“An Anthropology of Imamite Love among Iranian Believers”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
In the volume honouring the Islamic-studies scholar Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, De la lettre à l’esprit (eds. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov and Mathieu Terrier, Brepols, 2025), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), devotes a chapter to imamite love, the devotional attachment of Iranian Shia believers to the imams.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, she describes how this love takes shape in the gestures, tears, narratives and objects of popular piety, and highlights the central place of affect in contemporary Twelver Shia religiosity.
Dans le volume d’hommage à l’islamologue Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, De la lettre à l’esprit (dir. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov et Mathieu Terrier, Brepols, 2025), Sepideh Parsapajouh, anthropologue au CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), consacre un chapitre à l’amour imamite, c’est-à-dire à l’attachement dévotionnel des croyants chiites iraniens envers les imams.
À partir d’une enquête ethnographique, elle décrit comment cet amour se manifeste dans les gestes, les larmes, les récits et les objets de la piété populaire, et éclaire la place centrale de l’affect dans la religiosité chiite duodécimaine contemporaine.
في المجلَّدِ التكريميِّ المُهدى إلى العالِمِ في الدراساتِ الإسلاميّةِ محمد علي أمير معزّي، الصادرِ عن دار بريبولس سنة 2025 بإشرافِ أورخان مير قاسموف ومَتيو تيرييه، تُخصِّصُ سيبيده بارساباجوه، الأنثروبولوجيّةُ في المركزِ الوطنيِّ الفرنسيِّ للبحثِ العلميّ (CéSor-EHESS)، فصلاً للحبِّ الإماميّ، أي تعلُّقِ المؤمنين الشيعةِ الإيرانيّين الوجدانيِّ بالأئمّة.
وانطلاقاً من بحثٍ ميدانيٍّ إثنوغرافيّ، تصفُ كيف يتجلّى هذا الحبُّ في الإيماءاتِ والدموعِ والحكاياتِ وأشياءِ التقوى الشعبيّة، وتُبرزُ المكانةَ المركزيّةَ للوجدانِ في التديُّنِ الشيعيِّ الإماميِّ المعاصر.
Sepideh Parsapajouh, « Une anthropologie de l’amour imamite chez les croyants iraniens », in O. Mir-Kasimov & M. Terrier (dir.), De la lettre à l’esprit. Travaux en hommage à Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, t. II, Brepols, Turnhout, 2025, p. 331-357.
Resources of this researcher
article
“A Religious Cosmopolitanism: The City of Qom in the Mirror of Transnational Circulations”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
In the collective volume Un Moyen-Orient ordinaire (eds. Thierry Boissière and Yoann Morvan, Diacritiques Éditions, 2022), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), devotes ...
article
“The Power of Place, the Mediation of the Text: Anthropological Remarks on the Pious Visit to Karbalā”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
In the journal Studia Islamica (Brill, 2021), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), offers an anthropological analysis of the ziyāra, the pious visit to Shia holy places...
article
“The Topography of Corporal Relics in Twelver Shiʿism”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
In a thematic issue of the Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World (Brill, 2020) that she co-edited, Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), studies the topograph...
Resources related to
Shia Islam
videos
Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi’i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and Rūmī
Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme "Ethics and Aesthetics in Is...
article
“An Anthropology of Imamite Love among Iranian Believers”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
- Sepideh Parsapajouh
In the volume honouring the Islamic-studies scholar Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, De la lettre à l'esprit (eds. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov and Mathieu Terrier, Brepols, 2025), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropol...
article
The Guide, Pivot of Creation: The Sources of Shi’i Gnosis
- Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi
The aim of the article is to explore the relationship between cosmo-anthropogony and Imamology in Shi'ism through its earliest sources in the corpus of pre-Buyid hadiths. It shows that the figure o...
videos
Unity of God and unity in God – a possible perspective and way of dialogue between the believers?
- Vanessa Breidy
A shῑ‘ῑ perspective of dialogue developed by D. Mohammad Ali Shomali. Talking about unity between believers and calling them to act upon it is not new in Islam. The Qur’ān and the early history o...
article
“A Religious Cosmopolitanism: The City of Qom in the Mirror of Transnational Circulations”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
- Sepideh Parsapajouh
In the collective volume Un Moyen-Orient ordinaire (eds. Thierry Boissière and Yoann Morvan, Diacritiques Éditions, 2022), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), devotes ...
videos
The Hidden Imam and religious and spiritual authority in Shia Islam
- Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi
Conference « Religious Authority in Islam », organised by the Centre for the Study of Cultures and Religions and the Research Unit of the Catholic University of Lyon (UCLy), on 18 and 19 November 2...
publication
MIDEO 36 – Iǧtihād and taqlīd in Sunnī and Šīʿī Islam
- Emmanuel Pisani
The theme of iǧtihād and taqlīd, by pointing to the notional antagonism between independent reasoning on the one hand and submission to the argument of authority on the other, plunges us into the h...
article
“The Power of Place, the Mediation of the Text: Anthropological Remarks on the Pious Visit to Karbalā”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
- Sepideh Parsapajouh
In the journal Studia Islamica (Brill, 2021), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropologist at the CNRS (CéSor-EHESS), offers an anthropological analysis of the ziyāra, the pious visit to Shia holy places...