Jamkaran Mosque

Jamkaran Mosque hosted prayers beside former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's coffin on 7 July 2026, led by senior marja Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, before the body continued toward burial in Mashhad.

The mosque, in the village of Jamkaran on the outskirts of Qom, has been a place of pilgrimage since the 10th century, when Shia tradition holds the Twelfth Imam, the promised Mahdi, appeared there and ordered a mosque built on the site. It now draws an estimated 15 million pilgrims a year, with the largest crowds on Wednesday nights and on the Mahdi's mid-Sha'ban birthday, when up to two million people are said to gather.

As one of Shia Islam's most visited shrines, hosting the coffin rites there signalled that Iran's post-Khamenei transition sought the mosque's popular religious weight, not just state ceremony, to help legitimise a new Supreme Leader who lacks his own marja credentials.