in the history of Sayyida Zaynabs Damascus
shrine begins in the year 1950 when Sayyid Mushin al-Amin al-Amili, a well-
respected Shii cleric in the region, established a committee comprised of lead-
ing business figures and social elites from Damascus and its environs to draw
up a plan for a renovated shrine complex and to gather the funds necessary to
implement it. Early efforts were focused on upgrading the road from Damas-
cus, extending utilities to the rural area, and enlarging the core building of the
shrine, all of which were accomplished by 1964. In the 1970s and 80s the
courtyard was tiled as were the arcades and the exterior and interior walls of
the shrine building. Some 80 offices were built around the main courtyard, two
large prayer halls were added as was an exhibition area and the single minaret
was replaced with two 50-meter tile-covered columns. These were followed in
the 1990s by the addition of a medical clinic, a research center, and a five-star
hotel and shopping center adjacent to the complex. Future plans to expand the
shrine further include the overhead enclosure of the main courtyard and con-
struction of additional side courtyards. There are also long-term plans to build
apartments adjacent to the five-star hotel to house visitors.
According to literature distributed at the shrine, great emphasis has been
placed throughout on upgrading the Islamic character of the architecture and
decorations for the complex. Artists have been brought in from Iran to hand-
paint ceiling motifs. Quranic verses rendered in handcrafted blue tiles adorn
the shrine and courtyard, inside and out. As it stands today with its arcaded
spaces around the main courtyard and a gold dome, the shrine looks very much
like those built to the Imams in Najaf, Karbala, and Mashhad. And as is true in
those cities, there is a thriving community of academics working out of several
dozen hauzas, or religious seminaries, in the area.
Truly, the place has been transformed. Whereas shrine officials estimate
perhaps 100,000 pilgrims visited Sayyida Zaynab in 1950, today, as mentioned
in the introduction, they expect upwards of two million people to pass through
its doors annually. In addition there is a resident population of several hundred
thousand people whose origins range from Iraq and Lebanon to Sudan, Ku-
wait, and Pakistan among other countries. Throughout the year, but especially
during the holiday periods of Muharram and summer months, Sayyida Zaynab
hosts a variety of conferences, poetry readings, exhibitions, and most notably
Ashura commemorations. For the most part the economic and social services
necessary to support all these activities and people can all be found in the
growing city around the shrine.
One wonders if those original committee members ever envisioned quite
this level of success. Certainly, they approached the project conscious of the
need to provide for the demands of a growing body of visitors. Yet, the allu-
8
Muhsin al-Amin al-Amili, Ayaan al-Shia, vol. 7 (Beirut: Dar al-Taaruf lil-Matbouaat,
1983), 140.
9
Al-Saaoun wal-Mutabaroun li-Imaar al-Maqam al-Zaynabi al-Sharif, Al-Mawsem,
No. 25 (1996): 201-231.
10
Ibid., 224.
11Ibid., 220.
the spectrum, we see large groups, presumably from one village, collectively
donating as little as 28 Syrian lira, roughly fifty cents in todays terms.12 The
overall effect was to broaden the base of connection to and support for the
shrine. Each of these men, by extending his reputation to the project, appealed
to his readers personal loyalty to the sheikh or to his general sense of religios-
ity or desire for salvation in urging him to give money. They all vouched for
the power of the place and legitimacy of the project. None of them mentioned
Zaynabs real gravesite.
A second development that has indirectly legitimized Sayyida Zaynabs
shrine in Damascus and directly affected the number of visitors who make the
journey to see it is the establishment of several lesser sites also important to
Shia Muslims in and around the city. In the old city of Damascus sits a re-
cently renovated and gleaming white shrine to Sayyida Ruqayya, niece13 to
Zaynab and among the children taken captive with her at Karbala. Just south
of the city in the Bab al-Saghir cemetery, one finds numerous small and much
simpler shrines to other members of ahl al-bayt as well as the heads of sixteen
soldiers who died with Hussein. Zaynabs husband is also interred here in a
shared tomb enjoying very little fanfare. Nearer to Zaynab, a shrine to another
sister Sukayna is now undergoing major renovations with funding from a
prominent Iranian cleric resident in Sayyida Zaynab. And beyond Damascus,
there are other sites: two shrines in al-Raqqa along the Euphrates and a shrine
near Aleppo where Husseins head is believed to have rested a night leaving
behind drops of blood on a rock, among others.
Certainly, it would be inaccurate to imply that the development of these
sites has been part of a grand centrally orchestrated plan. However, their col-
lective effect is notable as tour groups now incorporate more and more of them
into their itineraries and consequently stay longer on any given trip. Secondly,
and more subtly, their presence consciously or unconsciously reinforces the
idea that Sayyida Zaynab really is buried in Damascus without ever explicitly
stating so. A similar phenomenon is present in Cairo regarding shrines to
women who had supposedly traveled to Cairo with Zaynab. The idea is if
Sayyida Zaynabs nieces, her husband and the heads of Husseins soldiers are
all buried in Damascus, why wouldnt she be?
A third phenomenon that has contributed to the construction of an emotional
identification of Zaynab with Damascus comes in the form of a wave of semi-
academic accounts of Zaynabs life published in the last 20 years and widely
available in bookstores around the shrine as well as in major Arab cities. They
12
Maqaam al-Sayyida Zaynab, Qariyat al-Sitt, al-Bayaan al-Aam li-Tabaruaat wa al-
Nafaqaat (Damascus, 1966), 232.
13
As with Zaynabs, there are also several family members named Ruqayya. This one is the
daughter of Hussein, not Ali ibn Abi Talib.
14See for example Bakr Sharif al-Qirshi, Al-Sayyida Zaynab: Batalat al-Taarikh wa Raaidat
al-Jihaad fil-Islaam (Beirut: Dar al-Mahajja al-Bayda, 2001) and Hassan al-Safaar, al-Mara al-
Athima (Beirut: Dar al-Bayaan al-Arabi, 1993).
15Ahmed Ali Dakheel, Al-Sayyida Zaynab min al-Mahad ila al-Lahad (Beirut: Dar al-
CONCLUSION