Iran's Holy City Isn't What it Seems

Iran's Holy City Isn't What it Seems

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Once known as Sanabad, it was here, in A.D. 817, that the eighth Shi'ite Imam, Reza, a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, arrived after a triumphant tour of the Shi'a heartland. The Abbasid Caliph Ma'mun, a Sunni, grew jealous of the imam's rising popularity and imprisoned him. Fearing the imam's growing spiritual authority might mature into something more temporal, something the greedy caliph could not allow, Ma'mun devised a plot involving pomegranates and poison, which were fed to the unsuspecting imam who soon fell ill and died.

Immense waves of grief washed over the sands of Persia and the martyred imam's tomb quickly became a site of pilgrimage, one that attracted the scattered Shi'a of the caliph's far-flung empire. Surviving invasions, earthquakes, rapine and ruin, the site, and even the name changed. Sanabad became known as Meshed — "place of martyrdom" — and Meshed turned into a booming modern metropolis sitting astride the old Silk Roads, some leading north to Samarkand and China and others west to the Levant and the Italian city states.

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I found this refreshing article on one reporter's trip to Iran to visit Iran's holiest city, Meshed. It is wonderful how people get along without the hateful purposes of governments and power hungry fanatics. This is how we all should be.


www.mysanantonio.com
(visit the link for the full news article)