Communities and Heyati Community

Rituals are the main context of producing the religious experience. In Iranian society, mourning rituals of Muharram are the central collective rituals. These rituals have important functions to organize social groups and identities of Shias. Assemblies and processions that formed on the base of these rituals are the main process of religious socialization.
There is an especial kind of social groups on the base of Muharram rituals, that is called “Hey`at” or Hey`at Azadari. In this paper the author will try to provid an anthropological analysis of components and structure of Hey`at and its functions in reproducing the organization of Shia religious communities.
Widespread impacts of Hey`at in Iranian society lead us to use the term “Hey`ati community or Hey`ati society”. On the base of Victor Turner`s theory on Liminal situation and Communities, Hey`at as a community, formed within liminal situation during religious rituals, has most aspects and functions of communists. In the last decade because of mass communication and developing of media and virtual spaces, a special kind of Hey`at has been emerged that we can call it “virtual Hey`at”. Finally due to importance of Hey`at in Iranian Shia communities, Hey`at is a social and cultural key to understand and analysis of the traditional communities in Iran.