SACRED PLACES, EMERGING SPACES: PILGRIMS, SAINTS AND SCHOLARS IN THE

CAUCASUS AND BEYOND

Conference Jena, October 9-10, 2015 Friedrich Schiller University, Jena Rosensäle, Fürstengraben 27 www.kaukasiologie.uni-jena.de

Abstracts

Organised by the research group “Transformation of Sacred Spaces, Pilgrimages and Conceptions of Hybridity in the Post-Soviet Caucasus”

Contact: Michael Stürmer (michael.stuermer@uni-jena.de) Katrin Töpel (katrin.toepel@uni-jena.de)

1. The Chain of Seven Pilgrimages in Kotaik, Armenia: Reviving or Inventing Tradition?

LEVON ABRAHAMIAN, ZARUHI HAMBARDZUMYAN, GAYANE SHAGOYAN, GOHAR STEPANYAN

(INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY, ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF ARMENIA, YEREVAN)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the chain of seven pilgrimages in Kotaik Province, which take place on seven successive Sundays starting on Easter. Such a chain is unique in Armenian tradition, where a shorter sequence of two pilgrimages is usually practiced, on the second (“Green”) and third ("Red") Sundays following Easter. The shrines visited by pilgrims are as a rule churches or chapels located (presently or in the past) at the edge of or at a considerable distance from villages; these villages celebrate the corresponding Sunday as their main feast day of the year. There is no written evidence of this pilgrimage practice before Soviet times. However, the official Armenian Apostolic Church claims that it was a church tradition which had been interrupted by the Soviet regime. The pilgrimage survived in folk practice, and in the Church's view needs to be revived in its “true” and not the present “pagan” format. At the same time people practicing pilgrimages and shrine offerings consider their format the true Christian tradition. We will try to show the competition for space and time between folk and institutional Christianity, including the Church’s attempts to exercise control over the worshippers' private spaces (home-shrines), through the ritual of consecration. We will try to show that the seven-linked chain was an invented than inherited pre-Christian tradition, though some universal archaic rituals like initiation find their place in the pilgrimage network, and could serve as an attraction point for forming a new link in the chain. The paper will discuss the general model for the origin of shrines through prophetic dreams and visions, on the base of modern practices associated with the shrines included in the chain, or functioning parallel in their vicinity. An interesting feature of the pilgrimage chain is its seventh link. Unlike the other links, it is bifurcated, the last pilgrimage being conducted to two interlinked sites, St. Minas and St. Varvara. This twofold nature of the chain, and St. Varvara’s evident folk Christian features (a distant mountain grotto), makes the chain open to other bigger chains of ritual practices: pilgrimages continue on successive Sundays in St. Varvara cave-shrine until the Vardavar (Transfiguration) festival (and sporadically later), this being the festival least “controlled” by the Church since Armenia’s conversion to Christianity.

2. From Community Cult to Religious Network: a New Pilgrimage Site in Transcarpathian Ukraine – and Beyond

AGNIESZKA HALEMBA (WARSAW UNIVERSITY)

In this paper, I look at a newly established pilgrimage site in Transcarpathian Ukraine with a special focus on social ties that develop around it. Using a terminology developed in Brubaker and Cooper’s discussion of identity (2000), I claim that there is a change in the way in which people perceive themselves as religious actors, a change from “groupness” to “connectivity” and “commonality.” Viewing oneself as a member of a bounded, localized religious community of practice (a parish) is being replaced by seeing oneself as connected to others through similar practices and symbols. Present changes in the religious arena in Transcarpathia indicate that a gradual change is occurring in the way people understand themselves as

participants in religious practice. In the case of Transcarpathian Catholics, their identification with a local, bounded community is supplemented (and in some cases even replaced) by their religious self-understanding as being connected to others through devotions that employ a set of religious symbols, beliefs, and practices defined as “Catholic.” Those symbols and practices are not necessarily grounded in a local religious life understood as a continuation of ancestral ways, but are instead seen as being legitimated through a religious center that is located beyond the immediate locality. Although particular places have an important role in sustaining and creating this feeling of connectedness, they should not be seen as local pilgrimage sites, but rather as knots in a transnational network of devotion.

