Fatima bint Musa

Fatima bint Musa (Template:Langx), circa 790–816 CE, commonly known as Fatima al-Ma'suma (Template:Langx), was the daughter of Musa al-Kazim (Template:Died in) and sister of Ali al-Rida (Template:Died in), the seventh and eighth Imams in Twelver Shia. A young Fatima left her hometown of Medina in about 816 to visit her brother al-Rida in Merv, but fell ill along the way and died in Qom, located in modern-day Iran. She is revered for her piety in Twelver Shia and her shrine in Qom is a major destination for pilgrimage.

Biography

Fatima was born circa 790 CE in Medina to Musa al-Kazim, the seventh Imam in Twelver Shia.Template:Sfn When Musa died in 799 in the prison of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (Template:Reign), possibly poisoned,Template:Sfn a significant group of his followers accepted the imamate of his son Ali al-Rida, brother of Fatima.Template:Sfn In 816, al-Rida was summoned to Khorasan by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (Template:Reign), who designated him as the heir apparent in 817, possibly to mitigate the frequent Shia revolts.Template:Sfn Fatima then set out to join his brother in Merv but fell ill along the way in the Sunni town of Saveh. There she asked to be taken to the nearby Shia town of Qom, where she died a few days later,Template:Sfn possibly after seventeen days.Template:Sfn Another account states that a local Shia figure by the name of Musa ibn Khazraj al-Ash'ari brought Fatima to Qom and hosted her during her final days.Template:Sfn There are also some reports that Fatima was poisoned,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn though they are not mentioned in Template:Transliteration, a history of Qom written in 988 by Hasan ibn Muhammad Qomi.Template:Sfn Fatima thus died in 816,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn or in 817.Template:Sfn Her age at the time is not known with certainty but she must have been at least twenty-one years old, considering that her father Musa was last imprisoned in 795 until his death in 799.Template:Sfn

Place in Twelver Shia

Fatima is known by the title al-Ma'suma (Template:Langx).Template:Sfn It is uncertain when and how she received this title but she was already referred to as such in an order issued by Jahan Shah (Template:Reign), the fifteenth-century king of Iran.Template:Sfn Fatima is revered as the "embodiment of the feminine virtues" in Twelver Shia,Template:Sfn where she is recognized for piety and religious scholarship, and often compared to Fatima bint Muhammad (Template:Died in), daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (Template:Died in). She is revered by Twelvers as a saint who would intercede on the Judgement Day and performs miracles, such as healing those with incurable diseases. Template:Sfn

Shrine

Fatima was buried outside of Qom in a plot of land owned by Musa al-Ash'ari, which became a public endowment later. The house where she stayed, the site of her prayers, became a mosque outside of Qom.Template:Sfn Her shrine has been developed by successive generations,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn patronized by the Buyids (Template:Reign) and the Seljuks (Template:Reign),Template:Sfn as well as the Qara Qoyunlus (Template:Reign) and the Aq Qoyunlus (Template:Reign).Template:Sfn The current imposing complex, however, largely dates to the Safavid (Template:Reign) and Qajar (Template:Reign) eras.Template:Sfn

Qom owes its status as a pilgrimage destination to the shrine of Fatima al-Ma'suma,Template:Sfn and pilgrimage to her shrine is encouraged in traditions attributed to her brother al-Rida and his son Muhammad al-Jawad (Template:Died in), the ninth Imam in Twelver Shia.Template:Sfn The city thus became an important center for Shia activity and learning from the eighth century onward,Template:Sfn reaching a peak in the tenth century, until it was destroyed in 1224 during the first Mongul invasion of Persia.Template:Sfn The Persian historian Hamdallah Mustawfi found the city in ruins in his visit in the fourteenth century,Template:Sfn but it reemerged during the Safavid period.Template:Sfn In particular, the shrine was further developed in 1519 by Shah Bigum, the daughter of the Safavid king Ismail I (Template:Reign),Template:Sfn while the Safavid king Abbas I (Template:Reign) financially supported the shrine and built there a school and pilgrim hospice.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn He did so partly to encourage pilgrimage to Shia shrines within his territory just before the Sunni Ottomans established in 1638 their rule over Iraq, where the shrines of most Shia Imams are located.Template:Sfn The theological law school there was founded in 1533,Template:Sfn known as Feyziyya after the Safavid-era philosopher Mohsen Fayz Kashani (Template:Died in).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Qom later benefited from its proximity to Tehran, the royal residence of the Qajars, who further developed the shrine and buried their dead in the city.Template:Sfn The Qajar-era jurist Mirza-ye Qomi (Template:Died in) particularly helped raise the academic profile of the seminary school.Template:Sfn Another phase of growth began with the arrival of Abdolkarim Haeri Yazdi (Template:Died in) in 1921, who founded the present theological center (Template:Transliteration).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Among his students was Ruhollah Khomeini (Template:Died in) who led the Iranian revolution in 1979.Template:Sfn