A Shrine in the Desert: Qom’s Golden Lady

Shrine of Fatimeh Masoumeh in
Qom, Iran

By Heidi Noroozy

The information director of the Holy Shrine of Fatimeh Masoumeh in Qom nearly fell off his chair in astonishment at my husband’s request.

“You want to know about the history of this place?” He narrowed his eyes skeptically.

“That’s right.”

“No Iranian has ever asked me that before. Most people come here to pray and then leave again. They don’t care about the building.”

“Can you arrange for a guide?” my husband persisted. “One who speaks English, if you can manage it.”

The director spotted me hovering near the door—my pale, American face peeking out from under a badly draped chador—and he immediately understood. He grabbed his coat, led us into the courtyard outside his office and spent the next hour delivering a lecture on the history and architecture of Iran’s second most important pilgrimage site. The top honor goes to the Holy Shrine of Reza, the eighth Shi’ite Imam (or leader of the faith), in the city of Mashhad.

Qom is the final resting place of Imam Reza’s sister, Masoumeh, also known as Fatimeh, who died and was buried here in 816 A.D. She’d been on her way to visit her brother in Khorasan, a province on Iran’s northeastern border, when she stopped to rest in Saveh, where enemies slipped poison into her food. Too ill to continue her journey, Masoumeh was brought to nearby Qom, where she languished for another 17 days in the home of a prominent citizen before succumbing to the poison.

The shrine’s current structure dates back to the Safavid Dynasty (1501−1736). Over the centuries it has grown into a sprawling complex of four courtyards, six minarets, three balconies, three mosques, four porticos (i.e., covered buildings attached to the burial chamber), one gold dome, and another made entirely of stone. On the day we visited, the scent of roses perfumed the air because the gleaming marble walls had been recently washed with rosewater, a sacred tradition that dates back to pre-Islamic times.

Twenty years ago, the authorities determined that the original gold plate covering the central dome was too thin and fragile, so they replaced it with thicker sheets attached to copper bricks. The project required 400 kilos (881 pounds) of gold and cost 25 billion rials (around US$2 million).

Two of the minarets are much shorter than the rest. They were toppled in an earthquake 250 years ago and were rebuilt at half the height to prevent them from collapsing in the next natural disaster.

View of the Mirror Balcony

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the authorities made several changes aimed at eliminating traces of the previous monarchies. They sealed up royal burial chambers and removed a huge stone beam beneath the Mirror Balcony, the entrance to the women’s sanctuary. This project was a major and highly risky engineering feat that required jacking up the entire structure and replacing the enormous block with another. They did this because the carvings on the original beam featured angels with flowing hair and bare breasts, a common motif in the 19^th century Qajar period but offensive to the more conservative 20^th century mullahs. Part of the original beam was relocated inside the women’s sanctuary, visible to women but hidden from male eyes.

Only one overt reference to the shrine’s royal past remains—a plaque high up on the clock tower in the Atiq Hayat, or the Old Courtyard, which bears an inscription proclaiming the greatness of the Qajar monarchs. The architects charged with renovations determined that the plaque could not be removed without destroying the historic clock, and so it remains in place.

At the heart of the shrine lies the burial chamber known as the zarih. It houses Masoumeh’s coffin, draped in richly embroidered cloths and encased in a huge glass and silver cage. The hall around it is divided into two sections, one for men and the other for women. Through the thick, green-tinted glass panels, the people on the other side look like shadowy figures moving slowly back and forth.

There are rules in the shrine. Women must wear chadors, even in the private sanctuary where no men are present. Everyone is supposed to speak quietly and act with proper respect for the sacred site. And you take your shoes off at the entrance to avoid soiling the lush carpets covering the marble floors.

The shrine has rule enforcers to lay down the law. They are men and women who wander through the crowds, holding long blue poles that look like enormous feather dusters. At first, I thought they were supposed to tap violators with the feathery fronds, but I never saw them actually touching anyone. Instead, their reprimands were low key. A couple of times, a woman enforcer came to me and whispered in my ear, “sister, you are showing too much hair.”