3. Landscape, ritual, gender and social space in Upper Svanetia

KEVIN TUITE, NINO TSEREDIANI AND PAATA BUKHRASHVILI

(UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL, ILYA UNIVERSITY TBILISI)

In our paper, we will present the results of three years of fieldwork in the commune of Latali in Upper Svaneti, Georgia. In addition to Georgian Orthodox churches, constructed in large numbers in Svaneti during the Middle Ages, the landscape is dotted with sacred sites of other kinds, most of which are not readily apparent to outsiders. These include ruins of churches and towers, and also places only marked by a tree or cross, which are visited annually by women bearing offerings of bread, candles and home-made vodka in the hopes of obtaining healing from various categories of pains and illnesses. A similar function is ascribed to sacrificed land plots called lalcxæt' or lëcxæt', set aside by local families and no longer used for agricultural purposes. After outlining the sacred geography of Latali, the following topics will be discussed:

1. The complementary ritual functions of women and men, with respect to social space (interior/exterior, private/public), the types of offerings, etc. 2. Comparison of the Svanetian ritual/spatial system with the one observed in northeastern Georgia (provinces of Pshavi and Khevsureti, in particular). 3. The impact of the increasing presence of the Orthodox Church and its clergymen in the northwestern and northeastern Georgian highlands (disputes over the use of churches and their surrounding space; interpretations imposed on traditional practices; etc.); and comparison with the role played by the Church in earlier periods (Middle Ages, Tsarist era).

4. Shifting Abkhas Religion: From Local Christian Cult to Nativist Neo-Paganism

IGOR KUZNETSOV (KUBAN UNIVERSITY)

Focusing on one case – the annual festival ‘Akadak’ at the Abkhazian village Lidzava – this paper examines the hybridization of a local Christiancult (Ldzaa-nykh). Dozens of historical reports, along with the author’s own fieldwork data, cover an extended period from the early 17th century until the present time, making it

possible to reconstruct how the sacred site, located at various placesnear the Orthodox church at Pitsunda and Lidzava village, gradually took its present location; how families of priests succeeded each other, evolving into a kind of local leaders; and how a cult itself took onits present form. Nowadays the shrine at Lidzava is surrounded by a fence. The altar is inside the fence, as well as a special structure built on the ruins of the village chapel, which had been destroyed by Stalin-eraatheist activists (bezbozhniki) in the 1930s. The structure is used for an important act, namely the baking of a ritual cheese pie. The Lidzava annual ritual is one of the last festivities in the whole of Abkhazia, which continues to involve not a few families, but all people in the village. While the shrine was located in Lidzava, it changed dramatically. On the one hand, its territory has decreased, due to the fact that an old holy grove outside the fence was cut down. But on the other hand, the space has become homogeneous, because the structure fully integrated into the cult has replaced the chapel, which representedinstitutional Christianity in the village in former times. The Lidzava festival has increasingly taken on the function of integrating the local community, helping to bring the current project of the Abkhaz nationalism to life. Since the 19th century, and Ldzaa-nykh has been linked and identified with several other shrines in Abkhazia, in a complex hierarchical system of local cults. Some of them were considered to be older and more important than others. ‘Feminine’Ldzaa-nykh was called sometimes the wife, sometimes the sister of the Dydrypshshrine in Achandara village. The Inal-qʼubashrine in Pskhu was considered another of “his” sisters, etc. Gradually through the selection and standardization of dissimilar elements of the cult, a system of seven principal shrines (nykhas) emerged, evolving in the post-Soviet period into a kind of national symbol (represented by seven stars on the Abkhazian flag).

5. Accompanying the Dead Souls – Transforming Sacral Time and Encounters

HEGE TOJE (UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN)

This paper analyses transformations in a community Easter graveyard ritual, over the course of several years in a Cossack stanitsa in Krasnodar krai. The majority of the stanitsa community identify with Orthodox Christianity. The gathering at the graveyard after Easter week is called “the accompanying” (provodá), as people believe that the spirits of their loved ones who have passed away come home to be with them during Easter,the commemoration of the miracle of Christ’s resurrection. The community ritual at the graveyard marks the closure of this spiritual interaction, as the families follow the spirits of their relatives back to the graves. At the graveyard the families bring food and drink for a ceremonial meal at the family graves. Friends and relatives visit each other’s graves to wish the spirits wellbeing on the other side, through ritual eating and toasting. Brothers and sisters gather at their parents’ graves, and people who have moved away from the stanitsa travel back to the community on this day. The change in this community ritual came as the stanitsa got its own resident priest, after having hada system of rotating priests to conduct Church services on specific days. With the arrival of priest, a new moral gaze on the graveyard practices was introduced and corrections enforced. The effect was a stronger distinction between active members of the church and the vast majority, who identify with Orthodox Christianity, yet do not follow all its prescriptions. The graveyard became in these years a central site of conflicting visions on practices that define the graveyard as a sacred place in the stanitsa. By studying such processes one can see how the Orthodox Church is not merely a unifying force, but also creates internal tension and divisions, by banning practices perceived to be an important religious tradition.

