Najaf

Najaf grew up around a single grave, that of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, whom Shia Muslims revere as the first Imam and Sunni Muslims honor as the fourth caliph. Ali was struck down in the mosque of nearby Kufa in 661, and tradition holds that he asked to be buried on the desert ridge where his shrine now stands. For Shia Muslims the Imam Ali Shrine ranks among the holiest places on Earth, and for a thousand years Najaf has been a leading center of Shia religious scholarship. Its senior clerics, the marjas, are followed by believers around the world, and its vast cemetery has drawn the dead of many lands.

Najaf stands on a low plateau at the edge of the Western Desert, about 160 kilometers south of Baghdad and roughly 10 kilometers from Kufa and the Euphrates. The Imam Ali Shrine rises at the center of the old city, a courtyard complex crowned by a golden dome and two golden minarets, its outer walls covered in glazed tiles and its inner chambers in glittering mirror mosaic. Around it lie the narrow lanes of the old quarters, the seminaries of the hawza, libraries, and markets. To the north spreads Wadi al-Salam, the Valley of Peace, covering about 6 square kilometers and holding millions of graves, where devout Shia have sought burial for centuries. The city is the capital of Najaf Governorate and has an international airport that serves pilgrims.

By Shia tradition, the grave was revealed in the late eighth century under the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, and a shrine has stood on the site ever since, rebuilt by Buyid, Ilkhanid, and Safavid patrons. The Persian ruler Nader Shah had the dome gilded in the 1740s. From the 11th century, when the scholar Shaykh al-Tusi settled here, Najaf grew into a hub of Shia learning, its seminaries drawing students from Iran, Lebanon, South Asia, and the Gulf. The shrine was damaged when the 1991 uprising was crushed and again during fighting in 2004. Iraq's 2024 census counted about 831,000 people in the city, and Najaf is a starting point for the Arbaeen walk to Karbala. Wadi al-Salam is on Iraq's Tentative List for UNESCO World Heritage status.

• Iran
  An ancient Persian civilization on a high desert plateau draws students and pilgrims from
• Karbala
  The Iraqi shrine city of Imam Husayn and the vast Arbaeen pilgrimage linked by the Arbaeen walk
• Iraq
  Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers located in
• Mesopotamia
  The land between the rivers, where the city was invented located in
• Euphrates
  The longer river of Mesopotamia, cradle of cities near
• Medina
  The City of the Prophet, burial place of Muhammad and Islam's second-holiest city sacred to the same faith