Mashhad

Overview

Mashhad is a city in northeastern Iran and the capital of Razavi Khorasan Province. It is Iran’s second-largest city by population and land area. Its central landmark is the tomb of Ali ibn Musa al-Reza, known as Imam Reza, the eighth imam of Shia Islam. The shrine makes Mashhad Iran’s foremost Shiite pilgrimage city; Qom is the principal seat of the global Shiite clergy. More than 22 million pilgrims visit Mashhad annually. Religious travel, the shrine’s institutions and the holdings of its endowment shape the city’s economy and political importance.^[1]

Mashhad also holds a distinct place in the history of Iranian Jews. In 1839, anti-Jewish violence killed members of its Jewish community and forced survivors to adopt Islam outwardly. Families continued Jewish worship and observance in secret for generations. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the city has been closely tied to the Islamic Republic’s leadership: Ali Khamenei was born there, and the supreme leader’s annual Nowruz address at the Imam Reza Shrine has become a major political event. Mashhad has also been a starting point for anti-government protest and a venue for activities of forces aligned with the Iranian regime.^[1][2][3]

Geography

Mashhad lies in the heart of Razavi Khorasan Province, in northeastern Iran. The wider Khorasan region has played a major part in Iranian political, cultural and religious history. Mashhad’s position and the presence of Imam Reza’s tomb have made it a destination for pilgrims from across Iran and beyond. The shrine complex contains a mosque, a library and other institutions devoted to the eighth Shiite imam. Its mosque is described as the world’s largest by area. The scale of pilgrimage gives the shrine significance beyond its function as a place of worship: it is also a center of employment, property ownership and urban development.^[1][4]

Landholding is a defining feature of the city. Astan Quds Razavi, the foundation that manages the Imam Reza Shrine, owns nearly half the land in Mashhad and controls extensive economic assets. The foundation has grown into Islam’s largest religious endowment and operates a vast business empire. Its holdings place decisions about shrine administration, property and investment at the center of Mashhad’s civic life. Astan Quds Razavi operates without oversight from other Iranian government bodies, leaving the full extent of its assets difficult to determine. Control of the institution therefore carries economic as well as religious authority.^[1][4]

Jewish history

Mashhad’s Jewish community lived beside one of Shiite Islam’s most important sacred sites. In the eighteenth century, Nader Shah encouraged Jews to settle in the city as part of an effort to develop commerce. After his death, restrictions confined the community to an area outside the city walls. Jewish residents maintained communal and commercial life under conditions of recurring tension. Their history forms part of the longer history of Jews in Persia, where restrictions and episodes of forced conversion differed by period and locality.^[5][6]

On March 26, 1839, a blood libel and ensuing pogrom devastated Mashhad’s Jews. Accounts of the immediate incident that sparked the violence differ, but the accusation against Jews was false. Attackers killed roughly 30 to 40 people, looted and burned Jewish property, and subjected survivors to further violence. The death toll is often given as about 40, approximately one-tenth of a community described as numbering around 400 people. Survivors faced a choice between outward conversion to Islam and death. The forced conversion did not end the community’s Jewish religious life; it drove that life into secrecy.^[5][6]

The survivors and their descendants became known as the Mashhad crypto-Jews. Publicly, they lived as Muslims and were called Jadid al-Islam, or “new Muslims.” At home, families preserved Jewish practice: they observed Shabbat, prayed privately and baked matzah for Passover out of public view, including in cellars. Concealment required sustained cooperation within households and the community. Children could receive a public Muslim name and a private Jewish name. These practices preserved religious continuity while exposure could bring danger. The 1839 events remain a clear example of anti-Jewish persecution before the rise of political Zionism, the Jewish national movement for self-determination in the historical Land of Israel.^[5][7]

Under the Pahlavi dynasty, beginning in 1925, Mashhad’s Jews gained greater freedom to practice Judaism openly. In the decades after the Second World War, members of the community left the city, chiefly for Israel and the United States. Descendants have preserved the community’s memory through family traditions, religious objects and accounts of the 1839 pogrom. The National Library of Israel has displayed objects associated with their history, including a liturgical poem written by a Mashhadi Jew who reached Israel in the early twentieth century. Mashhad’s Jewish history thus extends beyond the massacre itself: it includes generations of concealed observance and the later rebuilding of communal life elsewhere.^[5][7]

Modern history

Mashhad became deeply connected to the leadership of the Islamic Republic after 1979. Ali Khamenei was born in the city in 1939 and lived and studied there until the revolution. His son Mojtaba Khamenei was also born in Mashhad, in 1969. Ebrahim Raisi was born there on December 14, 1960, and came from a clerical family in the Noghan district. These personal connections gave Mashhad a place in the biographies of figures who would later hold considerable power in Iran.^[1][8]

In 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini appointed Abbas Vaez Tabasi, a revolutionary seminarian from Mashhad, custodian of Astan Quds Razavi. Tabasi led the shrine endowment for 37 years. Its land, religious trusts, budgets and commercial interests gave him exceptional influence in Iranian politics and business. His death on March 4, 2016, prompted the first change in the organization’s leadership since his appointment. Khamenei selected Ebrahim Raisi to head the foundation that month. Raisi, who had participated in the 1988 mass killing of Iranian political prisoners, gained control of substantial shrine-related assets and reported directly to Khamenei. The appointment joined Raisi’s political career to one of Iran’s most powerful religious and economic institutions.^[1][4][8]

