Musa Al Kadhim Shrine

The Shrine of Imam Musa ibn Ja'far Al Kadhim (peace be upon him) is located in the Bab Baghdad neighborhood, in the alley of the Sayyids known as "Akd Al Sada," inhabited by many of his descendants from the Musawi Sayyids, as if the place refused to remain anything but faithful to its master to this day.

The story of this shrine traces back to between the years 162 and 165 AH, when Imam Al Kadhim traveled to the sacred city of Karbala during the days of Abbasid Caliph Al Mahdi, coming to visit the grave of his grandfather Imam Hussein.

He did not settle as a guest in his father's house on the Alqami River, but chose to build his own house and school in the area between the two shrines of Hussein and Abbas, in the northeast of the Husseini sanctuary.

There the Imam devoted himself to teaching and spreading Islamic jurisprudence and hadith. Shia Muslims flocked to him from every direction, and scholars, hadith transmitters, and narrators gathered around him, drawing from his pure spring of knowledge. He contributed to the flourishing of the great University of Karbala, which advanced greatly in that era and left a vast jurisprudential legacy.

However, the Imam did not stay long. He recognized the danger of Karbala's proximity to the Abbasid Caliphate's capital, the pressure of the ruling apparatus, and the surveillance eyes trained on the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt. So he announced his journey to Medina, far from the center of the Caliphate.

Since his departure, believers have taken his house and school as a sacred shrine to visit for blessing and the fulfillment of needs. And still inscribed on the shrine's facade are these verses expressing the depth of the bond between the Imam and this place and its people:

Musa ibn Ja'far, whenever he came to us here with longing, would dwell among us

His descendants came from around him, and became for him a dwelling place surrounding him.