Ruzbeh Saadati – August 21, 2025
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| Historical Bazaar of Zanjan |
In Barcelona, Gaudí’s architecture and its spectacular buildings are not merely visual attractions; they carry the narratives of Catalan collective identity. The Sagrada Família, with its forms drawn from nature and the visual language of Catalan modernism, is a living symbol of people’s belonging to a city whose history is tied not to surrender, but to resistance. Heroes such as Rafael Casanova and national poets like Jacint Verdaguer are enshrined in literature and public memory; the former as a figure evoking sacrifice and the struggle for freedom, and the latter by contributing to cultural revival and the rebirth of the Catalan language in epic poems and stories, reinforcing the bond between language and identity. Even Catalonia’s defeat in 1714 and the loss of its local autonomy, rather than leading to collapse, transformed into a narrative of resistance; a narrative that was reproduced through poetry and literature, remained alive in language and collective memory, and was embodied by urban sites and symbols, turning into a tangible experience for later generations. This defeat, by passing through time and being named Catalonia’s National Day, became a symbol of Catalan endurance and collective identity. In this city, symbols, monuments, language, heroes, and historical events each shape part of the collective memory, enabling its continual reproduction and allowing people to recognize themselves and their city’s history in their narratives.
In contrast, Cornwall, a region in the southwest of England, with its Celtic Cornish identity and Cornish language, is an example of a lack of identity capital. The Cornish language, which until the eighteenth century was part of the people’s everyday life, was marginalized under England’s assimilationist policies, to the extent that children were punished in schools for speaking it. By the late eighteenth century, this language had disappeared as a living language within Cornish society. Yet from the early twentieth century, efforts toward revival—such as the publication of books introducing the Cornish language—breathed new life into it, and today several thousand people, including around five hundred fluent speakers, use the language. Unlike Barcelona, Cornwall lacks historical figures or symbolic monuments that are widely recognized in collective memory as markers of Cornish resistance or identity. Local events, such as the Cornish rebellions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were absorbed into Britain’s national narratives, and landmarks such as Tintagel Castle have served English rather than Cornish identity. As a result, Cornish collective memory has been weakened, and linguistic and cultural assimilation has taken place without tangible resistance.
These differences, when analyzed from a theoretical perspective, gain greater depth and clarity. Maurice Halbwachs conceives collective memory not merely as a reservoir of the past, but as a living and dynamic network of meanings, symbols, and rituals that sustain a society’s identity across time. From his standpoint, collective memory goes beyond individual recollections; it is a social structure formed through interactions, narratives, and cultural representations. This structure preserves collective identity as a shield against the intrusion of foreign narratives or cultural pressures. For Halbwachs, symbols and rituals—from historical monuments to collective ceremonies—not only recall the past, but also serve as pillars that uphold the existential continuity of a community against the instability of time.
From another perspective, Paul Ricoeur, through the concept of narrative identity, redefines identity as a fluid and dynamic narrative. In his view, collective identity is not something fixed, but a construct born out of the stories a society tells about itself. These narratives, nourished by collective memory, link the past to the present and future, enabling individuals to recognize themselves as actors within history and to feel their own agency. Yet Ricoeur also gestures toward the fragility of this process: the tension between official narratives, often serving power, and the lived memories of the people can lead to ruptures in identity. In this context, elements such as myths, memorials, and rituals, acting as stable and reliable points within the flow of time, consolidate collective narratives and bring identity down from abstraction into embodiment. These elements, in Ricoeur’s view, are not only carriers of meaning but also guarantors of social cohesion in the face of historical discontinuities.
Although collective memory is influenced by multiple factors such as economy, migration, and assimilationist policies—and its weakening is a multifaceted phenomenon—this note focuses on the role of symbols, monuments, narratives, and cultural representations in either reproducing or fragmenting this memory.
