Imam Reza Shrine
Interesting facts
- The shrine complex covers about 1.2 million square metres and can hold some 700,000 worshippers, making it one of the largest mosques in the world.
- Its central library is traced back to 974 and holds roughly a million volumes, including more than 200,000 manuscripts and tens of thousands of handwritten Qurans.
- A naqareh-khaneh drum house still plays for about twenty minutes at sunrise and sunset, a custom traced to the 15th century and passed from father to son.
- Shah Abbas the Great walked the whole way from Isfahan to Mashhad on foot as a pilgrim and later had the dome gilded.
- In 1578 invading Uzbek forces stripped the gold from the dome and a minaret, one of several times the sanctuary was plundered or damaged.
- Marks from the Russian bombardment of the shrine in 1912 can still be seen inside the dome.
- The tomb is enclosed by a metal screen called a zarih; the present one, installed in 2001, is the fifth in the shrine's recorded history.
- Its kitchen, formalised under the Timurids, serves tens of thousands of free meals on ordinary days and about a million during Ramadan.
- Besides the Imam and the caliph Harun al-Rashid, the shrine holds the graves of the polymath Sheikh Baha'i and the Qajar crown prince Abbas Mirza.
- The shrine has its own clock tower, whose clock was installed in 1899 on the orders of Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar.
Why it is worth it
The Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad is the burial place of Ali al-Rida, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shia Islam, who died in 818 and was laid to rest in the village of Sanabad beside the tomb of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. A dome went up over the grave, and the city of Mashhad — the name means "place of martyrdom" — grew around it. Today the sanctuary is among the largest religious complexes in the world, a city within the city of courtyards, prayer halls, libraries and museums visited by tens of millions of pilgrims a year.
What makes it remarkable to look at is the sheer accumulation of Persian craft over a thousand years. Seven great courtyards open one into another, each framed by tiled iwans and minarets; the oldest and largest is the Enghelab, or Atiq, courtyard. Above the tomb rises the golden dome, its gilded plates catching the light from far across the city, while the halls around the burial chamber are lined with mirror mosaic — thousands of small facets that turn lamplight into a glittering, almost liquid surface. The tilework ranges from Timurid mosaic faience to Safavid and Qajar glazed panels, so a walk through the complex is also a walk through the history of Iranian architecture.
The jewel of that history is the Goharshad Mosque, built in the early fifteenth century at the command of Goharshad, wife of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, by the architect Qavam al-Din Shirazi. Its four-iwan courtyard, double-shelled turquoise dome and the great southern iwan, with an inscription designed by Goharshad's son Baysunghur, are counted among the high points of Timurid art. Visiting is a reminder that this is first of all a living place of prayer: the atmosphere at dusk, when the courtyards fill and the dome is lit, is one of devotion rather than spectacle.
Getting there
The shrine stands in the heart of Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city, about 1.4 km from the centre. Mashhad International Airport (MHD) is roughly 6 km away. The tomb of the poet Ferdowsi at Tus, about 24 km from the city, makes a fitting second visit.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Imam Reza shrine is the mausoleum of Ali al-Rida, the eighth Imam in Shia Islam, located in Mashhad, the province of Razavi Khorasan, Iran. As one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, nearly 30 million Muslims making pilgrimages to the shrine every year, the most visited pilgrimage site in Islam. Imam Reza was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. His lineage traces back to Ali via Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, through the line of Husayn. He is part of the chain of mystical authority in Sunni Sufism, making him widely respected in Sunni Islam as well. He is also regarded as a model of asceticism in Sufism. Uyoun Akhbar Al-Ridha have recorded miracles which have occurred at the shrine.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
36.28797, 59.61569per Wikidata