Empress Goharshad, wife of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, commissioned the mosque, and Qavam al-Din Shirazi was its architect. Construction began in 1418 and finished around 1430. It follows the classical Persian four-iwan plan around a courtyard, with a turquoise dome about 141 feet (43 m) high. Two minarets of the same height flank the southern iwan and rise from the ground, which the article calls an innovation. Arthur Pope called it the first and greatest surviving Persian monument of the 15th century.
Earthquakes, Russian bombing in 1911 and the 1935 attack on the mosque by Reza Shah's forces damaged it. Death toll estimates conflict: foreign reports said about 128, and later Iranian accounts claim 2,000 to 5,000.
In the 1960s the outer dome shell was replaced in poured concrete and re-tiled in the Timurid designs. The mosque lies south of the Imam Reza Shrine and is part of that complex. The article gives no visitor information.
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