This book deals for the first time with the cultural history of media in nineteenth-century Iran, a history that deals with how modern techniques of representation and communication were received in the Iranian Shi.a society. This reception history is examined in religious photography, military reforms, Persian passion plays, Shi.a medicine, and the burgeoning telegraphic culture. The problematic relationship between Sh..a Islam and 19th-century media is conceptualised and contextualised, especially through the lens of the first Polytechnique college (D.r al-Fonun, 1851) in Iran. This college is conceptualised as a media laboratory, where the technological sphere in Iran was fundamentally transforming. It is also contextualised in the age of reform, a period in which the Middle East was undergoing widespread social, political, and military changes. Islamic (art) history, Iranian Studies, and cultural analysis form an interdisciplinary analytic framework to create new knowledge about the historical complexity of 19th-century Iran.

Arash Ghajarjazi received his PhD from the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University. His work deals with the relations between Islam, sciences, and media technologies in the Middle East from the 19th century onwards. More broadly, trained both as a cultural analyst and a historian, he explores how Islamic traditions have evolved in and as media. He approaches histories of Muslim material cultures and ideas together. His work seeks a balance between historical contextualisation and philosophical conceptualisation.

"This is a very concise and thought-provoking study on the crossroads and intersections of Qajar intellectual history, history of sciences and medicine, religious studies, media studies and Shiite Islamic studies. It does not fit smoothly into narrow disciplinary definitions, and this is what makes it so compelling, and at times challenging. – Christoph U. Werner, University of Bamberg The manuscript is written well and is original and very compellingly argued. The subject offers brilliant insights into the ways Iranian Shi’i belief systems, habits and praxis intersect with and adjust to new technologies and appropriate their potentialities to naturalise, through ‘the absurd’, those new ways of sensing the world. – Sussan Babaie, University of London "

List of figures
Transliteration table
Acknowledgements
Preface
INTRODUCTION A SHORT OVERVIEW OF EARLY REFORMS THROUGH THE LENS OF D.R AL-FONUN
ABSURD AS THE LIMIT TO MEDIATION MEANING, PARADOX, AND THE ABSURD IN ISLAM: PUSHING SHAHAB AHMED TO THE LIMIT NOTES ON THE METHODS
1. RESURRECTIONAL MEDIATIONS SHI.A ESCHATOLOGY AND PHOTOGRAPHY THEOLOGRAPHIC MEDIATION IN RESURRECTIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE LIMIT: FROM MIMESIS TO EVIDENTIALITY A WORLD OF MEANING IN THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE
2. MOURNING MEDIATIONS TA.ZIYE PERFORMANCES AND MILITARY SONIC TECHNIQUES MILITARY SOUNDS
THE CULTURAL INFLUENCE OF THE MILITARY TA.ZIYE: A SHORT HISTORY CUEING AND ORGANISING: TA.ZIYE RECONSTRUCTED P
THE AFFECTIVE MODE OF TA.ZIYE
3. THERAPEUTIC MEDIATIONS SHI.A MEDICAL IMAGINATION AND CHOLERA CHOLERA IN CONTEXT: MEDICAL INSTITUTIONALISATION AND AETIOLOGIES THE CASE OF CURE OF CHOLERA (.EL.J AL-WAB..)
COUNTER POINTS: MODERN PROPHYLACTIC APPROACHES TO CHOLERA
4. SPIRITUAL MEDIATIONS SHI.A DEMONOLOGY AND TELEGRAPHY HAPTICS OF THE JENN
SPIRITS AFTER TELEGRAPHY
DIMINISHING HAPTICS IN IRANIAN SPIRITISM EPILOGUE: THE SEMIOTICS OF SHI.A ABSURDIS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SOURCES
STUDIES
INDEX