An Analysis of Power Relations and Popular Culture in the Safavid Era: A Case Study of Nowruz Carnivals

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between power and popular culture in the Safavid era through a case study of Nowruz carnivals. It argues that Nowruz in this period was not merely a calendrical, domestic, or inherited Iranian festival, but a social, ritual, and political arena in which authority was represented, negotiated, softened, and reproduced. The Safavid state, relying on the combination of Iranian kingship, official Shiism, courtly ceremony, and the organization of urban space, used Nowruz as an opportunity to display royal magnificence, renew political loyalty, regulate social hierarchy, and connect Iranian cultural memory with Shiite legitimacy. At the same time, popular culture did not play a passive role in this process. Ordinary people, guilds, markets, neighborhoods, musicians, performers, and families gave social vitality to the festival through public participation, visits, new clothing, gift exchange, ritual consumption, collective joy, and festive presence in urban spaces. The findings show that Nowruz carnivals created a temporary and controlled suspension of everyday order. This suspension allowed for the experience of joy, social interaction, bodily display, sound, movement, and public participation, without necessarily leading to the complete rejection of political order. From this perspective, Safavid Nowruz should be understood as a multilayered field in which royal power, official religion, Iranian tradition, and everyday social life intersected. The article concludes that power in the Safavid period was not exercised only through institutions, commands, military force, or coercion. It was also reproduced through ritual, celebration, urban space, embodied performance, music, gift exchange, and collective memory. Therefore, the study of Nowruz carnivals provides a valuable perspective for understanding how early modern Iranian political authority operated through both official ceremony and the participatory energies of popular culture.