Sofrey-e Nazri Women's Agency in Ritual Community

Sofrey-e Nazri is a Persian collective religious ritual that is very common between Iranian women. This ritual is known as a female ritual and most of the time is performed inside the homes or sometimes in mosques, holy tombs and Huseynieh. This ritual is based on a religious promise that is named as Nazr that should performed by a person who made this promise – the Bani. This ritual is planned and started by Bani and will continued by women who are invited by Bani as guests to formed the religious community. The most important issue is considering about relationship between Sofrey-e Nazri and social constitution of women’s agency.We did ethnographic fieldwork to study this female religious gathering (Sofrey-e Nazri) among middle class women of Tehran. As the main issue in this essay we want to consider that how women’s agency is constructed through this ritual communities? Sofrey-e Nazri makes a network of social relations that is very useful for everyday life and is helpful for solving any problem and crisis in women’s life. So this ritual is a multi-function ritual that supports both religious and social needs of Muslim women and make some opportunity and options to support the other problems of a female’s life. This female agency constructed and practiced in collectively. Actually it is a kind of collective agency