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Toward a Theory of Iranian Urban Moieties: The Ḥaydariyyah and Niᶜmatiyyah Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John R. Perry
John R. Perry*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The Haydariyyah and Niᶜmatiyyah were Widespread, Mutually Hostile urban factions of Safavid and post-Safavid Iran, sparsely documented and virtually unstudied. From at least the middle of the tenth/sixteenth century up until recent decades, a number of cities and towns of Iran were perceived as being divided into two groupings of adjacent wards (maḥallah), one grouping known as the Ḥaydarī-khānah and the other as the Niᶜmatī-khānah, the respective (male) inhabitants of which would profess mutual contempt and antagonism, and would periodically clash in massive public fights. The origin of the terms and the cause of the antagonism were not generally known to the participants; the topography and composition of the Ḥaydarī-khānah and the Niᶜmatī-khānah (which in some places extended into the adjacent countryside) was apparently irrelevant; and membership in either of these factions corresponded to no other social, political, or sectarian affiliation.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Winter 1999 , pp. 51 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1999

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References

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