Mashad - City of Iran

Mashhad is the second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia world. It is located 850 kilometers east of Tehran, at the center of the Razavi Khorasan Province close to the borders of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.

Now Mashhad is notably known as the resting place of the Imam Reza . A shrine was later built there to commemorate the Imam, which in turn gave rise to increasing demographic development.

The city is the administrative centre of Mashhad County as well as the somewhat smaller district of Mashhad. The city itself, excluding parts of the surrounding bakhsh and shahrestan, is divided into 13 smaller administrative units.

Mashhad consists mainly of people of Iranian descent. There are also over 20 million pilgrims who visit the city every year.

In the beginning of the 9th century Mashhad was a small village called Sanabad situated 24km away from Tus. There was a summer palace of "Hamid ibn Qahtabi", the governor of Khorasan. In 808 when Harun al-Rashid, Abbasid caliph, was passing through there to settle down the insurrection of "Rafi ibn Leith" in Transoxania, he became ill and died. He was buried under the palace of Hamid ibn Qahtabi. Several years later in 818 Imam Reza was martyred by Al-Ma'mun and was buried beside the grave of Harun.

Shah Abbas I wanted to encourage Iranians to go to Mashhad for pilgrimage. he himself is known to have walked from Isfahan to Mashhad. During the Safavid era Mashhad gained even more religious recognition, becoming the most important city of the Greater Khorasan as several Madrasah and other structures were built beside the shrine of the Imam Reza.

Though primarily a Muslim city, Mashhad has harbored a number of religious minorities over the centuries. Among these were Jews, who in 1839 were forcibly converted to Islam. However, in truth they lived a double life: outwardly they conformed to Islamic ways, and were known as "Jadid al-Islam" or "New Muslims," but secretly they preserved a Jewish identity and Jewish traditions.

There was a Jewish district in Jennat Street. Jennat Street where the most prestiges shopping centers of Mashhad located at the time and was one the most expensive places of Mashhad.

The Bahá'í Faith has a history of victory and religious persecutions in this city. The latest was the executions of two Baha'is in 1998.

Today the holy shrine and its museum hold one of the most extensive cultural and artistic treasuries of Iran, in particular manuscript books and paintings. Several important theological schools are associated with the shrine of the Eighth Imam.

Long a center of secular as well as of religious learning, Mashhad has been a center for the arts and for the sciences. The large Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, named after the great Iranian poet, is located here. The Madrassa of Ayatollah Al-Khoei, originally built in the seventeenth century and recently replaced with modern facilities, is the city's foremost traditional centre for religious learning. The Razavi University of Islamic Sciences, founded in 1984, stands at the centre of town, within the shrine complex. The prestige of traditional religious education at Mashhad attracts students, known as talaban, internationally.