Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The shrine itself is inside a stainless steel
zarih
, a cage-like casing through which pil-
grims pay their respects and no small number of bank notes. Men and women must ap-
proach from different sides. The ayatollah wanted his shrine to be a public place where
people could enjoy themselves, rather than a mosque where they must behave with rever-
ence, and but for the megalomaniacal architecture, his wishes have largely been met.
Getting There & Away
To get to the holy shrine, take the Tehran Metro Line 1 (red) to Haram-e Motahar.
Behesht-e Zahra cemetery is also close by.
Behesht-e Zahraارهز تشهب
Behesht-e Zahra is Tehran's biggest cemetery and is interesting primarily because it's the
main resting place for those who died in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). For some visitors,
the roughly 200,000 glass boxes will be familiar from 1980s TV and newspaper images
showing hysterical mourners surrounded by countless portraits of the dead. Like windows
into another time, these small, glass boxes on stilts contain a watch, a knife, maybe a letter
that belonged to the lost father/son/husband staring out from a yellowed photograph. The
pine trees have grown since then, but the faces remain. The sheer scale of the death rep-
resented here makes it a haunting experience that brings home the horrific cost of war.
Right at the heart of the cemetery is a shrine to Iranian pilgrims killed during the annual
hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), when Saudi Arabian soldiers opened fire on a crowd during
the mid-1980s. Elsewhere, the graves of ordinary people stretch on for kilometres.
A visit is usually combined with a trip to the Holy Shrine of Imam Khomeini; take
Metro Line 1 to Haram-e Motahar (and
not
Behesht-e Zahra station).
Reyیر
In the 11th and 12th centuries Rey was a major centre that was much larger than Tehran,
but it was devastated when the Mongols swept through. These days it has been swallowed
up by the urban sprawl of the capital, but retains enough history to give it a different sens-
ibility - one best experienced by just wandering around on foot.