6. Murids as New Religious Mediators: Informal Religious Practices and Social Transformations in Yezidi Community

HAMLET MELKUMYAN (INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY,

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF ARMENIA, YEREVAN)

In traditional Armenian Yezidi culture,the Sheikh and Pir religious classes constituted the upper level of the community. These classes are responsible for organizing sacral spaces and sacral life for the lower social class, called Murid (Each Murid clan has its corresponding Sheikh and Pir clans). In 2014, the informal sacred landscape organized by the Murids was studied. This landscape was created along with the formal/official religious Ziarat complexes. The informal sacred sites are small cabin-like constructions built at household yards mostly owned by Murids. According to the owners, these shrines were built after having a vision of spirits or hearing the voice of The Virgin. This may bring a new aspect of religious life organization when the Sheik/Pir clans in some aspects yield their position of religious mediator to the Murids. This trend seems to increase, and becomes more evident when comparing its dynamism through the Soviet, early post-Soviet period and the period after 2000s. Obviously, the informal religious experiences and new religious role of the Murid creates new social practices within the Yezidi community in general. The role of the “sacred place” holder is changing the perception of the Murid in the religion-based class hierarchy, where the Murid used to occupy the lower level. In the community with strong conservative traditions, this transformation looks as a process of social “modernization” from below.

7. Between ‚Great‘ and ‚Small‘ Traditions? Situating Shia Saints in Contemporary Baku

TSYPYLMA DARIEVA (FRIEDRICH SCHILLER UNIVERSITY, JENA)

This paper is focused on transformation of Shi’a Islamic sacred sites (ziyaratgah and pir) in Azerbaijan, and seeks to understand how the notions of ‘sacred‘, ‘miracle‘ and ‘saint’ are reinforced and contested in foundation narratives, official discourses and everyday life in Baku. Based on the ethnography of place making, studies of existing literature and archival documents, this paper explores dynamics of relationships between urban secular settings and religious practices around Shia saints during and after socialism. The relationships between religious practices and urban culture in the Caucasus, and the role played by sacred sites in the construction of social networks in the city,have seldom come into analytical focus. The practice of worshipping pirs, saints and shrines in Azerbaijan has been undergoing change, from persecution to restoration and protection with the support of the ruling elites. In opposition to orthodox Islam, saints and sacred sites are believed to be a middleman and transmitter of communication between the Allah and the mundane world. Another feature of pir pilgrimage sites is that they provide a space for alternative healing. Consequently, whereas Sunni and Shi’a Islamic institutions have been associated by scholars with institutional, ‘great tradition’, male, dominant and urban religious lifestyles; pirs have been classified as a rural, small, unofficial, unorthodox and female tradition. I argue that this division obscures interactions between rural and urban, believers and non-believers and, moreover, this differentiation neglects change, complexity, and the variety of discourses and practices that cluster around pilgrimage sites in modern Azerbaijan. Looking at a popular urban praying place in central

Baku (Et-aga saint) I highlight different functions and trajectories to the sacred site by analyzing official grand-narratives and practitioners' views (shrine keepers and pilgrims), with respect to the meaning of pilgrimage and ‘urban saints’ in the complex conditions of the modern metropolis of Baku. What innovative practices turn a locality, in this case, a residential house in central Baku, into a sacred place? Who controls local Shi’a sacred places, what is new in worshipping Azerbaijani pirs, and in what broader secular and spiritual understandings can the persistence of believing in pirs and saints be grounded?

