Two gleaming golden domes rise over one of Shi‘a Islam’s most venerated shrines — but the story behind these twin crowns is a dramatic mix of sacred burial, flood damage, conquest and royal rebuilding.
The shrine of Imam Jawad (peace be upon him) in Kadhimayn, with its two golden domes, is a symbol of Shi‘i love and devotion to this great Imam. This article examines the historical and architectural reasons for this unique feature.
The shrine of Imam Jawad (peace be upon him) is counted among the sacred stations in Islamic and Shi‘i history. This shrine, which is located in the holy city of Karbala, is one of its distinctive features: the presence of two domes, which has attracted the attention of many researchers and pilgrims.
Kadhimayn (in Arabic Al-Kadhimiyya) is an area north of Baghdad and west of the Tigris River in Iraq that is considered one of the Shi‘i world’s sacred places because of the presence of the pure tombs of Imam Kadhim and Imam Jawad. The importance of this area to Shi‘a has led some to regard it as an independent city. Kadhimayn hosts pilgrims who come from all over the world out of love for visiting the two Infallible Imams.
Because the holy bodies of the two Infallible Imams — Imam Kadhim and Imam Jawad — are buried there. Two domes have been installed for the seventh and ninth Imams. For this reason it is also called Kadhimayn and Jawadayn. Each of the two golden domes of the Kadhimayn shrine sits over the burial place of one of the two Imams, the seventh and ninth of the Shi‘a.
If we leave aside the old traditional markets of Kadhimayn, Kadhimayn ranks among Baghdad’s middle-to-upper districts. This quarter is located west of the Tigris River and north of the city of Baghdad, and because the shrines of Imam Musa al-Kadhim and Imam Muhammad al-Taqi (known as Muhammad Jawad) are there, it became known as Kadhimayn or Kadhimiyya. Flooding of the Tigris has caused at least two serious damages to the Jawadayn shrines and brought considerable destruction to Kadhimayn.
The Mongol army’s attack on Baghdad in the sixth century [AH? — as written] also resulted in the plundering and burning of the Jawadayn shrines, despite earlier promises that the Shi‘a holy places would be spared from looting and destruction. After each of these devastations, the rulers of the time who were friends of the Imams undertook restoration of the shrines.
Although the Abbasid caliphs were the original founders of the Kadhimayn shrine, after a large fire there the Seljuks and later the Buyid dynasty carried out construction works, but another severe flood of the Tigris in the eighth century [AH? — as written] disrupted everything until the Safavids came to power.
The greatest expansion and reconstruction in Kadhimayn took place in the ninth century [AH] during the Safavid era; Shah Ismail Safavid, demolishing the existing shrine buildings, built a beautiful and magnificent complex with porticoes, an outer courtyard, the shrine and two new tiled domes. The present shrine is a legacy of that era and was later furnished and expanded during the Qajar period.
During their rule and even in periods when Iraq was not under their control, the Safavid state played an important role in repairing and rebuilding the sacred shrines, so that the main present-day structures of many holy sites in the four cities of Samarra, Kadhimayn, Karbala and Najaf were created in the Safavid era. As a result, Iraqi Arab architecture was greatly influenced by the Iranian architectural style.
The Kadhimayn shrines
The efforts of the supreme shrine reconstruction committee have, of course, aimed to make the design of the courtyards harmonize with the historic shrine building and to complement the authentic Iranian-Islamic architecture. Given the proximity of the Tigris to the shrine, groundwater in the city of Kadhimayn—similar to Karbala and Samarra—is high, and one can reach water at a depth of around three meters.
The Kadhimayn shrine, besides the attractive and nurturing Iranian artistry, also houses well-known Iranian personalities; scholars and jurists who were deeply devoted to guardianship and the Imamate and who wished to be buried in their vicinity.
Khajeh Nasir al-Din Tusi, the great Iranian poet, philosopher, jurist, astronomer, mathematician, physician and architect of the seventh century AH, is among them. His body is buried at the foot of the two Imams, and according to his testament the verse from Sura al-Kahf has been inscribed on his tombstone: “And their dog stretched forth its two forelegs at the entrance (of the cave)” (and the dog, in a guarding posture, had spread its two forelegs at the doorway).
Another great Iranian interred in Kadhimayn is Shaykh al-Kulaynī, the author of Al-Kafi (one of the four canonical books) and the most famous Shi‘i jurist and hadith scholar.
