Sayyidah Ruqayya Shrine

The Sayyidah Ruqayya Shrine in the old city of Damascus is one of the most important Shia Muslim pilgrimage sites in Syria, venerated as the burial place of Ruqayya bint Husayn — the young daughter of the third Shia Imam Husayn ibn Ali, who according to Shia tradition died in Damascus at the age of approximately four after being brought there as a captive following the events at Karbala in 680 CE. The shrine sits in the Al-Amara district of old Damascus, directly adjacent to the much larger Umayyad Mosque, in the historic Shia religious quarter that grew up over the centuries around the various Damascene shrines associated with the family of the Prophet. The current shrine building, with its distinctive blue-tiled dome and twin minarets, is the result of a major Iranian-funded reconstruction completed in the 1980s and 1990s in the classical Iranian Shia shrine architectural tradition — extensive turquoise majolica tilework on the exterior, mirror-mosaic decoration (āina-kāri) on the interior walls and ceilings, and a centrally-placed silver-grilled tomb chamber containing the small grave traditionally identified as Ruqayya's. The shrine is a major destination for Shia pilgrims from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and the wider Shia world who include it on the broader Damascus pilgrimage circuit alongside the larger Sayyida Zaynab Shrine in the southern Damascus suburbs.