This is why it is important that believers improve their record during their lifetime. Helping others, giving to charity, feeding the poor, rendering service to the community, teaching and learning, reading the Quran, offering prayers regularly, and taking part in religious ceremonies are all activities that attract divine reward.
In Shi’ism, visiting the graves of the deceased, the Holy Imams, and their descendants is felt to be spiritually beneficial for both the dead and the living. On Thursday evenings or Friday mornings, families visit the graves of their loved ones. Whenever we visit the grave of my parents-in-law, we buy a bouquet of flowers, a box of pastries or a bag of candies, and a bottle of rose water. Hossein washes the gravestone with the rose water, scatters the flower petals on it, and sits cross-legged on the nearby grave to read sura 55, Ar-Rahman (The Compassionate), of the Quran, a chapter enumerating God’s blessings. The children walk around offering pastries or candies to other mourners, who ask God’s forgiveness for our dead and offer a Fatiha prayer (see earlier in this chapter) for them.
Thursday evening is also a busy time for a visit, or ziârat, to an Imam’s or a saint’s mausoleum. Pilgrims remove their shoes by the entrance and can leave them with an attendant who gives them a pigeonhole number. Once inside, they borrow a booklet containing the special supplication (ziârat-nâmeh) of the shrine and stand or sit to read it. They usually offer a short prayer, and if the time is right, their obligatory prayers too. Pilgrims add their own personal supplications here: prayers for other people, a cure for an illness, an offspring’s successful marriage, a solution to financial difficulties, or admission to a university, as in the story that began this chapter. If a pilgrim attains a connection (tavassol) through the Imam or saint, a channel opens for the supplication to be heard by God.
Some people make a point of touching the elaborate grille that surrounds the saint’s tomb, push money through it (the money is used for the upkeep of the shrine), or tie strips of green fabric on it, a visual metaphor of the knotty problems of their lives. It is believed that when the problem represented by the green knot is solved through the saint’s intercession to God, the knot unties itself. At the end of the visit, pilgrims walk out into the large courtyard and through the huge wooden portal, bid farewell to the saint, and step out refreshed into the hustle and bustle of the bazaar and of ordinary life.
Similar rituals take place all over the Shi’a world where Imams and saints are buried: in Iran, in the city of Mashhad, where Imam Reza is buried, and in Qom, where Imam Reza’s sister, Fatemeh Ma’sumeh, rests.
Shia Islam and the Caliphate of Imam Ali
