Jamkaran Mosque

Jamkaran Mosque stands on the plain a few kilometres east of Qom, beside the village whose name it carries. It is dedicated to Muhammad al-Mahdi, the twelfth imam of Twelver Shia Islam, who in Shia belief went into occultation in the ninth century and will return at the end of time to fill the world with justice. Of all the places in Iran associated with him, Jamkaran draws the largest crowds.

Its origin is told in a story preserved in later Shia writings. A pious man of the district, Hasan ibn Muthla Jamkarani, is said to have been woken one night in the late tenth century and led to this spot, where he met the hidden imam, who asked that a mosque be built here. Historians treat the account as devotional tradition rather than documented history, and the early buildings have not survived; for most of its life Jamkaran was a modest village mosque.

That changed in the late twentieth century. From the 1990s onwards the mosque was rebuilt and expanded on a vast scale, with a turquoise-tiled dome, tall minarets, broad courtyards and halls able to hold great crowds, and the site became one of the most visited religious places in the country. Supporters see this growth as a sign of popular devotion; some scholars and clerics have voiced reservations about practices that grew up around the site, and the debate is part of the mosque's modern story.

The busiest night is Tuesday, the eve of Wednesday, when pilgrims arrive from Qom, Tehran and much further afield to pray through the night. The largest gathering comes on the fifteenth of Sha'ban, the birthday of the twelfth imam, when the roads from Qom fill with walkers and the courtyards with lamps. Many visitors write petitions to the imam and drop them into a well within the complex, the chah-e arizeh, “the well of petitions”.