Anthropological Study of the Culture of Pilgrimage in Gazu Shrine

One rich subculture in Iran is the pilgrimage, which has been observed throughout the entire country. North Iran is one of the areas where many local shrines with particular rituals come in to view. In Mazandaran Province located in Northern Iran next to the Caspian Sea, one of North Iran’s provinces, some pilgrimage rituals have been held and people gathered there around the year as well as on some particular occasions. Gazu shrine is one of the shrines of this province where the ritual of pilgrimage has been observed from the past time as ritual subjects and trustees of this shrine remember. Some of these rituals take the same form of other holy shrines customs, while others differ partly. This article focuses on the Shrine of Gazu in the given region. It uses ethnography and information gathered from key informants to reconstruct the rituals attached to the shrine.