1M+ mark Prophet Mohammad's death anniversary in Basra

Shafaq News- Basra

More than a million people walked to one of Islam's oldest mosques in southern Iraq to mark the anniversary of the Prophet Mohammad's death, the mosque's management said.

Pilgrims set out on foot from the center of Basra and its outlying districts, according to the mosque's director, Ali al-Baghdadi, who said the crowd exceeded a million and included arrivals from several Iraqi provinces.

The mosque is one of the earliest built in Islam, dating to the seventh century, and sits about 12 kilometers west of modern Basra. Shia Muslims revere it as marking a spot where Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, the fourth caliph and the first Shia imam, is believed to have stepped; "khutwa" means footstep in Arabic.

About 800 volunteers helped organize the pilgrimage and guide arrivals along the roads to the mosque, al-Baghdadi said, coordinating with security, service, and health authorities to manage entry and exit. Some 250 service stations, known as mawakib, lined the routes to hand out food and water, a fixture of Iraqi religious pilgrimages such as the far larger Arbaeen.

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The gathering is one of many mass Shia pilgrimages Iraq hosts each year, drawing crowds that walk for days along volunteer-run routes. The largest, the Arbaeen commemoration in Karbala, drew more than 22 million people in 2026, over 4 million of them from abroad, according to the city's shrine authorities, ranking it among the world's biggest annual religious gatherings. The martyrdom anniversary of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, marked at his shrine in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district, gathered around 15 million visitors this year, according to the shrine's administration.

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