Fatima al-Kubra bint Musa al-Kazim

Fatima al-Kubra was a daughter of Musa ibn Jafar al-Kazim. The child lists in Shaykh al-Mufid's al-Irshad, al-Tabrisi's I'lam al-Wara, and Ibn Shahrashub's Manaqib Al Abi Talib name Fatima al-Kubra and Fatima al-Sughra separately. This independent list identity is the strongest historical foundation for the protected record, but those sources do not name her mother or provide a birth date or independent life events.

The preserved Qom narrative concerns a woman called Fatima bint Musa who was a sister of Ali al-Rida. It reports that al-Ma'mun moved Ali al-Rida from Medina to Marv in 200 AH and that Fatima travelled in 201 AH seeking or intending to meet him. The text calls her Fatima bint Musa and al-Rida's sister, but does not identify her as Fatima al-Kubra or Fatima al-Sughra.

In the account transmitted from Tarikh Qom, she became ill at Saveh, asked the distance to Qom, which was given as 10 farsakhs, and was brought to the house of Musa ibn Khazraj al-Ash'ari. Later quotations give her stay as either 16 or 17 days. These details are securely preserved as part of the Qom tradition about Fatima bint Musa, but this profile does not convert them into certain personal events of Fatima al-Kubra.

According to the Qom tradition, after Fatima bint Musa died she was buried in Musa ibn Khazraj's land at Babulan. A wicker or mat canopy was first placed over the grave. In the middle of the third Islamic century, commonly dated in later shrine histories to around 256 AH, Zaynab daughter of Imam Muhammad al-Taqi built the first brick-and-mortar dome above it. The Qom grave therefore developed not as a modern attribution, but as a continuously remembered early pilgrimage site.

The sanctuary continued to grow through successive periods. In 457 AH, Mir Abu al-Fadl al-Iraqi, a vizier of Tughrul, replaced the earlier domes with one high dome. Under the Safavids, the old courtyard and northern porch began to take shape from 925 AH, and in 950 AH Shah Tahmasb expanded the decorated tomb chamber and tilework. In the Qajar period, Fath Ali Shah commissioned the golden dome in 1218 AH, and the larger new courtyard was completed by 1303 AH. Modern expansions added further halls, courtyards, mosques, a renewed burial chamber, and pilgrim services, making the shrine a central symbol of Qom's religious, scholarly, and urban identity.

The later and firmly established Imami tradition identifies the woman buried in Qom as Lady Fatima al-Ma'suma and commonly as Fatima al-Kubra. The early child lists distinguish Fatima al-Kubra from Fatima al-Sughra but do not explicitly attach either title to the Qom woman. This profile therefore brings both evidentiary levels together respectfully: the Qom shrine is fully represented as a real, ancient, major, and living pilgrimage centre, while the early naming precision is retained. The exact map position of the present sanctuary is now recorded on this profile's location page.