Ziyareti: Imagined Sacred Places and Cultural Transmission among Georgians in Turkey

Author: Khalvashi Tamta  

Publisher: Berghahn Journals

ISSN: 1746-0727

Source: Anthropology of the Middle East, Vol.4, Iss.2, 2009-12, pp. : 84-96

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Abstract

This article attempts to analyse the role of collective remembering and imagination of certain traditions, practices and rituals that are related to sacred places through the process of cultural transmission and social change among Muslim Georgians living in north-eastern Turkey. For this purpose, I refer to nineteenth-century ethnographic narratives collected by the Georgian critic Zakarya Chichinadze, as well as my own fieldwork materials. I aim to show how these narratives mediate collective remembering of sacred places that is modified with additional imagined constructs.