Atabat

ATABAT

Shiʿa holy places in Iraq.

Atabat, literally "thresholds," are Shiʿite holy places in Iraq, at Karbala, Qadimayn, Najaf, and Samarra, containing the tombs of six imams revered in Twelver Shiʿism, serving also as holy sites for pilgrimage. Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first imam of Shiʿism, is buried in Najaf. His son, Husayn ibn Ali, the third Shiʿa imam; Husayn's half-brother Abbas; and Husayn's son Ali Akbar were martyred and buried in Karbala, fighting the Umayyads in 680. Qadimayn is the burial site of the seventh and ninth imams, Musa al-Kazim, who died in 802, and Muhammad al-Taqi, who died in 834. Samarra, which lies at a distance from the remainder of the Atabat, is the burial site of the tenth imam, Ali alNaqi, who died in 868, and the eleventh imam, Hasan al-Askari, who died in 873.

The Atabat have historically served as centers of Shiʿite learning. During the Iranian constitutional revolution from 1905 to 1911, the Atabat, under Ottoman suzerainty, served as a safe haven for the revolutionaries. Ayatollah Hasan Shirazi, who engineered the retraction of the Regie tobacco concession in 1870, resided in Samarra. The Atabat also played a decisive role in fostering clerical opposition in the Pahlavi period, as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini lived in exile in Najaf from 1965 to 1978.

see also khomeini, ruhollah.

Neguin Yavari