Author's note: I thank Andreas Bandak and Mikkel Bille for organizing the “Sainthood in Fragile States” conference at the Danish Institute in Damascus in April 2010. I presented an earlier version of this paper at that conference and received helpful feedback from Lisa Wedeen and Glenn Bowman.

¹ Sayyida Zaynab is a female Muslim saint with two shrines: one in Cairo and the other just south of Damascus. This article focuses on the latter, Zaynab's Syrian shrine, which is currently a favorite pilgrimage destination among Twelver Shiʿa from Iraq, Iran, the Arabian Gulf, and South Asia. On the interesting debate over the authenticity of the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab, see Zimney, Michelle, “History in the Making: The Sayyida Zaynab Shrine in Damascus,” ARAM 19 (2007): 695–703CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an engaging monograph on Zaynab's tomb in Cairo, see Abu-Zahra, Nadia, The Pure and Powerful: Studies in Contemporary Muslim Society (Reading, U.K.: Garnet & Ithaca Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

² Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. Schwab, George (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 5Google Scholar; Agamben, Giorgio, States of Exception, trans. Attell, Kevin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 9–11Google Scholar.

³ Hussain, Nasser, “Beyond Norm and Exception: Guantanamo,” Critical Inquiry 33 (2007): 735–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ This does not mean, of course, that the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab can be equated with concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, a loose adoption is useful for thinking about religious, national, and regional politics as well as for highlighting particular socioeconomic aspects of those politics. Cf. Agamben, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Heller-Roazen, Daniel (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Agamben, States of Exception; Schmitt, Political Theology.

⁵ Pinto, Paulo G., “Pilgrimage, Commodities, and Religious Objectification: The Making of Transnational Shiism between Iran and Syria,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27 (2007): 109–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Agamben explains that homo sacer cannot be sacrificed because being sacer (or sacred) means that he already belongs to the gods. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 72–73.

⁷ Ibid., 1–2.

⁸ In his dissertation, Ali J. Hussein explains that after the Battle of Karbala, in 680 ce, there was public outcry over what could be termed the “sacrilege” of killing the grandson of the Prophet. This eventually led to trials wherein lower ranking Umayyads were blamed and individual soldiers were executed for killing Husayn. Higher-ranking officials were not held accountable. According to Shiʿi narratives, later Imams were killed by poison, which made reprisals practically impossible. Ali J. Hussein, “A Developmental Analysis of Depictions of the Events of Karbalāʾ in Early Islamic History” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2001), 272–73.

⁹ For Foucault, the modern nation–state is mainly concerned with controlling, disciplining, and managing populations for the sake of growing the economy. Thereby, the modern state turns populations into “bare life.” Agamben, Homo Sacer, 3; Foucault, Michel, Society Must Be Defended, trans. Macey, David (New York: Picador, 1997), 239–63Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The fourteen infallibles in Twelver Shiʿism include the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, and the twelve Imams, beginning with ʿAli, Hasan, and Husayn and ending with the hidden but awaited Mahdi, who entered the Greater Occultation in 940 ce. The precise nature of the Imams’ and the Prophets’ infallibility is hotly debated. For some, having ʿiṣma means being entirely incapable of making mistakes; for others, it means being guided. According to the theology teacher of the women's section at Shirazi's seminary in the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab, the infallibles “know” or “see” the ugly outcome of particular paths of action. The teacher's example was: “Imagine a delicious-looking cake. You know it is poisoned. Would you still eat it?” According to the teacher, all of the infallibles have such knowledge. Lecture, Zaynabiyya Seminary, Sayyida Zaynab, 2 August 2008.

¹¹ Aghaie argues that there has been a shift in Shiʿi women's pious role models from Fatima, who represents docile piety, to Zaynab, who is represented as a courageous heroine. Aghaie, Kamran, The Martyrs of Karbala: Shiʿi Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2004), 113–30Google Scholar. Lara Deeb explains that “pious modern” Lebanese Shiʿi women emphasized the need to “authenticate and rationalize” their pious beliefs about saints such as Zaynab. Deeb, Lara, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shiʿi Lebanon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

¹² Cornell, Vincent, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1998), xix–xxGoogle Scholar.

¹³ “Beneficence,” according to Talal Asad, was an important aspect of sainthood among medieval Christians. Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 32Google Scholar.

¹⁴ According to Agamben, a “qualified life” is a good life or a life worth living. For Shiʿi scholars such as ayatollahs Muhammad Shirazi and Khameneʾi, a good life is necessarily also a virtuous, pious life.

