The Shrine of Imāmzādi Ḥaḍrat Shāh-Zandū

This article, based on library research and newly discovered manuscripts as well as reliable oral histories, introduces and examines the life and family of Imāmzādi Sayyid ‛Afīf al-Dīn Shāh-Zandū in the city of Bīram, Lārestān. By analyzing and comparing the published works on this figure, the study seeks both to present a consolidated account of his historical identity and to add new findings concerning this prominent Islamic personality of southern Fārs. According to extant records, Shāh-Zandū arrived in the Bīram district of Lārestān in the year 402/1011 and passed away in 432/1040, as confirmed by an earlier tombstone inscription and a tadhkira compiled by Sayyid Ali-Akbar, known by the pen-name Ṣāber Bīramī, the kalāntar of Bīram during the Qājār period. His thirty-year presence in southern Iran resulted in the Islamization of wide areas of Lārestān and southern Fārs, extending as far as parts of Hormozgan and Bushehr. His mausoleum and domed shrine stand in the center of Bīram. The extant tadhkira, derived from an earlier primary source and the Dīvān of Shāh Zayn al-‛Ibād Bīramī (a poet of the 8th–9th/14th–15th centuries and descendant of Shāh-Zandū, who described his battles), provides additional details on his legacy. The surviving shrines of the region—including those in Lārestān, southern Būshehr, and western Hormozgan—are, for the most part, connected to the offspring and relatives of Ḥaḍrat Shāh-Zandū.