Kadhimiya, a shrine and the district built around it in northern Baghdad, holds the tombs of two of the Twelve Imams of Shia Islam and is among the principal Shia pilgrimage destinations of Iraq.
The two Imams
The shrine contains the graves of Musa al-Kadhim, the seventh Imam, who died in 799 after long imprisonment by the Abbasid caliph, and his grandson Muhammad al-Jawad, the ninth. The two are named together as al-Kazimayn, "the two who restrain their anger", from the title of the seventh Imam, and the district and its great mosque take their name from them. The tombs became a focus of Shia devotion under the Abbasid caliphate whose capital surrounded them.
The shrine
Twin gilded domes and four minarets rise over a courtyard, the whole enriched by centuries of patronage from Shia rulers and pilgrims. The shrine is a place of devotion and lament rather than sightseeing, filling with mourners on the anniversaries of the Imams' deaths, when the rituals of Shia grief, elegy, procession and the recollection of the sufferings of the Prophet's family, are performed.
Pilgrimage and its dangers
Kadhimiya stands with Najaf, Karbala and Samarra among the great Shia shrine sites of Iraq, and enormous crowds converge on it during the commemorations of the religious calendar. That very scale has brought tragedy: in 2005 a rumour of a suicide bomber among pilgrims crossing the bridge to the shrine caused a crush in which close to a thousand people died. The shrine remains a heavily attended, living centre of Iraqi Shia devotion.