¹⁵ For this article, I draw both on primary textual sources, which I obtained at the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab, and on my own fieldwork, which I conducted intermittently at the shrine town from the summer of 2007 to the summer of 2010 for a cumulative period of thirteen months.

¹⁶ Zimney, “History in the Making,” 698.

¹⁷ Ibid., 700.

¹⁸ Ibid., 695.

¹⁹ Prior to 1949, there was a small farming community in the area, which had two names: Rawiya and Qabr al-Sitt (“the grave of the lady”). Mervin, Sabrina, “ʿAshuraʾ: Some Remarks on Ritual Practices in Different Shiite Communities (Lebanon and Syria),” in The Other Shiites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia, ed. Monsutti, Alessandro, Naef, Silvia, and Sabahi, Farian (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2007), 137–47Google Scholar.

²⁰ Agamben, Homo Sacer, 11–23; Schmitt, Political Theology, 5.

²¹ Once again, it was the government that settled these displaced Syrians. Cf. Mervin, Sabrina, “Sayyida Zaynab: Banlieue de Damas ou nouvelle ville sainte chiite?” Cahiers d'etudes sur la Mediterranée orientale et le monde turco-iranieni: Arabes et Iraniens 22 (1996): 149–62Google Scholar.

²² The South Asian students tend to be new arrivals. They come to Syria in order to study and work, but they usually return to the subcontinent after a few years. In contrast, most of the Afghans have lived in Syria since the 1970s, when the Iraqi government forced them to leave Najaf and Karbala. Rather than return to Afghanistan, they came to Syria.

²³ Farouk-Sluglett, Marion and Sluglett, Peter, Iraq since 1958 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1987), 258Google Scholar.

²⁴ Especially in the years between 2003 and 2009, when violence in southern and central Iraq was rampant and the shrines in Iraq remained inaccessible, thousands of Shiʿa from Iran and the Gulf countries came every year. The average cost for a night at hotels near the shrine rose from 750 Syrian lira (approximately US $15) to 2,000 Syrian lira (approximately US $40) as soon as schools closed for summer vacation in eastern Saudi Arabia.

²⁵ Added to this are several hundred Syrian Kurds, who have settled in Sayyida Zaynab for the sake of business. One Kurdish merchant explained that the linguistic proximity between Kurdish and Farsi has helped him serve Iranian customers. Interview, Sayyida Zaynab, 15 September 2009.

²⁶ Hussain, “Beyond Norm and Exception,” 740.

²⁷ United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, “World Refugee Survey 2009—Syria,” 17 June 2009, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4a40d2b3a.html (accessed 28 December 2011).

²⁸ Notably, the 2008 law No. 11 was overturned in the spring of 2011. “Draft Law on Real Estate Ownership for Non-Syrian Citizens Approved,” 28 April 2011, http://meyer-reumann.com/draft-law-on-real-estate-ownership-for-non-syrian-citizens-approved (accessed 28 December 2011).

²⁹ United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, “World Refugee Survey 2009—Syria.”

³⁰ See, for example, Arjomand, Said Amir, ed., Authority and Political Culture in Shiʿism (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Sachedina, Abdulaziz, The Just Ruler in Twelver Shiʿism: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Takim, Liyakat, The Heirs of the Prophet: Charisma and Religious Authority in Shiʿite Islam (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

³¹ Cf. Agamben, States of Exception, 75.

³² For Twelver Shiʿa, the Twelfth Imam, or the Mahdi, first went into hiding (or Lesser Occultation) in 873 CE, but communicated with his Shiʿi followers through four “ambassadors” until the last one died in 940 CE. Since then, Twelver Shiʿi Muslims consider the Mahdi to have entered the Greater Occultation. The nature of the Mahdi's occultation is subject to debate, but popular imagination has it that he is still present in the world and on occasion reveals himself to select people in order to teach them religious and moral lessons. Generally, Shiʿi Muslims expect that he will return near judgment day and lead them in a fight against the devil.

³³ Yet since the Mahdi's fourth ambassador died, various Twelver Shiʿi governments, from the Buyids (945–1050 ce) to the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran, have claimed to hold legitimate (i.e., religiously authoritative) power.

³⁴ In the 17th and 18th centuries a debate raged among Shiʿi ʿulamaʾ who were divided into the Akhbaris (“traditionalists”) and the Usulis (“rationalists”). They argued over the relative import of revelation versus reason for deriving fiqh. Concurrently, the institutionalization of religious learning promoted fiqh or jurisprudence above other Islamic sciences. Momen, Moojan, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 127–38Google Scholar, 222–25.

