MashhadPrayer Times in Mashhad, Qazvin

Mashhad — literally 'the place of martyrdom' — grew up around the tomb of the eighth Twelver Shia Imam, Ali al-Rida, who died in 818 CE under contested circumstances near the Khorasan village of Sanabad. The Imam Reza Shrine has been continually expanded since the tenth century, particularly under the Timurid queen Gawhar Shad in the fifteenth century, whose mosque adjoining the shrine is among the finest pre-Safavid Persian mosque interiors, and under the Safavids who made Mashhad a major imperial pilgrimage destination after Shah Abbas I walked there from Isfahan in 1601. The complex now spans multiple courtyards, minarets, museums, and seminaries, and the city's economy and identity revolve around the millions of pilgrims and seminary students it hosts annually. Mashhad is a pillar of Twelver Shia devotional life in Iran and beyond, with year-round ziyarah, recitation gatherings, and major ceremonies on the birth and martyrdom anniversaries of Imam Reza, when the surrounding streets fill with mourners and reciters in an atmosphere of communal devotion.