Burial chamber (zarih)

She failed to mention another wardrobe malfunction: the fact that my chador was on inside out. Apparently, wearing the garment this way is a sign that the wearer is looking for a husband. The helpful woman who pointed out my error was being kind in that Persian way of not saying precisely what you mean. In fact, a woman with her chador reversed is offering herself in sigheh, a temporary marriage contract that can last as little as an hour or as long as a lifetime.

My rescuer helped me turn the chador around, and then she asked for a favor in return. Would I offer a prayer to Masoumeh on behalf of her husband, who was dying of cancer? Because I was a first-timer to the shrine, she explained, my prayers would rise above the cacophony of desperate petitions and reach the ears of the saint. How could I refuse?

By the time we left the shrine in the late afternoon, I’d said prayers on behalf of 10 different women, all of whom had terminally ill husbands, parents, or children. While the grace and glitter of the shrine’s architecture are memorable enough, the human stories of suffering and hope I heard throughout the day will remain in my mind far longer.

Sufis and the Quest for Divine Love

Whirling Dervishes
Photo by Thomas Maltby

By Heidi Noroozy

Until a few years ago, what I knew about Sufism could be summed up in two words: whirling dervishes. You’ve seen them, those Turkish men spinning to the rhythm of music and song, arms outstretched, white skirts floating about their legs. They seem to be in a trance, an ecstasy of communion with the divine. I knew about Sufi poets such as Rumi and Hafez, whose verses are filled with images of wine and intoxication. But I never understood what either the twirling or poetic imagery really meant.

Then, on a visit to Paveh, a village in Iran’s western Zagros Mountains, I met my very first dervishes. As soft afternoon sunlight fell through the windows of a house perched high on a hill, I sat across a vast Persian carpet from a row of women who wore white chadors and had taken seats on the floor along the far wall. Soon they were swaying gently from side to side to the rhythm of a daf, a round drum held in the palms and played by tapping with the fingers of both hands. With the image of Turkey’s whirling dervishes so firmly planted in my mind, it had never occurred to me that Sufis could also be female.

Sufism is the mystical side of Islam. Its adherents are called sufis or dervishes, and they seek divine truth and love through direct encounters with God. Their name is said to come from the Arabic word for wool, a reference to the garments that early Sufis wore, and is sometimes also associated with the Greek word, “sophia,” meaning “wisdom.”

According to the Sufi path, religious knowledge must be learned through a teacher and cannot come from books or purely intellectual learning. This belief has led to the formation of orders, centered around a spiritual leader (sheikh or murshida, if the leader is a woman) who teaches and guides his (or her) followers.

The whirling dervishes are more properly called the Mevlevi Order, and they trace their roots back to the 13^th century Persian poet, Rumi. According to legend, Rumi was walking through the marketplace when he heard the goldsmiths praising God in rhythm with the pounding of their hammers. The sound filled Rumi with such joy that he stretched out his arms and began whirling with delight.

Hafez tomb in Shiraz

I don’t know if this story is true, or if it arose after the fact as a way to explain the practice of whirling, but it has the ring of truth to it. Spreading your arms and spinning does indeed create a sense of pure joy. My three-year-old niece does it all the time when she can’t contain her happiness.

Sufi spiritual practice is known as dhikr (remembrance), which involves ceremonial activities that can take many forms: chanting, music, dancing, meditating (muraqaba), ecstasy, and trance. The whirling dance of the Mevlevi Order is a form of dhikr called sama (listening), which includes the music of sacred instruments (drums, bells, and flute), singing, and poetry recitation. But not all Sufi orders use music in their practice, and some—such as the Naghshbandis, a Sunni-based order that traces its lineage directly to the Prophet Mohammed—perform their dhikr rituals in silence.

Women have been part of Sufism since the very beginning. Mohammed’s daughter, Fatimeh, received revelations of the divine and is believed to be Islam’s first mystic, although the term, Sufi, had not yet been coined. A century later, Rabia al Adawiyya (717—801), was the first Sufi mystic to describe the relationship with the divine in terms of love by referring to God as “the Beloved.” She introduced the notion that a Sufi’s journey is not to seek entry into paradise after death but to experience divine love in the here and now.

