- 30 - 2007
- 4. Histoire, Période Musulmane
- 4.2. Histoire du XVe au XIXe siècle
- 4.2.1. Safavides et Qâjârs
148
Morikawa, Tomoko
« Pilgrims and the ‘Modernization’ Seen at the Iran-Ottoman Border in the Later Half of the 19th Century ». The Journal of Oriental Researches, 65-3, 2006, pp. 445-477. [in Japanese]
In the later part of the 19th century, many Shiite Iranians crossed the border to make a pilgrimage to the holy shrines of the ‘Atabāt, located in Ottoman Iraq. In this paper, the author describes vividly how Iranian pilgrims were bewildered by unfamiliar immigration procedures which had been introduced in the increasingly modernized Ottoman Empire. After the conclusion of the second Erzurum Treaty (1847), which defined clearly the Ottoman-Iran border, the Ottomans adopted a set of measures to control strictly the border and foreigners, such as customs, immigration and quarantine. This novel immigration control system, coupled with the long-standing Sunni-Shiite rivalry between the two countries, did not fail to perplex and harass travelers from Iran, a country in a very early stage of modernization. The author successfully highlights how the introduction of modern concepts of state and border in West Asia did not only bother ordinary Iranian pilgrims, but also necessarily raised their ‘national’ consciousness.

