Qom

Qom or Qum, city in central Iran, and administrative center of Qom province. Located about 120 km (about 75 mi) south of the capital city of Tehrān, Qom is situated in a 940-m (3100-ft) high basin on both banks of the Qom River, which flows from the Zagros Mountains west of the city and terminates in a large salt marsh.

The city is a rail and highway transportation hub and has numerous factories that produce hand-knotted carpets, ceramics, glass, textiles, refined petroleum products, and processed foods. Northeast of the city near the village of Alborz is an oil field, but the inferior quality of the deposits has delayed its exploitation. An important natural gas field lies southeast of the city near the village of Sarājeh. However, since the 1920s the city of Qom has been known primarily for its Shia Islamic theological colleges (see Shia Islam). In addition, for several centuries Qom has been an important pilgrimage center for Shia Muslims, who visit the famous shrine here to Fatima the Pure, a saint who lived during the 9th century.

The origins of Qom are obscure, but the city has a long history as a focal point for religious activity. It served as a regional center near an important Zoroastrian fire temple during the Sassanid dynasty (AD 224-651). Even after Muslim Arabs invaded Iran in the 7th century, the Qom area remained a Zoroastrian religious center for at least another 200 years.

The Shia sect of Islam came to Qom in 685, when the city’s Zoroastrian leaders gave refuge to the Arab followers of Ali and Husayn, the martyred son-in-law and grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. These Arabs believed that after Muhammad’s death, Ali and his descendants were the rightful spiritual and political leaders (imams) of the Muslims; hence they were known as Shi’at-e Ali (partisans of Ali), or Shia.

During the 8th century, most of Qom’s native Iranian population converted to the Shia Islam of the Arab immigrants. The presence in Qom of a large community of Shia Muslims led Fatima, the sister of Reza, the eighth Shia imam after Muhammad, to visit the city in the early 9th century while traveling to see her brother in eastern Iran. However, she became ill, died, and was buried in the city. Her grave soon became a pilgrimage site, which helped Qom become renowned as a center of Shia learning between the 9th and the 16th centuries. Theological seminaries were established in the city as early as the 10th century, and the first major shrine to Saint Fatima was built over her grave in the 12th century. At this time, however, most of Iran’s rulers and a majority of its Muslim population adhered to Sunni Islam. Despite this doctrinal split, various Sunni rulers between 1300 and 1490 resided in Qom for part of each year.

After the Safavid dynasty (1501-1722) proclaimed Shia the official state religion in the 16th century, Qom became an object of royal patronage. Saint Fatima’s shrine was rebuilt and embellished by successive shahs (or kings), and its dome was plated with gold during the 19th century. Shrine-affiliated theological colleges were endowed, and several shahs and senior statesmen had elaborate mausoleums built next to the shrine. By 1850, the shrine to Saint Fatima the Pure had become one of the most important Shia religious sites in Iran, second only to the shrine to her brother, Imam Reza, in Mashhad.

Even as Qom prospered as a pilgrimage destination, however, it declined as a seminary center. By 1900 no prestigious theologians were teaching in Qom, and its colleges were largely inactive. Qom’s revival as a center for religious studies began in 1920, when the first of several prominent Shia theologians immigrated to the city. Many of the clergy who arrived during the early 1920s came from the important Shia centers in Iraq, which had fallen under British colonial rule in 1918. The theologians preferred to teach Islam under a Muslim government in Iran rather than under a non-Muslim government in Iraq. Hundreds of seminary students flocked to Qom to study at the new colleges; these students included Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who would eventually become the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s.

The city’s reemergence as a theological center coincided with the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), a monarchy ruled by shahs that promoted various secular policies and engaged in overt anticlericalism from 1927 to 1941 and from 1962 to 1978. Tensions between the state and the clergy led in 1963 to major antigovernment demonstrations in Qom; these were repressed with considerable violence and bloodshed, creating a deep rift between the regime and several clerical leaders.

Among the latter was Khomeini, now one of the city’s principal theologians (an ayatollah). He was imprisoned for one year in 1963 and then deported to foreign exile. Several hundred seminarians who had studied under Khomeini prior to June 1963 formed the nucleus of an anti-shah movement among the clergy that gradually gathered strength during the next 14 years.

Concern about Khomeini’s continuing influence in Qom, despite his exile abroad, prompted the government in late 1977 to plant media stories that slandered his character. The publication of these defamatory articles sparked several days of rioting in Qom in early January 1978, an incident that many cite as the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. Subsequently, the merchants of Qom went on strike to protest the government brutality, and the clergy helped to organize similar demonstrations and strikes in other cities. Within nine months the opposition had evolved into a nationwide general strike.

In January 1979, one year after the Qom riots, the shah and his family left Iran. The monarchy was overthrown four weeks later, soon after Khomeini’s triumphant return from exile, and an Islamic Republic was established in its place. Since then, the government has treated Qom as the spiritual heart of the revolution and has expended considerable funds on refurbishing the city’s numerous mosques, seminaries, shrines, and public buildings. New infrastructure projects have been undertaken, including the construction of a toll expressway connecting Qom and Tehrān. The construction boom and a major expansion in enrollments at the theological colleges have stimulated a near-tripling of the city’s population since 1979. Population (2007 estimate) 777,700.