Alternative titles: Mashad; Meshed; Meshhed

Mashhad, also spelled Mashad or MeshedMashhad: shrine of ʿAlī al-Riḍā [Credit: Fred J. Maroon/Photo Researchers]Mashhad: shrine of ʿAlī al-RiḍāFred J. Maroon/Photo Researcherscity, capital of Khorāsān-e Razavī ostān (province), northeastern Iran. It is located in the Kashaf River valley at an elevation of about 1,000 metres. As the burial place of ʿAlī al-Riḍā, the eighth imam in Twelver Shīʿism (Ithnā ʿAshariyyah), Mashhad is an important pilgrimage site. Also, as the easternmost of Iran’s major cities, it is a hub for trade with the countries that border Iran to the east.

Mashhad has the second largest population in Iran—after Tehrān, the national capital. Tourists and pilgrims add to the number of people in the city, as do refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan. Pop. (2006) 2,427,316.


City site

Mashhad is located in a valley between two mountain ranges, the valley of the Kashaf River. As with many cities located in intermontane valleys, access to underground aquifers is through a series of canals (qanāt) drilled downward into the slopes of the mountains. The metropolitan area is subject to earthquakes, and seismic activity in outlying areas, such as Qāyen in 1997 and Bam in 2008, has also been recorded in Mashhad.

The city is laid out in a roughly circular shape, with the religious edifices and monuments located in the centre and avenues radiating outward to approximately 12 neighbourhoods, such as Malikābād, Sajjād, Shahrak-e Azadi, Kuy-e Imām Riḍā, and Sīsābād. Mashhad differs from other Iranian cities in that a shrine—in this case, the one marking the burial place of ʿAlī al-Riḍā—rather than a bazaar constitutes the centre of municipal life. Prior to the renovation of the shrine area in the mid-1970s, that complex was in effect a town within a city, somewhat akin to the Forbidden City in Beijing prior to the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Mosques, courtyards, areas for bast (sanctuary-taking), seminaries, caravanserai (inns), and bazaars collectively formed the ḥaram (holy site).

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the city grew into a major modern metropolis, and religion continued to play an enormous role in its development. The shrine’s landholdings were so extensive that when a massive urban renewal project was launched just before the 1978–79 revolution, more than three-fourths of the available land belonged to the shrine.


Mashhad has a semidesert climate. Winters are cool to cold, springs and autumns are mild, and summers are hot. Daily low temperatures hover around 25–30 °F (roughly −2 °C) in December and January, with highs reaching 45–50 °F (roughly 9 °C) during those months. During the spring, temperatures can range from lows of 35–55 °F (roughly 2–13 °C) to highs of about 60–80 °F (roughly 16–27 °C). July is usually the hottest month, with lows of about 65 °F (roughly 18 °C) and highs of about 95 °F (roughly 35°C). The relative humidity in the summer months is approximately 30 percent but in the winter months can rise to as high as 75 percent. Mashhad’s annual precipitation is approximately 10 inches (about 250 mm) of rain, snow, and sleet, roughly average for Iranian cities.


Mashhad is a multiethnic city that includes Persians, Baluchis, Daris, Hazrajatis, Turkmen, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kurds, and Lurs among its residents. The dominant ethnic groups are Persians, followed by Turkmen, and Kurds. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979–89 and following the American invasion of that country in 2001, hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled to Iran, especially to Khorāsān and Mashhad, to escape from war zones.


Manufacturing and trade

Mashhad’s main industries include natural gas and light industrial enterprises, such as food processing and the production of textiles, carpets, valves, pipes, fittings, water heaters, air coolers, and ceramics.

Commerce in Mashhad is focused on agricultural and animal products, such as fruits, nuts, and wool. Iran’s trade with Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, China, and the countries of Central Asia has become increasingly important, and some of that commerce is channeled through Mashhad, one of the few large Iranian cities located near the eastern border. Mashhad exports electrical power, gas, minerals, livestock, cotton fibre, saffron, grains, sugar beets, cement, and construction materials.


Tourism based on pilgrimages to the shrine of ʿAlī al-Riḍā is a key part of Mashhad’s economy. Renovations to the shrine beginning in the 1970s helped attract larger numbers of visitors. The city now receives more than 10 million tourists annually. Accommodations range from spartan pilgrims’ hostels to luxury hotels.


Infrastructure-development initiatives significantly expanded the road and railroad systems in Mashhad. The ring road circling the city—featuring modern highway roadbeds, dividers, and shoulders—was one such project. The city is connected by rail with Tehrān and other Iranian cities, such as Bāfq and Sarakhs, and a rail connection with Herāt in Afghanistan was under way in the early 21st century. Mashhad also began constructing a metro system, the first line of which opened in 2011. The city’s airport is one of the country’s largest, with domestic flights to many Iranian cities and international routes to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Administration and society

The city of Mashhad is the seat of Mashhad shahrestān (county), which is a part of Khorāsān-e Razavī ostān (province). The province is governed by a provincial governor (ostāndār); the shahrestān is ruled by a regional governor (farmāndār); and the municipality is ruled by a mayor (shahrdār) and a city council. The city has 13 districts. Its officials have limited budgetary discretion, as power in Iran is concentrated in the central government. Prior to the 1978–79 revolution the provincial governor served as the administrator of the great shrine complex, but the new government after the revolution and subsequent establishment of an Islamic republic separated the provincial governorship from the administration of the shrine, lodging the latter in the hands of a senior cleric.