8. Hybrid vs. Traditional Religious Practices and Narratives: Networks of Muslim Shrines in Post-Soviet Dagestan

VLADIMIR BOBROVNIKOV ( RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, MOSCOW)

With the growth of religiosity begun at the turn of the 1980s-1990s, the social landscape of ex-socialist Caucasus changed substantially. The numbers of religious congregations, houses of worship of different confessions, and sacred spaces grew at exponential rates. This shift is often taken to indicate the revival of local traditions or the influence of transnational missionary movements. Numerous papers have been written on the subject. However, everyday religious practices are still poorly studied; almost no research has been done on pilgrimages of post-Soviet Muslims to their shrines. To start filling this gap at the micro-social level of rural districts, a number of cases studies were carried out in mountain Dagestan and the Nogay Steppe in 2013-2015. Based on the data I collected, I argue that we are witnessing not a revival, but the hybridization of local religious practices,against the background of forced Soviet modernization and recent de-secularization of public space. Muslim shrines (ziyarat, pir, shiykh) constitute an important element of today's Islamic landscape in Dagestan. These are usually the graves of male (and sometimes female) sheikhs, or places associated with their lives,visited by pilgrims who seek healing, the birth of children, or the resolution of family problems with the help of their miraculous grace. The most popular sites form a kind of ritual network, with shared (and competing) saints. Narratives and practices of pilgrimage present a mixture of folk and universal Islamic habitus, influenced by invented Soviet traditions. Some rites of pilgrimage imitate those of the hajj (circuit of shrines, drinking sacred water etc.). The people’s cultural memory has fusedthe dates of pilgrimages with the former Soviet festivals of May 1st and 9th, June 22nd, etc. Heroes of the Caucasian Wars, Civil War and WWII have become popular saints. In exchange for miraculous help, believers bring them donations (sadaqa) in cash, food and second-hand clothes. This gift exchange constitutes a highly contested ritual practice, criticized by official Muslim clergy, Salafi religious dissidents, secular intelligentsia, and even by some keepers of shrines. At the same time, Muslim shrines and their relics remain as much objects of public criticism as resources for political legitimation for district and republican power holders.

9. State Law or the Spirits - Who is Protecting Siberian Sacred Sites?

STEPHAN DUDECK (UNIVERSITY OF LAPPLAND)

The paper focus on the interplay of state institutions, indigenous people, scientific research and other interest groups in the regulation of access to, preservation of, and knowledge about sacred places of nomadic and half nomadic reindeer herders in arctic and subarctic regions of Western Siberia and the

Russian North. Tourists, Christian missionaries, the oil and gas industries, scientists, journalists and politicians have nowadays an impact on different forms of land use on sacred sites. Different groups and different concepts of ‘use’ are associated with different and sometimes opposed concepts of protection, education (knowledge transmission), recognition and respect, but also punishment and retaliation for the violations of rules at sacred sites. The presence of researchers at sacred places happens increasingly at the behest of indigenous groups themselves, but state and scientific institutions with their own agendas and state law are involved as well. Scientific research starting from local practices of reindeer herders, and dealing with the description of sacred sites, their identification, mapping, and classification, becomes part of social practices at these sites, as are the political decision-making, legal protection, touristic use or the extraction of oil. The reindeer herders’ and hunters' religious traditions are based on spontaneous experience of individual ritual experts being bound to a particular social order of local kinship groups, with their particular and exclusive values. The vernacular religious practices and concepts put high emphasis on local exclusivity, personal experience of the sacred, and contextualised meanings of ritual practice. Ideas of very personal and exclusive relationship to particular parts of the cultural landscape become endangered, not only by the advancement of industry, but also by the spread of universalist religious ideologies. Custodians of sacred sites are looking for support in other generalising, objectifying and universalist practices, such asacademic research and state legislation for the protection of 'cultural heritage'. The historical experience of forced conversions, repression of religious practices and deprivation of access to sacred sites is influencing the strategies and organisation of ritual practice by custodians of sacred sites up to the present. Certain practices of purism, conservatism and traditionalism can be seen as effects of this development.

10. Not Sharing the Sacra

FLORIAN MÜHLFRIED (FRIEDRICH SCHILLER UNIVERSITY, JENA)

The Caucasus is a landscape dotted with informal sacred places which are excluded from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Some of these places have, in not-so-far-away times at least, served as nodes of contact between groups who nominally adhere to different religious. They were united by a mutual respect for the place, by a joint willingness to experience the place as sacred, and by common rituals. The sharing of sacred sites is, however, decreasingly popular – not only in the Caucasus. The societal reasons for this are complex and have been addressed, among others, by the anthropologists Bowman and Hayden. Both agree that shrines may in fact be shared, but disagree on the nature of this sharedness. For Bowman, the sharing of places considered sacred by all involved creates a common sphere of loyalty and attachment to place. Hayden argues in contrast that shared religious space is built on “antagonistic tolerance”. My point of departure is not whether the sharedness of sacred sites fosters solidarity or antagonism, but rather to cast an eye on a blind spot in this debate. For as much debate there is on sharing the sacra, as little there is on NOT sharing the sacra. As a case in point, I will look at the interaction of the Jewish and the Christian populations in Racha, a highland region in Northwest Georgia. Rather remarkably, their joint history is characterized by both a generally shared sense of mutual understanding, tolerance and conviviality and by a strict division of sacred spaces. My lead question is whether the distinction of sacred spaces was not so relevant as to hinder good mutual relations, or whether this distinction may actually have contributed to getting along well.

