Indexing Imams: The Urdu Shiʿi Practice of Khiṭābat.
Khiṭābat (oratory) is a regular and integral part of the ritual lives of Urdu-speaking Shiʿa devotees in contemporary Karachi, Pakistan. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that indexicality, the physical relationship between a sign and its context of use, is necessary to any...
| Publicado en: | Journal of the American Academy of Religion Vol. 94; no. 1; pp. 106 - 125 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Mar2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=192320120&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 192320120 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00027189 AAR jtl: Journal of the American Academy of Religion issn: 00027189 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2026 vid: 94 iid: 1 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 192320120 10.1093/jaarel/lfaf066 ppf: 106 ppct: 19 formats: tig: atl: Indexing Imams: The Urdu Shiʿi Practice of Khiṭābat. aug: au: Jafri, Mohammad Nabeel su: Indexicals (Semantics) Shiites Speech Ethnology research Oratory Karachi (Pakistan) Pakistan sug: subj: Karachi (Pakistan) Pakistan Indexicals (Semantics) Shiites Speech Ethnology research Oratory ab: Khiṭābat (oratory) is a regular and integral part of the ritual lives of Urdu-speaking Shiʿa devotees in contemporary Karachi, Pakistan. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that indexicality, the physical relationship between a sign and its context of use, is necessary to any analysis of oratory. My emphasis on the physical contexts redresses the existing emphasis on referentiality (meaning) or pragmatism (function) with which scholars approach oratory. I make my argument by attending to the ways in which the first, fifth, seventh, and ninth Shiʿi imams, the male descendants of Prophet Muhammad and around whom the Twelver Shiʿi tradition later coalesced, were invoked by orators during my fieldwork, with each invocation indelibly intertwined with the physical contexts in which it took place. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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