A Little History

Qom is a holy city 125 kilometers southwest of Tehran. It is famous for its religious schools, its kohlrabi soup (dizzy)/abgusht-e qonbid, spicy meatballs/kufteh-ye qomi, and caramel brittle/sohan-e qom. The city was ruled by Yemeni Arabs when Islam first came to Iran, but the Mongols totally destroyed it several times in the thirteenth century. It was later rebuilt by Fath Ali Shah Qajar in the 1800s. More recently, Qom has thrived both economically and as a center of Shia Islam.