Within such a composite framework, Zanjan—a city formerly with a Turkish-majority population—presents a deeply thought-provoking case. If Tabriz can be likened to Barcelona, it is because its collective narratives are reproduced through monuments, cultural figures, and intellectuals, sustaining cultural and identity-based resistance. It is a city where the cannonball marks on its buildings’ walls still remind people daily of its stand during the Constitutional Revolution. A city that nurtured poets, writers, and intellectuals such as Roshdieh, Baraheni, Behrangi, Sa’edi, and others, possessing figures to suit every taste, each of whom holds a firmly established place in public narratives and collective memory, rendering palpable the link between people, time, and place. A city whose glorious history and experiences of resistance, alongside its language and symbols, are bound together like a chain, keeping collective identity alive and tangible in people’s minds.
In contrast, Zanjan, from the standpoint of lacking such identity resources, shares certain similarities with Cornwall. Although monuments such as the Soltaniyeh Dome, the Zanjan Bazaar, or the Jameh Mosque are historically and architecturally valuable, they have not been integrated into a network of collective identity narratives and lack the identity coloring that could reproduce a lived experience of collective belonging in society. From Halbwachs’s perspective, this neutrality is a sign of rupture in the reproduction of collective memory; for without the continuous representation of the past through meaningful symbols and narratives, collective memory succumbs to oblivion. From Ricoeur’s angle, the absence of identity narratives that could link these monuments to both past and present has weakened the experience of narrative identity in Zanjan. Intellectual, literary, or historical figures who might strengthen people’s bond with history and place either do not exist at all or have rarely been highlighted in Zanjani collective memory. Unlike Tabriz, where names like Sattar Khan are still, even after a hundred years, invoked as symbols of resistance within collective memory, Zanjan lacks such figures in its public narratives. The outcome of this rupture is a space where the absence of emotional bonds with local symbols, narratives, and elements becomes visible. The result of this condition is the lack of a meaningful relationship between people and their city, and between different generations—a fertile ground for the penetration of Tehran’s official cultural narratives and the transformation of younger generations’ identities.
Within this context, the position of languages is also noteworthy. Turkish in Zanjan still carries folklore and part of tradition, and it is precisely in this domain that its strongest resistance against the process of Persianization takes place. Yet contrary to the perception of those in Zanjan who, under the influence of assimilationist policies, have shifted to Persian, the strong presence of the language in folklore and tradition never means that Turkish is a “village language” or merely a vehicle for subordinate local narratives. On the contrary, folklore in its deeper sense is a reservoir of collective memory and a medium for transmitting historical identity. Experience shows that even when the dominant language gains hegemony in education, media, and official domains, it struggles to penetrate the folkloric sphere of the subordinated language, because this sphere carries emotional, ritual, and mnemonic weight that cannot easily be forgotten or replaced. Here, folklore is not a sign of weakness or backwardness, but the last bastion of linguistic identity—a space where narratives and collective memory continue to be reproduced, and where, in another sense, the possibility of identity—however fragile—remains in the face of dominant narratives. Thus, the relationship of Turkish with folklore must be understood as a continuation of memory and resistance, not as evidence of marginality or rural confinement. This common misperception of the language has widened the emotional and cultural gap with younger generations.
Today, Persian— which in the early stages of Persianization functioned as a marker of distinction and refinement for a minority elite, serving as a tool of prestige and a sign of authenticity—has become so widespread in Zanjan that it no longer provides the possibility of differentiation or recognition of identity. This linguistic shift, coupled with economic changes, migration, state policies, and other factors that have weakened local ties—together with the absence of symbols, monuments, and narratives that could stabilize Turkish identity, and with Turkish’s retreat into the folkloric domain—has left much of the younger generations and the urban sphere open to the easy penetration of imposed central narratives and the Persian language.
What I have written above relies above all on my everyday experiences and observations—my encounters with the extent and quality of Zanjanis’ sense of belonging to Zanjan, with the absent connections of the people around me to the city, to the past, to the geography, and, in a word, to home! For this reason, it is only natural that these experiences alone cannot offer a complete or final picture of the mindset of all the people of Zanjan.