![]() ![]() Taken together, these sources shed new light on how these shrines brought together individuals as well as institutions from the Iraqi countryside, from the provincial governorate at Baghdad, and from the imperial court in a contest for the control of the wealth redistributed through the endowments of these shrines in the form of sinecures. Therefore this introduction, notwithstanding its length, is not a conventional article laying out, unfolding, and wrapping up an argument, but rather a purposeful extract of the documents, and a case study more generally on the use of Ottoman archival material for new explorations in early modern history. The contrast between the thematic makeup of the introduction and the blocks of data found in the documents highlights how one can draw out from such sources a set of information that those who created and kept these writs did not have in focus. The introduction, especially the observations and commentary that follow the background setting, thematically prunes out and refines the raw information found in these writs. These writs span the time from the mid-seventeenth century up to the early eighteenth century, while further documents that come from the same archives but are not chosen for publication are also referenced in this study. In the present paper I translate, transcribe, and reproduce a set of Ottoman archival documents on the Imamic shrines of Karbala and Najaf, their endowments, the rivalry between factions at the local, regional, and imperial level to control their funds as well as tenures, their visitation by Shiite Iranians, and likewise the pilgrimage of Shiite Iranians to Mecca and Medina. ![]()
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