Mashhad is the site of a prominent institution of higher education, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM; founded in 1949), which has colleges of humanities, mathematics, natural sciences, theology, education, and veterinary medicine. The college of medicine was detached from FUM in 1989 and became an independent institution under the name of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. Some five or six other universities and more than a dozen other colleges are also located in the city. In addition to those are the traditional madrasahs (seminaries), which attract students from all over the Shīʿite world.

Cultural life

Mashhad’s cultural scene is rich. Religious life is centred on the shrine at the burial site of ʿAlī al-Riḍā. Shīʿite pilgrims come to pay their respects there from all over Iran and from many countries of the world. Also in Mashhad is the magnificent Friday Mosque, the construction of which is attributed to Gawhar Shād—wife of the Timurid ruler, Shāh Rokh (ruled 1405–47). The city maintains parks, a zoo, museums, and libraries. Just outside Mashhad is the mausoleum of Abū Qāsim Ferdowsī (c. 935–c. 1020–26), the incomparable poet and author of the Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”).


In earlier times Mashhad had been a village called Sanābād (also called Nūqān). It was long overshadowed by the pre-Islamic city of Ṭūs. Both the ʿAbbāsid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (ruled 786–809) and the eighth imam of Shīʿite Islam, ʿAlī al-Riḍā (died 818) were buried in Sanābād. Al-Riḍā is the only imam buried on Iranian soil, and the belief that he was martyred by poisoning explains the name of the city, which literally means “place of martyrdom.”

Contemporaries apparently began to call the village of Sanābād by the name Al-Mashhad al-Riḍāwī (Arabic: “The site of the martyrdom of ʿAlī al-Riḍā") in the late 10th century, more than a century after the imam’s demise. The great traveler Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Baṭṭūṭah reached the city about 1330 and referred to it by that appellation. It appears that the unadorned name, Mashhad, entered into conventional usage after the Mongol destruction of Ṭūs in 1389.

The shrine of ʿAlī al-Riḍā and the Friday Mosque, the city’s architectural jewels, suffered damage but survived numerous raids and invasions by Uzbek and Afghan forces, whose depredations did not spare the people of the city. Those repeated attacks had the effect of isolating the city and its province for long periods of time. Under the Afshārid ruler Nādir Shah (ruled 1736–47), who tried but failed to reconvert the population of Iran to Sunni Islam, Mashhad became the imperial capital. Under his grandson, Shāh Rokh (died 1796), Khorāsān was essentially a vassal territory tributary to Herāt, autonomous from the Iranian monarchy.

The new dynasty, the Qājārs (ruled 1794–1925), brought Khorāsān and its capital city back into the orbit of the Iranian state in 1803. However, the Qājārs struggled to hold the region, alternating control with local rebel groups from 1825 until 1850. In 1905 the Iranian Constitutional Revolution broke out, greatly undermining the authority of the government. The government’s loss of legitimacy was exacerbated by the Anglo-Russian Entente (1907), which virtually partitioned Iran between Russia and Great Britain. In 1912 Russian forces bombarded Mashhad in an action that coincided with the seizure of power by Yūsuf Khan, who had rebelled against Tehrān in 1911. The bombing damaged the shrine of ʿAlī al-Riḍā and generated widespread indignation and anger among the people. Although Khan was eventually captured and executed, the Qājār dynasty was clearly on its last legs. In 1919 the British tried to impose a protectorate over Iran, a stratagem that failed when the Majles (parliament) refused to ratify the project.

It was in those circumstances that Col. Reza Khan, commander of the Cossack Brigade, effected a coup d’état and appointed himself minister of war in 1921, prime minister in 1923, and shah of Iran in 1925, taking the name Reza Shah Pahlavi. The transition to Pahlavi rule brought about changes to Mashhad’s governance. Under the Qājārs, members of the royal family were appointed to rule the province of Khorāsān and simultaneously served as the administrator (mutawallī) of the shrine complex. The latter had grown dramatically in importance as properties and shops were brought under its aegis, and its annual revenues made it economically one of the most-profitable enterprises in Iran. The Pahlavi shahs did not follow the Qājār model in appointing members of the dynasty to serve as governors and shrine administrators but rather appointed loyal aides to those positions. The crown thus controlled the shrine’s assets and made all the key decisions about pilgrimage, prayer, infrastructure investment, madrasah activities, and curricular affairs.

Reza Shah (ruled 1925–41) pursued anticlerical policies, such as declassing the ulama (religious scholars), removing them from their posts in the Ministries of Education and Justice, taking over their assets, defrocking clergymen, and conscripting them into the army. In 1935, angered over popular resistance to Reza Shah’s order that men wear European-style hats and that women appear in public without veils, officials ordered troops to open fire on a crowd in Mashhad that had formed to commemorate the Russian bombing of the city in 1912. Scores were killed.

Under Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (ruled 1941–79), Mashhad’s shrine complex was subjected to a major urban-renewal project that removed the bazaar shops, inns, hotels, and workshops adjacent to the property, leaving a vast plaza with a modern avenue leading to it. The shrine was then renovated and expanded. After the Iranian Revolution (1978–79) the Khomeini regime and its successors expended much effort on maintaining the prestige of the shrine as well as underwriting the general cultural, educational, economic, and political growth of the city. However, the administrative reform that broke Khorāsān into three separate provinces in 2004 somewhat diminished the lustre of the city as a whole.

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