The Pilgrimage Capital of the Shia World — Iran's second-largest city and the site of the Imam Reza Shrine, the largest mosque complex on Earth by area and the destination of 25 million pilgrims annually, where the Silk Road crossed Khorasan
Mashhad is Iran's second-largest city (population ~3.5 million) and the most visited city in the Islamic world after Mecca — approximately 25 million Shia Muslim pilgrims visit annually from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the broader Shia diaspora. The draw is the Imam Reza Shrine: the burial place of Ali ibn Musa al-Ridha (Imam Reza, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shia Islam), who died (or was poisoned) here in 818 CE. The shrine complex has expanded over twelve centuries into the largest mosque complex on Earth by total area — roughly 600,000 square metres of courtyards, prayer halls, m…
The site was a small village called Sanabad before 818 CE, when Imam Reza died here during a journey as a virtual prisoner of the Abbasid Caliph Ma'mun. His tomb rapidly became a pilgrimage destination; the name 'Mashhad' (place of martyrdom) reflects the Shia belief that he was poisoned. The Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998–1030) built the first major shrine complex and the city grew around it. The Mongols under Timur (Tamerlane) destroyed much of Khorasan but spared Mashhad due to its sacred status. The Safavid shahs — who made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion of Iran — poured…