³⁵ Sindawi, Khalid, “The Zaynabiyya Hawza in Damascus and Its Role in Shīʿite Religious Instruction,” Middle Eastern Studies 45 (2009): 861CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Momen, Shiʿi Islam, 189–99. Jurisprudence was simply one among many Islamic sciences until the 16th and 17th centuries, after which the Usuli triumph ensured greater prominence for jurists (especially those capable of ijtihād or independent legal reasoning) than for other scholars.

³⁷ Less than three percent of the Syrian population follows Twelver Shiʿism. Sindawi, “Zaynabiyya Hawza,” 862.

³⁸ In 1973 Musa al-Sadr, a Lebanese Twelver Shiʿi cleric, issued a fatwa declaring that ʿAlawis are Shiʿi Muslims. Hafiz al-Asad, the Syrian president at the time, had requested this fatwa in order to counter accusations by Sunnis (in particular the Muslim Brotherhood) that ʿAlawis are not Muslims and, thus, unfit to rule a Muslim-majority country. See Momen, Shiʿi Islam, 269; and Seal, Patrick, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995), 173Google Scholar.

³⁹ For an insightful study of Shiʿi scholars and their networks in Syria, see Mervin, “Sayyida Zaynab,” 149–62.

⁴⁰ Cf. Sindawi, “Zaynabiyya Hawza,” 859–79.

⁴¹ Cf. Louër, Laurence, Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁴² Pinto, “Pilgrimage, Commodities, and Religious Objectification,” 113–14.

⁴³ After Muhammad Shirazi's death in 2001, Ayatollah Sadiq Shirazi became the head of the network of religious institutions that his older brothers, Muhammad and Hasan, had founded. Collectively, the partisans of ayatollahs Muhammad and Sadiq Shirazi are known as the shiraziyyūn or Shirazis. Cf. Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 90.

⁴⁴ After Hasan Shirazi was assassinated in Beirut in 1983, his younger brother Muhammad Shirazi became the head of the Shirazis’ network of religious institutions, including the Zaynabiyya Seminary in Sayyida Zaynab, Syria. Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 93.

⁴⁵ The only other Shiʿi group in Sayyida Zaynab that holds independent Friday prayers at a seminary ḥusayniyya consists of the followers of the young Iraqi cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

⁴⁶ Since the late 1980s, the Shirazis have not been on good terms with either the Iraqi scholarly elite or the Iranian government. For an insightful discussion of the Shirazis’ relationship with Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the eastern Gulf states, see Louër, Transnational Shia Politics.

⁴⁷ Shirazi, Sayyid Sadiq Hussayni, Islamic Law (Washington, D.C.: Fountain Books, 2008), 7Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Cf. Deeb, Enchanted Modern; Norton, Augustus Richard, “Ritual, Blood, and Shiite Identity: Ashura in Nabatiyya, Lebanon,” Drama Review 49 (2005): 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ Mervin, “ʿAshuraʾ,” 142.

⁵⁰ Shirazi, Sadiq, Ajawbat al-Masaʾil al-Husayniyya (Beirut: Dar al-ʿUlum, 2008), 104Google Scholar; see also Maʿash, Mahdi, Mashruʿiyyat al-Shaʿaʾir (Damascus: Muʾassasat al-Imama, 2007), 177–78Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Shirazi, Muhammad, al-Shaʿaʾir al-Husayniyya (Beirut: Dar al-Sadiq, 1998), 13–149Google Scholar.

⁵² For further discussions of “revolutionary” versus “salvific” interpretations of Karbala, see Aghaie, The Martyrs of Karbala; and Deeb, Enchanted Modern.

⁵³ al-Shammari, Wathiq, Ikhbar al-Faqir fi Ithbat Hurmat al-Tatbir (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Nabaʾ, 2010), 17–22Google Scholar. Note: The publication date on the booklet is 2010. However, the booklets were actually disseminated in Sayyida Zaynab in December 2009.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 22.

⁵⁵ Al-Shammari, Ikhbar al-Faqir, 10; Deeb, Enchanted Modern. See also Ende, Werner, “The Flagellations of Muharram and the Shiʿite Ulama,” Der Islam 55 (1978): 26–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁶ Al-Shammari, Ikhbar al-Faqir, 53–54.

⁵⁷ In Iran, Muhammad Shirazi and his followers have been politically marginalized since the 1980s, when Shirazi began critiquing Khomeini. In Iraq, the Shirazi family endured political oppression and staunch opposition by religious elites in Najaf since the 1970s. Moreover, as Shirazi family members and supporters left Iraq, they lost some of their influence there. The two places in the Middle East where the Shirazis are not marginalized are Syria and Kuwait. Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 89–102, 186–95.