After Tabasi’s death, Khamenei also named Mashhad-born Ahmad Alam al-Hoda his representative in Razavi Khorasan Province. Alam al-Hoda is Raisi’s father-in-law. Together, the appointments placed the shrine endowment and the supreme leader’s provincial representation in the hands of closely connected clerics. The foundation’s economic reach extends into the physical development of Mashhad. At a 2017 ceremony for the first stage of two proposed subway lines, Raisi appeared alongside Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Mohammad Ali Jafari and the head of the Guards’ construction company, Khatam al-Anbiya. Their presence illustrated the overlap of shrine administration, provincial development and the regime’s security institutions.^[1][9]

Since becoming supreme leader in 1989, Khamenei has made a springtime Nowruz visit to Mashhad a recurring political ritual. He issues a recorded New Year message and separately addresses a large public gathering at the Imam Reza Shrine. The shrine speech allows him to set out domestic and foreign policy priorities before pilgrims and a national audience. It also reinforces the religious authority attached to his political office. Topics have included Iran’s economy, relations with Western governments and the regime’s regional priorities. The address gives a sacred setting to announcements that affect the state as a whole.^[1][2][3]

Mashhad has also figured in Iran’s regional diplomacy. In January 2016, crowds attacked Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad after Saudi authorities executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Saudi Arabia then severed diplomatic relations with Iran. The attacks showed how a crisis involving a Shiite cleric could reach Mashhad’s streets and diplomatic premises, adding the city to a confrontation between two regional governments.^[10][11]

On December 28, 2017, protests against rising prices and economic hardship began in Mashhad. Demonstrators also voiced opposition to Iran’s political leadership. Authorities arrested participants, and protests soon spread to other cities. The movement broadened from local economic grievances into nationwide demands and criticism of the regime. Mashhad’s role as the starting point was striking for a city so closely associated with the supreme leader, his annual shrine address and major clerical institutions.^[12][13]

Security

Mashhad has served as a venue for gatherings tied to the Iranian regime’s armed networks. On August 13, 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-directed Fatemiyoun Brigade, composed of Afghan Shiite fighters deployed in Syria, held its first international conference in the city. Brigade commanders and fighters attended alongside senior Iranian clerics. Commander Sayyed Elias declared continued loyalty to Khamenei and pledged to fight for Israel’s destruction. He also vowed that the brigade would join other groups aligned with the regime in avenging Qasem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander killed by the United States in January 2020. The conference brought the regime’s regional military aims into a public event in Mashhad.^[14]

The city also appears in the histories of other Iranian-backed formations. The Quds Force trained members of Liwa Zainabiyoun in Mashhad before fighters deployed to Syria; some recruits received specialized weapons instruction, including sniper training. Esmail Qaani helped form the nucleus of what became the Guards’ 5th Nasr Division in Mashhad. Separately, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council decided at an August 14, 1993, meeting in Mashhad to bomb the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. These episodes place the city within the history of the regime’s military organization and operations beyond Iran’s borders.

Mashhad’s prisons and courts have been sites of severe repression. On December 31, 2020, Iranian authorities executed Hamid Rastbala, Kabi Saadat-Jahani and Mohammad Ali Arayesh, three Sunni prisoners, at Vakilabad Prison. Mashhad’s Revolutionary Court had sentenced them to death for “armed rebellion against the Islamic Republic” following their arrests in 2015. The men denied membership in one of the groups cited in their cases. They were denied legal representation during trial and contact with their families before execution. Rastbala reported torture and threats against relatives intended to force televised confessions.^[15]

In 2021, nine other Sunni prisoners held at Vakilabad requested an investigation into their cases and reported beatings, torture and coerced confessions. Repression in Mashhad has also extended beyond prison sentences. In 2018, authorities amputated a man’s hand by guillotine at the city’s central prison following a livestock-theft sentence. That year, journalist Amir Hossein Miresmaili received a 10-year prison sentence over a tweet criticizing a Mashhad cleric. These cases show the reach of the city’s penal institutions into religious dissent, expression and criminal punishment.^[15][16]

Present day

Mashhad remains both a major pilgrimage destination and a center of political power. Millions visit Imam Reza’s shrine each year, while Astan Quds Razavi manages the religious complex and extensive property throughout the city. The foundation’s control of land and businesses gives shrine leadership influence far beyond worship. Khamenei’s Nowruz address continues to connect the city’s sacred status with the regime’s account of its policies and authority.^[1][2][4]

Public life in Mashhad also reflects constraints imposed by the Islamic Republic. In April 2018, authorities arrested the local culture ministry chief after videos showed young men and women dancing at a shopping-center concert. On November 22, 2020, security agents carried out coordinated raids on Baháʼí homes in several Iranian cities, including Mashhad, Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Kerman. Mashhad was therefore one site in the wider persecution of Baháʼís in Iran. The city’s protests, prosecutions and minority histories sit alongside its continuing religious importance: Mashhad is at once the home of Imam Reza’s shrine, the site of the 1839 persecution of its Jews, and a place where the regime’s authority has faced public opposition.^[5][12][17]