Jamkaran
Six kilometers east to the center of the holy city of Qom, at the fringes of the great Dasht-e Kavir desert, lies the mosque of Jamkaran. It is a holy place where it is said that Mohammad Mahdi, the 12th Shi’a Imam, had appeared in 373 AH, together with Al-Khidr. There is a well where the faithful drop their letters with wishes and desires. Not from Jamkaran but Samarra in what is now Iraq, the Mahdi will reveal himself at the end of all time. One of the first acts of the government of the new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to donate $10 million to the mosque in Jamkaran. My visit of Jamkaran was mainly inspired by an article by Ulrich Ladurner in the German weekly DIE ZEIT from October 2006. Ladurner painted a most strange picture of Iran and the Iranians, emphasizing special features of Shi’a beliefs in the return of the Mahdi. The article conjured up a completely irrational society waiting, and indeed preparing for, an apocalypse. He argued that the current President of ...