A Sociological Study of the Functional Changes of Religious Gatherings (Heyats)

This article aims at delving into the nature of the essence of religious Heyats, in the light of religious traditions and performances, with emphasis on the changes such gatherings have undergone in terms of their functionality. Moreover, two main types of religious Heyats which currently exist in Iran have been scrutinized based on five significant indicators as the main fundaments of such religious gatherings: the elegy-citer (laudators), the audience, the object, the setting, the ambience and the conext and content. In this research the qulaitative content analysis approach has been used and the statistical society of it are the videos of famous elegy-citers in Tehran, which have been filmed from during the last two decades. Furthermore, it has been attempted to show that basic and functional alterations have taken place in such gatherings through scrutinizing them in the city of Tehran. This shows that the function of many such gatherings has changed from a religious one to an artistic one, or in some cases to a theatrical one, and that their purpose is now distant from the main religious purpose, the reasons of which have to be examined.