Shah Cheragh Holy Shrine

Shah Cheragh ("King of Light") in Shiraz is one of the most important Shia Muslim pilgrimage sites in Iran outside the major Imam shrines, and one of the most visually spectacular religious interiors in the country. The shrine contains the tombs of Ahmad and Muhammad — two brothers of the eighth Imam Ali al-Rida (whose own shrine in Mashhad is the largest in Iran) — both descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through Imam Ali. The brothers fled to Shiraz in the early ninth century during the Abbasid persecution of the Shia ahl al-bayt and died there in obscurity; their tombs were rediscovered, according to local tradition, when a luminous glow was observed at the burial site, giving the shrine its name. The present complex, built up progressively over centuries with major Safavid and Qajar-period contributions, is famous for the extraordinary mirror-mosaic decoration (āina-kāri) of its interior — a Persian craft tradition in which thousands of small mirror fragments are set into geometric and floral patterns covering the walls, ceilings and domes, producing an effect of overwhelming refracted light from any angle. The shrine sits at the heart of the historic religious quarter of Shiraz, near the bazaar and the tombs of the great Persian poets Hafez and Saadi. It draws very large pilgrim crowds during major Shia religious occasions, particularly the death anniversaries of the Imams.