Reviewing the Role of ‘Ritual Landscape’ in Tourism DevelopmentCase Study: Imāmzādeh Mohsen in City of Hamadan, Iran

One of the basis of ‘cultural tourism’ is to address the ritual landscapes in countries, which attract many visitors each year. Generally, the ritual spaces have always been attractive and special to the viewers, either due to the burial of a holy person, or being the symbol of spirituality, the myth and the story referred to in making the building, or even due to the combination of the natural implications. Since, the meaning of the word ‘tourism’ points to the action of ‘travel’ and ‘moving’ for exploring new subjects and frontiers, the study of ritual landscapes is inevitable, as kind of multi-functional landscapes, where points to the object and socio-economic issues in addition to satisfying the people’s minds in case of spirituality and making memories of the environment. Therefore, to better understand the issue, the Imāmzādeh Mohsen, which is located in city of Hamadan as a case study, has been adopted here to review the role of ritual landscape in tourism development. In this research, the holy shrine is assumed as a ritual landscape, by having the characteristics such as “repeatability in holy time and place”, “symbol and metaphor” and “social actions”, that due to its positioning in pure Nature, the holiness of its building (before and after Islam) and the presence of socio-economic activities is considered as a multi-functional item that has the high potential for attracting tourists and developing the tourism industry. The research method in this study is descriptive-analytical one and the data is gathered based on the library information from ancient texts and documents, in addition to site visit of the Imāmzādeh location. Therefore, to better understand this issue,a case study of Mohsen Imamzadeh located in Hamedan has been selected to re-read the role of the ritual landscape in tourism development. In this study, it is assumed that this shrine due to its characteristics such as "repetition in the holy time and place","symbol and metaphor" and "social actions" is a ritual landscape that is located in pristine nature and also The sanctity of its building (before and after Islam) and the presence of social and economic activities is a multi-functional complex and the potential for attracting tourists and developing tourism is abundant. The research method in this article is descriptive-analytical and has been collected based on the collection of library information from old texts and documents as well as a field visit to the Imamzadeh site.