Sultan Ali

Sulṭān ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Bāqir ibn ʿAlī Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn ibn Al-Ḥusayn was the son of the fifth imam of Twelver Shi'i Muslims and fourth imam of Isma'ili Shi'i Muslims, Muhammad al-Baqir. Born in Medina, Ali, known in Iran as "Sultan Ali," was dispatched by his father to the areas of Kashan and Qom, where he served as a Friday prayer leader and teacher; his popularity and his preaching of Shi'i Islam proved threatening to the local representative of the Umayyad dynasty. The Umayyad representative's forces cornered and killed Sultan Ali and a band of his supporters, after a prolonged battle, and before a larger group of supporters could arrive, in Ardihal, a village roughly 45 kilometers east of Kashan on August 7, 734 CE. He is still revered by Shi'i Muslims, especially in Iran, where his burial place - which has undergone repeated renovations but dates, in part, to the Saljuq period - has become a site of visitation. The shrine is known for a distinctive annual carpet-washing ritual (qālī-shūyān) that occurs on the seventeenth day of autumn to commemorate the day of Sultan Ali's martyrdom, a ritual that might have its origins in Sultan Ali's body having been wrapped in a carpet and brought to the site of his burial after his murder.