Shrine of Sultan Ali

A shrine on the slopes of the Ardehal hills, about 40 km west of Kashan, marking the martyrdom site of Sultan Ali, son of the 5th Imam, Muhammad al-Baqir. Sent from Medina to lead and teach the community around Kashan and Qom, his growing popularity was seen as a threat by the local Umayyad governor, whose forces cornered and killed him along with a band of supporters in 734 CE, before a larger group of reinforcements could arrive. The shrine, whose earliest structure traces to the Seljuk era under the minister Majd al-Din and which has been repeatedly renovated since (with major Safavid and Qajar work), is the site of the annual Qali-Shuyan ("Carpet Washing") ritual — a UNESCO-recognized intangible cultural heritage event held each autumn, in which a carpet symbolizing the one Sultan Ali's body was wrapped in is ceremonially washed. The modern Iranian poet and painter Sohrab Sepehri is buried in the shrine's eastern wing.