⁵⁸ Pro-taṭbīr scholars quote a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad praising ḥujāma or cupping and argue that taṭbīr is a form of ḥujāma. Shirazi, al-Shaʿaʾir al-Husayniyya, 146; Maʿash, Mashruʿiyyat al-Shaʿaʾir, 186–89. However, there are also supporters of ḥujāma who do not advocate taṭbīr. al-Nasari, Muhammad Sharad, al-Hujama: Shifaʾ li-Kul Daʾ (Beirut: al-Aalami Est, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Al-Nasari, al-Hujama, 13–18, 41–44.

⁶⁰ Sermon, Zaynabiyya Seminary, Sayyida Zaynab, 6 January 2009.

⁶¹ For insightful discussions of Hizbullah's approach to taṭbīr, see Deeb, Enchanted Modern; and Norton, “Ritual, Blood, and Shiite Identity,” 140–55.

⁶² al-Burhani, ʿAbd al-ʿAthim al-Muhtadi, Limadha al-Tatbir? (Beirut: Dar Saluni, 2010), 104–123Google Scholar; al-Nasari, al-Hujama, 178, 242; Maʿash, Mashruʿiyyat al-Shaʿaʾir, 169–74.

⁶³ Interview, Sayyida Zaynab, 28 December 2009.

⁶⁴ Asad, Formations of the Secular, 31–32.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 32.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Ayoub, Mahmoud, Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of “Ashura” in Twelver Shi'ism (New York: Mouton, 1978), 25–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ Pinault writes that some young men, for example, self-flagellate in order to “make up” for not performing daily prayers all year long. Pinault, David, “Shia Lamentation Rituals and Reinterpretations of the Doctrine of Intercession: Two Cases from Modern India,” History of Religions 38 (1999): 295CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁹ Cf. Norton, “Ritual, Blood, and Shiite Identity,” 151.

⁷⁰ Cf. Betteridge, Anne, “Gift Exchange in Iran: The Locus of Self-Identity in Social Interaction,” Anthropological Quarterly 58 (1985): 190–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷¹ Sufra, Sayyida Zaynab, 20 October 2009.

⁷² Cf. Betteridge, Anne, “The Controversial Vows of Urban Muslim Women in Iran,” in Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives in Non-Western Cultures, ed. Falk, Nancy Auer and Gross, Rita (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row, 1980), 141–55Google Scholar; Betteridge, “Gift Exchange in Iran,” 190–202.

⁷³ Bilal, Haydar, Sufrat al-Sayyida Zaynab: Karamatuha Muʿajizatuha (Beirut: Dar al-Hawraʾ, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Muhammad, Sayyid Husayn Najib, Athar wa-Barakat al-Majlis al-Baytiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Mahajja al-Baydaʾ, 2008)Google Scholar; al-Jizaʾiri, Sayyid Hashim al-Naji al-Musawi, Athar wa-Barakat Sayyid al-Shuhadaʾ fi Dar al-Dunya (Beirut: Dar al-Taʿaruf, n.d.)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Muhammad, Athar wa-Barakat al-Majlis al-Baytiyya, 18.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 153.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ As Saba Mahmood has noted in her groundbreaking work on Muslim women in Cairo, even politically quietist movements are politically relevant as they seek to reform society from below. Mahmood, , Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 192–99Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Agamben, Homo Sacer, 73.

⁸⁰ According to a teacher at the women's section of the Zaynabiyya Seminary, Zaynab and the sabāyā (“the girls,” i.e., the wives and daughters of Husayn and his men at Karbala) were unveiled by Shimr (the killer of Husayn) and the Umayyad army. However, none of these men, according to the principal, ever actually saw their faces, because Zaynab and the other women wore seven layers of face veils. Lecture, Zaynabiyya Seminary, Sayyida Zaynab, 3 August 2008.

⁸¹ Agamben, Homo Sacer, 83.

⁸² Ibid., 1–2.

⁸³ Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering in Islam, 37–48.

⁸⁴ United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, “World Refugee Survey 2009—Syria.”

⁸⁵ Ritual mourning gathering, Husayniyya ʿAbbas, Sayyida Zaynab, 23 August 2008. The names of female informants have been changed to protect their anonymity.

⁸⁶ Interview, Sayyida Zaynab, 22 June 2008.

⁸⁷ Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 26.

⁸⁸ Interview, Sayyida Zaynab, 7 January 2009.

⁸⁹ Interview, Sayyida Zaynab, 20 July 2008.