Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi visited the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, where he discussed ways to develop the partnership between his country and Syria, especially in the economic and oil fields.
During this visit, Al-Zaidi visited the shrine of Sayyida Zeinab and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, accompanied by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani.
The Iraqi Prime Minister's Media Office said, in a statement, that Al-Zaidi donated $10 million from his personal account, to benefit the shrine of Sayyida Zeinab and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
He added, "The Prime Minister performed the visitation and prayer ceremony inside the Holy Shrine, after which he was briefed on the landmarks of the shrine. He also donated $10 million from his personal account, $5 million to meet the needs of the Holy Shrine, and $5 million to the Umayyad Mosque."
This visit and generous donation sparked interest and interaction online. What is the story of the shrine of Sayyida Zeinab and the surrounding area? How did it acquire its current connotations?
According to what was stated in the writings of a number of Muslim historians and what was preserved in the Shiite heritage, the Al-Taff incident, or the Battle of Karbala, in the year 61 AH (680 AD), witnessed the killing of Imam Hussein bin Ali, and a number of his family and supporters. After the battle, the army of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid bin Muawiyah captured the women and children, including Zainab and Umm Kulthum (Zainab the Younger) - Hussein's two sisters. The prisoners were taken to Kufa, where they arrived on the 12th of Muharram, 61 AH, two days after the end of the battle.
In Kufa, Zainab emerged as a leading figure for the Hashemite prisoners who were imprisoned with her for a period, before the governor of Kufa, Ubaid Allah bin Ziyad, sent them to Damascus. It was reported that in Damascus, a confrontation took place between Zainab and Yazid bin Muawiyah, where she delivered a famous sermon in which she strongly criticized Yazid.
Zainab died in 62 AH (681 AD). Muslims, especially Shiites, commemorate her death annually on Rajab 15.
The burial place of Mrs. Zainab bint Ali has remained a subject of historical controversy. While some accounts indicate that she died in Medina, others say that she died in Syria after traveling with her husband, and there are those who state that she was exiled to Egypt for spreading news of Karbala. This mystery makes her burial place uncertain.
The Syrian-Palestinian researcher and novelist, Tayseer Khalaf, said in his interview with BBC Arabic, “The registered name of the Sayyida Zeinab area in the real estate records is the village of Rawiya. Its original inhabitants were the people of Ghouta, and in 1967 they were joined by Palestinian refugees and displaced Syrians from the Golan.”
During the second half of the twentieth century and until the beginning of the second millennium, the region was mainly inhabited by Palestinian refugees and Syrian refugees from the Golan. The major transformation that the Sayyida Zeinab region witnessed at the turn of the millennium was the significant increase in its Iraqi population after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In her book “In the Footsteps of Sayyida Zainab: The Twelver Shiite Sect in Contemporary Syria,” researcher Edith Andrea Elk-Zanto states that Syria “embraced and welcomed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled turmoil-torn Iraq after the Americans entered.”
Tayseer Khalaf says, “Iranian interest in the Sayyida Zeinab area began immediately after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. At that time, the restoration of the old building of the mosque began in the Iranian style.” He added, "The Iranians then began buying properties adjacent to this shrine, paying millions. In the 1990s, Sayyida Zeinab turned into an independent city."
Khalaf points out that during the years of war in Syria, the region began to transform “into a large city, and it can be said that it became similar to the southern suburb of Beirut. The region witnessed a major demographic change, and is now mainly inhabited by Iranians, Afghans, and Shiite Iraqis.”
According to the official website of the Zainabiya Shrine, the Syrian Al-Murtaza family has been managing the shrine since the sixth century AH, and to this day his family still supervises the shrine in coordination with the Syrian Ministry of Endowments.
