Imam Reza Shrine

The Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad is the largest mosque-shrine complex in the world by area and the most important Shia Muslim pilgrimage site after the shrines of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. The complex contains the tomb of Ali al-Rida (Imam Reza in Persian) — the eighth of the Twelve Imams of Shia Islam — who died in 818 CE in the small village of Sanabad, which subsequently grew into the city of Mashhad (literally "the place of martyrdom") around his tomb. The shrine has been progressively expanded by successive Iranian dynasties — the Timurids, the Safavids, the Afsharids, the Qajars and the modern Islamic Republic — into an enormous walled religious city covering approximately six hundred thousand square metres at its current extent. The complex includes the central golden-domed tomb chamber surrounded by multiple courtyards and prayer halls (sahns and rivaqs), the Goharshad Mosque (one of the great Timurid-era mosques of Iran, built in 1418), the Razavi Library with one of the largest collections of Islamic manuscripts in the world, the Astan Quds Razavi Museum, and substantial accommodation, dining and educational facilities for the millions of pilgrims who visit each year. The shrine is administered by the Astan Quds Razavi Foundation, one of the largest religious endowment institutions in the Muslim world, which oversees both the religious functions of the shrine and a vast network of associated charitable, educational and commercial enterprises throughout Iran.