Typologies of the visitors at Khaled Nabi shrine, Iran: tourists or pilgrims?
Authors: Ebadi Mehdi 
Published: August 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of the current study, besides describing the Khaled Nabi shrine and the reasons and motivations behind the visits to the shrine, is to elaborate its importance and meaning for the Turkmen community with regard to cultural identity in modern Iran. In addition, the possibilities of the classification of the visitors at the shrine, according to the tourist-pilgrim model will be also considered.

Design/methodology/approach
– Because of the complexity of the tourism issues, for the collection of data for this research, the author has relied on both qualitative and qualitative methods, notably general observation, participant observation and in-depth interviews with key persons at the shrine. Furthermore, to get some insight in the general opinion, a total of 180 questionnaires that contained open- and close-ended questions have been distributed among Turkmen and non-Turkmen pilgrims/visitors in the age group of 18-80 years, of which 100 were completed. Therefore, observations were made for a whole week’s cycle to record variations during the same season.

Findings
– Results of the study indicate that, because of the character of Khaled Nabi shrine, visitors with varieties of motivations like religious, semi-religious and secular, do visit Khaled Nabi and the shrine takes on a variety of functions for its visitors. The research specifies that drawing an exact line between the visitors proved to be improper. Therefore, to classify the visitors, the tourist-pilgrim continuum, being the most proper model, was applied. Accordingly, six categories of religious pilgrims, spiritual pilgrims/tourists, ecotourists, ethnic tourists, Turkmen cultural/historical tourists and non-Turkmen cultural/historical tourists have been created.

Research limitations/implications
– In regard to the research many problems also appeared. Perhaps the most difficult part was overcoming all sorts of practical and bureaucratic hurdles of doing research in Iran which can be quite challenging at times. It is even harder when the research is on ethnic or religious minorities, which is deemed – without exception – by the Iranian authorities “sensitive”. Consequently, for example, in practice, to not attract undesirable attention of the officials, the author, instead of putting direct questions, did it through participant observation or informal chats with the visitors.

Originality/value
– Despite the huge amount of publications related to pilgrimage and tourism, there is still a gap between abstract theory and empirical research. Tending to be general in nature, the studies dedicated to specific geographical regions with their own unique history and environment are rather few. This lack of tourism studies is even greater when the study is related to zeyarat (religious motivated in the Islamic contexts) which, despite its importance and wide extended practice, has been mostly ignored in tourism and geographic literature. The present study features one such area that is (almost) unknown within the community of tourism and geography researchers.