S6E6: A Shrine Online: The Case of Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin, with Keelan Overton

In the city of Varamin, some 50km southwest of Tehran, lies the Shrine and Mausoleum of Emamzadeh Yahya, a site of pilgrimage and veneration for Shi’i Muslims.During the nineteenth century, all of the shrine’s luster tiles, including its mihrab, were stolen and then dispersed to museums worldwide.The focus of this podcast is the project, supported by The Barakat Trust, that has sought to reunite the disconnects that have long afflicted this site, its worshippers, and audience. The project is an online museological intervention in the form of a website that combines many aspects of the shrine, from its architectural features to ritual practices, from an urban history of the city to the stories of the shrine’s keepers and attendants.The website includes galleries that explores these aspects of the shrine through essays, films, digital interactives, and lectures. There is also a Checklist of materials in the exhibition.The website is a sizeable digital publication that is being completed as we speak and includes content in Persian, English, and French:https://khamseen-emamzadeh-yahya-varamin.hart.lsa.umich.edu/The leader of the project and guest on this month’s episode is Keelan Overton. She led a team of over 50 individuals who collaboratively contributed to the creation of this project that experimented with format, media, and technology to connect audiences in Iran and beyond to Emamzadeh Yahya and his shrine.Keelan Overton is an art historian trained at Williams College and UCLA (PhD 2011). Since 2015 she has been an independent scholar. Her first book project was the Iran-Deccan edited volume published by IUP in 2020. She then transitioned immediately into the Emamzadeh Yahya project, which she has directed and produced from her home office since 2021.This episode is part of our series Peripheries which seeks to push our understanding of the cultural heritage of the Islamic world away from the traditional centres that we associate with it. With a fantastic range of guests we will examine places and topics often considered peripheral to the Islamic world and understand why they are in fact of central importance to the region’s cultural heritage, from Armenia to England, from Ethiopia to West Africa.Reading List:Citation of the website/digital publication:The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine, directed and edited by Keelan Overton. 33 Arches Productions. Host: Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online.Contributors and works mentioned in this podcast:Essay on Yahya b. Ali by Ahmad Khamehyar (Ritual gallery)Essay on yadegari by Nazanin Shahidi Marnani (People gallery)Essay on the shrine’s present social life by Maryam Rafeienezhad (People gallery)Essay on the shrine’s chronological history by Keelan Overton and Hossein Nakhaei (Building gallery)Films by Hamid Abhari: City Tour (Varamin gallery) and Site Tour (Building gallery)Oral history with Mohammad Amini on Moharram ceremonies (Varamin gallery)Catalog entries by Jabbar Rahmani (Checklist, no. 5, 48, 49)Catalog entries by Heshmat Kafili (Checklist, no. 14, 16, 21)Photo Timeline of the shrine’s physical evolution (Building gallery)Essay on the site’s 1980s preservation by Zahra KhademiEssay on the scientific analysis of the tomb’s luster tiles (now published, in the Luster gallery, by Trinitat Pradell, Judit Molera, Moujan Matin, and Keelan OvertonFilm on the Godard Archive of architectural photography with Alejandra Tafur Manrique and Martina Massullo (Museum gallery)Film on luster tiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum with Fuchsia Hart (Luster gallery)Film on luster tiles in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha with Nicoletta Fazio (Museum gallery)Essay on the site’s 1980s preservation by Zahra Khademi (People gallery)