Najaf

Najaf sits beside Wadi us-Salam, the valley of peace and one of the largest cemeteries on earth, and around the shrine of Imam Ali it has built a city of books. The hawza of Najaf has trained scholars for a thousand years.

The tension is tender: an afterlife at the city's edge, and a bustling, learned present at its heart. To walk Najaf is to walk from the oldest questions to the liveliest arguments.