Imam Ali Shrine

In the Iraqi city of Najaf, a golden dome and two golden minarets rise above the rooftops. Beneath it lies Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the fourth caliph and, for Shia Muslims, the first Imam. Shia tradition places this shrine just after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem in holiness, and pilgrims arrive by the million every year. Ali was fatally wounded in the mosque of nearby Kufa in 661 and buried secretly at night, his grave hidden for more than a century; the familiar story of its rediscovery tells of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid out hunting, whose dogs refused to follow a gazelle onto one particular patch of ground.

The complex visible today is the work of many patrons layered over one another. Harun raised the first building around 786; the Buyid ruler Adud al-Dawla rebuilt it on a grand scale in the late tenth century and practically founded the town around it; the Safavid shahs added gifts and the great courtyard; and in 1743 Nader Shah had the dome and the two minarets, until then clad in green tiles, sheathed in gilded plates. That gold has defined the shrine ever since. The outer dome carries more than three thousand gilded panels, and the Golden Iwan on the east side is a tall open hall whose walls are covered entirely in gold, flanked by minarets of roughly 35 metres.

Inside, the effect changes from glare to glitter. The sanctuary and its surrounding halls are lined with mirror mosaic and tilework by Iranian craftsmen, so that every lamp is multiplied thousands of times across the vaults. The tomb itself sits within a silver-and-gold screen, or zarih, unveiled in 1942 and made by Indian artisans over five years; inside it lies a carved teak sarcophagus originally given by Shah Ismail I, inscribed with Quranic verses. A vast arcaded courtyard, two storeys high and once lined with rooms for seminary students, wraps around three sides, and the shrine keeps growing, most recently with the enormous Fatimah al-Zahra courtyard.

The building has also known violence: it was damaged during the 1991 uprising, and in August 2003 a car bomb outside the gates killed some 95 worshippers, among them Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim. For most visitors, though, the lasting memory is the crowd itself, moving slowly toward the screen in a hall of reflected light.

Getting there

The shrine stands at the heart of Najaf, in the Najaf Governorate of central Iraq. Al Najaf International Airport (NJF) lies about 9 km away.