section_path: History/Eastern performing arts/West Asia
section_name: West Asia
paragraph_text: West Asia
  
  The most popular forms of theater in the medieval Islamic world were puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali 's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. It commonly refers to passion plays about the battle of Karbala and its prior and subsequent events. Sir Lewis Pelly begins the preface of his book about Ta'zieh maintaining that "If the success of a drama is to be measured by the effectswhich it produces upon the people for whom it is composed, or upon the audiences before whom it is represented, no play has ever surpassed the tragedy known in the Mussulman world as that of Hasan and Husain." Years later Peter Chelkowski, professor of Iranian and Islamic studies at NYU, chooses the same words for the beginning of his book 'Ta`ziyeh, ritual and drama in Iran'. Live secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta'ziya theater.