Mashhad

Mashhad is the holiest city in Iran, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, and one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in the world. The Imam Reza Shrine receives nearly 30 million pilgrims annually and is the most visited site in Islam. Its religious significance stems from being the burial place of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam in Shia Islam. After his death in 818 CE (203 AH), he was buried in the village of Sanabad near Tus, and the site gradually became known as Mashhad, meaning "the place of the martyrdom." Over the centuries, the settlement grew into a major religious city centered around his shrine. Numerous traditions attribute immense spiritual merit to the pilgrimage (ziyārah) of Imam Reza, and millions of pilgrims travel to Mashhad every year. Mashhad is also one of the leading centers of Shia religious scholarship. …

The city is located at 36.20º North latitude and 59.35º East longitude, in the valley of the Kashafrud River near Turkmenistan, between the two mountain ranges of Binalood and Hezar Masjed Mountains. The city benefits from the proximity of the mountains, having cool winters, pleasant springs, and mild summers. It is only about 250 km (160 mi) from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. The city is the administrative center of Mashhad County (or the shahrestan of Mashhad) as well as the somewhat smaller Central District (Bakhsh-e Markazi) of Mashhad. The city itself, excluding parts of the surrounding Bakhsh and Shahrestan, is divided into 13 smaller administrative units, with a total population of more than 3 million. Mashhad features a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk; Trewartha: BShk) with very hot summers, cold winters and Mediterranean-like dry summer precipitation pattern. …

Long a center of secular and religious learning, Mashhad has been a center for the Islamic arts and sciences, as well as piety and pilgrimage. Mashhad was an educational centre, with a considerable number of Islamic schools (madrasas, the majority of them, however, dating from the later Safavid period. Mashhad Hawza (Persian: حوزه علمیه مشهد) is one of the largest seminaries of traditional Islamic school of higher learning in Mashhad, which was headed by Abbas Vaez-Tabasi (who was Chairman of the Astan Quds Razavi board from 1979) after the revolution, and in which Iranian politician and clerics such as Ali Khamenei, Ahmad Alamolhoda, Abolghasem Khazali, Mohammad Reyshahri, Morteza Motahhari, Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, and Madmoud Halabi (the founder of Hojjatieh and Mohammad Hadi Abd-e Khodaee learned Islamic studies). …