I don’t know what the Sufi women in Paveh were chanting. Maybe the name of Allah, maybe poetry verses. But what the words meant is entirely beside the point. I felt the peace and calm that filled the room and held me captivated for an hour. Perhaps longer. The time hardly matters, since I lost track of it after the first few minutes.

Every day for a week, the Sufis returned to the house where I was staying. The woman who lived there, a member of my husband’s extended family, had recently returned from a trip to Mecca, and the female dervishes wanted to celebrate the happy event with her. After the ceremony, one of the younger women passed around a tray with tiny cups of water supposedly from the holy Zamzam Well in Mecca. (I didn’t sample it.)

Touba Mosque of the Mouride
Sufi Order in Senegal
Photo by Jean Claude Perez

Later, someone gave me a string of prayer beads, another souvenir from Islam’s holiest city. I’m not religious and haven’t a clue how to use the beads, but I hang them from a lamp next to my computer. Periodically, I look at them and perform my own kind of dhikr: remembrance of the afternoon I spent in the presence of divine love.

Sufism is sometimes mistakenly described as an Islamic sect, perhaps because of the way the dervishes are organized into orders focused on a spiritual leader. In fact, Sufis come from all branches of Islam—Sunni as well as Shia—and live all over the world. They are men and women from all walks of life whose only difference from other Muslims is their mystical approach to spiritual practice.

A Peacock in the Mosque

Photo by seier + seier

When the Safavid king, Shah Abbas I, moved his capital from Qazvin, north of Tehran, to central Iran in 1598, he transformed Esfahan from a sleepy desert town to a bright jewel on a branch of the Silk Road. He built palaces with fanciful names such as Hasht Behesht (Eight Heavens) and ornate river bridges such as Sioseh Pol (Bridge of the Thirty-Three Arches). At the very heart of his new city, Abbas constructed a vast square that he called Meydoon-e Naghsh-e Jahan, or Half the World Square. Modesty was not an issue with this king.

The Safavid royals were known for their piety—they were the rulers who made Shi’a Islam Iran’s official religion. So it comes as no surprise that Esfahan’s most magnificent structures dating back to Abbas’s time are the mosques. When the sun strikes their blue-tiled domes, they gleam like turquoise gemstones against the dusty brown landscape beyond the city limits. Incidentally, the practice of placing colorful, glazed tiles on the outside of a mosque's dome, and not only on the inside, is a Persian invention.

Meydoon-e Naghsh-e Jahan boasts two magnificent mosques. The larger one is a big blue structure that draws the eye toward the south end of the square. Its orientation is slightly skewed because the architect needed to fulfill two requirements, one aesthetic and the other religious. The main portal stands in smooth alignment with the two-story bazaar building that defines the limits of the rectangular square. But the mosque proper is angled catty-corner to the portal to ensure that its mihrab, or altar, has a southwest orientation and thus faces the holy city of Mecca.

The smaller and (to my mind) far prettier mosque lies straight across the square from Shah Abbas's Ali Qapu Palace. Built between 1601 and 1619, Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque (named after the king’s father-in-law), has two unique physical features as well as a mysterious past. Unlike most Safavid mosques, Lotfollah’s dome is yellow, not blue, and the structure lacks minarets, those slender towers that rise on either side of a mosque’s dome. I can’t explain the unusual color, but the lack of minarets indicates that this mosque was for the royal family’s private use and not open to the public. Minarets are where the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, a function that is unnecessary in a private place of worship.

Photo by Hamid Parsi

In fact, Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque was built specifically for Shah Abbas’s harem (he was said to have had 200 wives). Guards were posted at the main entrance and a tunnel ran from the mosque to the Ali Qapu Palace—underneath the square—so the king's wives could walk to their prayers without having to shield themselves from public view. This is where the mystery comes in: no evidence of this tunnel has ever been found. So what happened to it? Was the tunnel filled in or did it never exist at all? No one knows.

