Shah Cheragh shrine

From the outside Shah Cheragh is a handsome Persian shrine: a bulbous dome with calligraphy circling its drum, a columned portico flanked by two short minarets, and a broad courtyard in the centre of Shiraz. Nothing quite prepares you for the inside. The walls and vaults of the funerary halls are sheathed in mirrored glass cut into thousands of small facets and set among coloured tiles, so that every lamp and every movement is broken into a shimmering field of light. It is one of the most dazzling interiors in Iran, and one of the finest examples of the Persian art of mirror mosaic.

The shrine honours Ahmad ibn Musa, a son of the seventh Shia imam Musa al-Kazim, who died in Shiraz in the ninth century; his brother Muhammad is also buried here. The name, meaning "King of the Light", comes from a story told in Shiraz that a mysterious light once revealed the grave. A first domed mausoleum rose under the Salghurids in the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth century the Injuid queen Tashi Khatun enlarged it with a mosque and a college. Safavid builders renovated the complex, an eighteenth-century earthquake damaged it badly, and the Qajars restored it in the nineteenth century and enclosed the grave in a silver screen. The present dome dates from a reconstruction in 1958.

Shah Cheragh is above all a living place of pilgrimage, one of the most important in Iran, and much of its beauty lies in that: families sitting in the courtyard, pilgrims touching the silver screen, the glitter of the mirror halls reflected in thousands of faces. A small museum on the site, founded in 1925, keeps ceramics and other finds. Visitors of other faiths are generally welcomed with a guide; women are asked to wear a chador, which is lent at the entrance.

Getting there

The shrine stands in central Shiraz, about 1.2 km from the city centre and within walking distance of the bazaar and other historic sights of the old city. Shiraz Shahid Dastghaib International Airport (SYZ) is about 9 km away, reached by taxi.