"Sunni-Shi'i Mausoleums and Saint Veneration" is a three-year pilot project directed by Prof. Thierry Zarcone (GSRL/CNRS-PARIS) and Dr. Pedram Khosronejad (Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, Scotland).

This pilot project will examine the Culture of Saints and the Mortuary Culture of the Turko-Persian world in the light of cultural continuity, comparability in environment, and similarity of cultural form, with special attention given to the unique community mortuary landscapes and material cultures, and their accompanying ritual/historic topography. An overview of Turko-Persian spiritual and ritual practices and their relationship to the use of mortuary material culture and sacred sites of interment will be accompanied by a summary of the use of sacred sites by contemporary residents of Turko-Persian cities.

Each year the collaborators in this project will gather together in an international workshop to discuss their research and field work. At the end of project, the results of these three interdisciplinary workshops will be published in an edited book.

For more information about this research project and details of collaborators, please visit our website:

www.st-andrews.ac.uk/anthropologyiran/veneration/

Project Co-ordinators

- Pedram Khosronejad Research Fellow, Department of Social Anthropology, University of St- Andrews, Scotland

- Thierry Zarcone
Senior Researcher, French National Research Centre (CNRS), Paris, France

Project Honorary Members

- James Allan
Professor of Eastern Art, Khalili Research Centre, Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, U.K.

- Robert Hillenbrand
Professor Emeritus, History of Art, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Project Collaborators

- Michel Boivin
Research fellow in Centre of Indian and Asian Studies, CNRS/EHESS, Paris, France
- Stephane Dudoignon
Senior Researcher, French National Research Centre (CNRS), Paris, France
- Jürgen Wasim Frembgen
Anthropologist, Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde München, Germany
- Nile Green
Associate Professor (South Asian/Islamic History), Dept of History, UCLA, U.S.A
- Masami Hamada
Professor in History, Department of history, University of Kyoto, Japan
- Jean-Paul Loubes
Professor, Ecole d'architecture, Bordeaux, , France
- Pierre-Jean Luizard
Senior Researcher, French National Research Centre (CNRS), Paris, France
- Manijeh Maghsudi
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Science, University of Tehran, Iran
- Ashirbek Muminov
Professor of History, Institute of Oriental Studies, Ministry of Education and Science of Republic of Kazakhstan
- Ahmet Yaşar Ocak
Professor, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
- Alexandre Papas
Research Fellow at the CNRS. Lecturer in Central Asian History, EHESS. Paris, France
- Minoru Sawada
Professor, University of Toyama, Japan
- Yasushi Shinmen
Professor in History, Department of Oriental History, Faculty of Letters, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan
- Mehmet Baha Tanman
Professor of history of Art, Dept. of History of Art, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul, Turkey
- Yasushi Tonaga
Professor and Deputy Director, Centre for Islamic Area Studies at Kyoto University, Japan