The Semiotics of the Sacred space: A Critical Approach to the Production of Space in the Yārsān Religion

The current paper aims at investigating the strategies of spatial production and representation in the Yārsān religion by focusing on a sacred scripture entitled bārga bārga. To this purpose, firstly the strategies employed for locating a referent in the text are explained according to space grammar as proposed by Levinson (2004). Then, we try to study the strategies of spatial production and representation in the text by applying the geocriticism approach (Westphal 2011). The results show that the text mainly employs three strategies of topology, deixis and motion to specify the location of a referent. In addition, the results demonstrate that the spatial ideas in the text are mainly based on two macro-metaphorical models (Caravan and dyeing). These models make a unified spatial-temporal complex in such a way that any spatial idea associates a temporal epoch (the principle of spatiotemporality). Additionally, the study indicates that the text, by using some strategies, challenges the established and formal spatial boundaries and reconstructs them in a new order to support its ideological intentions. Furthermore, this sacred scripture tries to deconstruct the strict boundary between the real and the fictive (referentiality principle) and also it employs divergent and numerous placenames in an innovative way in order to express its ideological and theological messages. Finally, it should be noted that these strategies are employed to present a new spiritual spatial ideology in the text.