11. Ingiloys and Sacred Rituals

NINO AIVAZISHVILI- GEHNE (MPI HALLE)

Ingiloy from the village “Mosul” are Sunni Muslims and Georgian speaking minority in Azerbaijan. The word “ziarət” has a special meaning for the villagers: it denotes a holy place, where the grave of a canonized person is situated; it also has a meaning of a saint. Ziarət and the religious practices at the shrine have an important social meaning for the village community. The goal of my presentation is to analyze this meaning. There may be a specific reason why a group visits the shrine. They may also do this "just so". The preparations for the event and the atmosphere are different depending on the type and purpose of the group that visits ziarət. Among other things, I show how the pilgrimage (ziaratzewasvla) is used as a kind of strategy to strengthen and improve relations within the groups of pilgrimsin the village. Ingiloys rank ziarəts according to their miracle abilities and reputation. There are ziarəts and there are powerful ziarəts (Zlieriziarati). Furthermore, the shrines are differentiated by sense of belonging among members of this ethnic group. This can be described as follows: the Mosuler differentiate between "Ingiloyziarəts" - (depending on the ethnicity) and "own ziarət" Hasan-Soltan Baba- -a very special Saint, which is understood as a kind of "patron Saint" of Ingiloys. A very upsetting political fact for the villagers is that the grave of this saint is currently located "behind the border" in present-day Georgia. Such a geographical position makes the pilgrimage to the shrinevery difficult and special arrangements are required to visit it. Hasan-Soltan Baba is a unique sacred place which has a power of creating identity for Ingiloy. In some extent He shares the fate of the group: to be split by the border. The dramatic question here is: what happens "when the sacred geography collides with the political geography?!" The deep emotional bond of Ingiloy to this specific sacred place manifests itself additionally in the symbolic meaning of the shrine. This shrine is a memorial and remembrance place of "the historical adversity" of Ingiloy.

12. Sharing the Non-Sacred: Rabati and the Display of Multiculturalism

SILVIA SERRANO (CENTRE D'ÉTUDE DES MONDES RUSSE,

CAUCASIEN ET CENTRE EUROPÉEN EHESS, PARIS)

This presentation aims at shedding some light on some of the uses of religions in the context of neo-liberal globalization and democratization, as promoted by the Georgian government. It focuses on a religious heritage development project initiated during Saakashvili’s presidency: the restoration and reconstruction of the fortress at Akhaltsikhe, and inside its walls, the 18th-century madrassa and mosque, as well as an Orthodox church. For the government and, more specifically, the Interior Minister who initiated the project, it was to be a symbol of multiculturalism and confessional diversity. Indeed, a Catholic church, an Armenian church and two synagogues are also located next to the fortress, in the district of Rabati. But the specificity of the project is that neither the mosque nor the church is open for worship: they are part of a museum. The Akhaltsikhe region, situated along Georgia's border with Turkey, is inhabited by Georgians and Armenians, Orthodox and Gregorian Christians, Jews and Catholics. The Muslim population, deported under Stalin's orders, still faces hindrances to its return. Open conflicts around religious issues are recurrent, for example about the property of the Catholic and Armenian churches, or about the opening of mosques and the erection of minarets.

In this context, what is the rationale behind the staging by the State of secular multiculturalism, and how is it perceived by the population? I will focus on two points:

- The display of multiculturalism and interfaith cohabitation aimed at countering the national narrative centered on Orthodoxy as formulated by the Church. - The transformation of religion into cultural heritage is seen — by the Government, but also by part of the population — as a way to avoid interfaith conflicts.

In other words, desacralizing religious buildings is the condition for creating a shared common space.

Discussants: Bruce Grant (New York University),

Maria Louw (University of Aarhus),

Gayane Shagoyan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Yerevan),

Sergei Shtyrkov (European University, St. Petersburg)