Qualla: Qom Seminary

Qom Seminary: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:SohanSeri, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ja'far al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia Imam, is reported to have made a prediction: "Soon Kufa will be empty of believers, and knowledge will be withdrawn like a serpent withdrawing into its lair, and it will reappear in a city called Qom." Whether prophecy or aspiration, the words proved accurate. When Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Haeri Yazdi arrived in Qom in 1922 and formally established the modern seminary, he was not creating something from nothing. He was reviving a tradition of Shia scholarship that had taken root in the city more than a thousand years earlier, when the Ash'ari family -- a Shia clan from Kufa -- migrated east and began teaching hadith and the Quran in their new home. Today, the Qom Seminary is the largest hawza in the Shia world, with over forty thousand students from Iran and dozens of other countries.

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Image: User:SohanSeri | CC BY-SA 3.0

Qom Seminary: The Nest of the Ahl al-Bayt

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mostafameraji, CC BY-SA 4.0. Qom fell to Muslim armies between 643 and 644 CE, but it was the arrival of the Ash'ari Arabs from Kufa, beginning around 670 CE, that set the city's intellectual trajectory. The Ash'aris brought more than their families. They brought the hadith -- the recorded sayings and tradit...

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Image: Mostafameraji | CC BY-SA 4.0

Qom Seminary: Centuries of Eclipse and Revival

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mohammad mahdi P9432, CC BY-SA 3.0. Scholarship does not survive in a vacuum. When the Seljuk dynasty rose to power and imposed Sunni orthodoxy, Qom's seminary influence waned. The Mongol invasion inflicted further damage. Revival came under the Safavid dynasty, which made Twelver Shiism the state religion and pour...

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Image: Mohammad mahdi P9432 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Qom Seminary: Fifty Thousand Students and a Global Reach

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean Chardin, Public domain. Under Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi's leadership in the mid-twentieth century, enrollment at the Qom Seminary swelled to fifty thousand students. The seminary sent representatives to Medina, Kuwait, Pakistan, the United States, and Europe. Borujerdi secured recognition of the Ja'fari ...

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Image: Jean Chardin | Public domain

Qom Seminary: Learning by Listening, Then by Debating

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mahdikarimi70, CC BY-SA 4.0. The method of instruction at Qom follows traditions centuries old. In the early years, a teacher would recite hadiths from memory or text while students memorized or transcribed them. When a student demonstrated sufficient understanding, the teacher granted permission to transmit...

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Image: Mahdikarimi70 | CC BY-SA 4.0