page_title: Qom
section_title: Hawzah 'Ilmiyya Qom (Qom Seminary)
hierarchical_section_title: Qom / Educational institutions / Hawzah 'Ilmiyya Qom (Qom Seminary)
caption_attribution_description: English: Qom Seminary. فارسی: حوزه علمیه قم
context_page_description: Qom is the seventh largest metropolis and also the seventh largest city in Iran. Qom is the capital of Qom Province. It is located 140 km to the south of Tehran. At the 2016 census, its population was 1,201,158. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River.
  Qom is considered holy in Shi'a Islam, as it is the site of the shrine of Fatimah bint Musa, sister of Imam Ali ibn Musa Rida. The city is the largest center for Shi'a scholarship in the world, and is a significant destination of pilgrimage, with around twenty million pilgrims visiting the city every year, the majority being Iranians but also other Shi'a Muslims from all around the world. Qom is also famous for a Persian brittle toffee known as sohan, considered a souvenir of the city and sold by 2,000 to 2,500 "sohan" shops.
  Qom has developed into a lively industrial centre owing in part to its proximity to Tehran. It is a regional centre for the distribution of petroleum and petroleum products, and a natural gas pipeline from Bandar Anzali and Tehran and a crude oil pipeline from Tehran run through Qom to the Abadan refinery on the Persian Gulf.
context_section_description: The Hawzah (a short form of al-Hawzah al-Ilmiyya), which presently consists of over 200 education and research centres and organisations, catering for over 40,000 scholars and students from over 80 List of sovereign states. The modern Qom hawza was revitalized by Abdul Karim Haeri Yazdi and Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi and is barely a century old. There are nearly three hundred thousand clerics in Iran's seminaries. At present Hossein Vahid Khorasani heads Hawza 'Ilmiyya Qom.
caption: Qom Seminary
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