Tunnel or no tunnel, the fact remains that this women’s mosque is a unique place of worship, on the inside as well as the outside. Most Iranian mosques have a portal that leads directly to a large open square, beyond which lies the main prayer hall and often many other rooms. The open square serves as a meeting place on weekdays and extra space for worshipers during Friday prayers and holidays.

Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque has no central square. You pass through the portal into a narrow, beautifully tiled corridor. The hallway veers off to the left at a 45-degree angle then takes a sharp 90-degree turn and finally opens into the mosque’s one large chamber. Sixteen windows set high in the walls offer the only natural light, and the tiles cover walls in yellow, cream, and several shades of blue. Floral patterns with twisting vines that look like they came straight from an Esfahani carpet abound. Fine calligraphy outlines the mihrab, spelling out the names of the 12 Shiite Imams and the mosque’s master architect (Ostad Mohammed Reza Esfahani).

Photo by Nick Taylor

But I’ve saved the best for last: if you stand at the entrance to the prayer hall and peer up into the dome, you’ll see the shape of a peacock splayed across the ceiling. This is no manmade work of art. The peacock's head is its only physical attribute, formed by a pulley in the center of the dome. The bird's body and tail are nothing more than a trick of the light, created when the sun moves across the ceiling at just the right angle.

Persian mystics believe that the peacock represents the human spirit. A Sufi legend says that God created the human soul from the sweat of the peacock and that the bird's fanned tail represents the cosmic manifestation of the spirit.

I like to think that the spirits of Lotfollah’s designers still reside inside this exquisite mosque. Maybe they contribute to the special sense of tranquility that the interior inspires, so unlike the bustling square outside.

From Hejab to a Handshake

“Do you have to wear a burka?”

This is the number one question people ask me when I tell them I travel regularly to Iran. It’s a question I never have a ready answer for, because the most honest reply is “yes and no”.

“No” because burkas are worn in Afghanistan, not Iran. Traditional Persian women wear chadors, like the two ladies in the photo. And “yes” because I know that the real question is this: do you have to cover yourself like a Muslim woman? The precise form of hejab, a woman’s proper Islamic attire, is irrelevant. I do have to wear a loose-fitting tunic and scarf under current Iranian law.

The follow-up question, often unspoken but apparent from the wariness in the speaker’s eyes is: but how do you feel wearing such a symbol of female oppression? The answer to this one is easy: it doesn’t bother me a bit. Mainly because I don’t see hejab as an oppressive symbol, but rather as an expression of religious devotion. But also, when I travel, I follow one primary rule: check your cultural attitudes at the door. Open your heart and mind to a new way of thinking, of being. For me, that is the whole point of travel.

Knowing what to wear on the street in Iran is the easy part. More difficult is navigating the many unfamiliar customs. This is complicated by the fact that Iranian hospitality makes everyone seem so open and friendly, it’s easy to forget that there are any social rules to be broken.

And yet I have broken a few—such as the time on my first visit to the country when my husband stopped a group of men on the street to ask for directions. At the end of the conversation, there were handshakes all around. Unthinking, I stuck out my hand as well. The men stared at me in alarm, and no one reached out to shake it. I realized I’d made a faux pas, and later I learned that Muslim men do not touch women they are not related to.

Like many rules in Iran, this one is routinely broken. Despite the lack of physical contact between genders, Iran is not a fully segregated society. Bus seating is organized by gender, with women sitting at the back, while savaris—the shared taxis that ply regular routes along Iranian city streets—are co-ed. Men and women share cramped quarters, practically sitting in each other’s laps. Where Islamic custom and convenience collide, convenience wins much of the time.

I’ve learned that the best strategy is to wait and observe. Not all men are averse to a handshake with a woman, and most of the time it’s pretty easy to tell who they are. A man whose beard and collarless tunic identify him as a conservative Muslim will certainly observe the gender separation rules. But a young guy with a gold ring in one ear and hair long enough to brush his shoulders probably isn’t going to think twice about it. For everyone else, I wait and let the man make the first move. If he sticks out his hand, I shake it. If not, a simple nod in greeting will do.

What about you? Do you have strategy for navigating unfamiliar customs? What mistakes have you made?