A black flag is displayed above the golden dome of the Imam Reza shrine in Iran in a Facebook post from October 17 (direct link, archive link). The caption suggests the flag represents something ominous.
A black flag is displayed above the golden dome of the Imam Reza shrine in Iran in a Facebook post from October 17 (direct link, archive link). The caption suggests the flag represents something ominous.
In the past, flags have been hoisted above the shrine's dome to commemorate or celebrate significant occasions. After an explosion on October 17 killed at least 100 people at Gaza's Al Ahli Arab Hospital, it hoisted a black flag in protest.
A "mourning flag" was flown over the mausoleum of Imam Reza, according to a Facebook post from the site. For the first time in the history of Astan Quds Razavi, the black flag has been raised above the gleaming white dome of the mosque, and the custodian has decreed that tomorrow there will be no drumming. The bombing of the Al-Mu'amdani hospital and other atrocities committed by the usurping Zionist administration prompted this.
According to Shahla Haeri, a professor of cultural anthropology at Boston University whose work focuses on ethnographic study in Iran, Pakistan, and India, the shrine's declaration is compatible with the traditional meaning of a black flag.
I can tell you that black flag is a sign of collective mourning - and not necessarily of war," Haeri wrote in an email. "While it is hard to determine who means what and who wants to do what to whom in the thick of the fog of war and ongoing brutality and violence that is going on in Gaza and the (Middle East), I can tell you that black flag is a sign of collective mourning."
According to Reuters' interview with Sajjad Rizvi, professor of Islamic intellectual history at the University of Exeter's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, black flags are "usually raised on shrines to symbolize mourning - in Muharram and other times to mark the death anniversary of the Prophet and the Shii (Shia) Imams."