Qom Seminary

The Qom Seminary (Persian: حوزه علمیه قم, romanized: Ḥawza ʿIlmiyya-ye Qom) is the largest and one of the foremost Shia hawzas (Islamic seminaries), located in the city of Qom, Iran. It is the largest seminary in Iran, established in 1922 by Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Haeri Yazdi in Qom to train Usuli scholars. The Hawza is composed of several structured institutions and systems developed to govern itself. Its curriculum includes Arabic grammar, rhetoric, Qur'anic sciences, theology, and traditional sciences. Along with Kufa and Baghdad, the Qom hadith school is among the three earliest centers of hadith transmission in Shia intellectual history.

The seminary's history dates back to the founding of Shia Qom, when the Ash'ari family—a Shia clan—migrated from Kufa to Qom and contributed to the development of the city. Once they gained control over Qom, the propagation of Shiism and teaching of hadith and the Qur'an began. This continued with the arrival of agents and descendants of the Imams of Shia Islam, who played a substantial role in establishing and expanding the seminary.

Its influence waned under Sunni reign during the rise of the Seljuk dynasty, and was further diminished during the Mongol invasion of Qom. During the Safavid dynasty, it likely regained notability along with the seminaries of Isfahan and Qazvin. Among its faculty in this era were scholars such as Sheikh Baha'i and Mulla Sadra. In the Qajar period, the establishment of major schools like Feyziyeh School in Qom further strengthened the seminary.

Eventually, with renewed efforts to revitalize the seminary in the Qajar era, Yazdi migrated to Qom and founded the modern seminary. It became the most active seminary in the history of Shia Islam in Qom, later becoming a primary center of Shia scholarship in the Islamic world. After Yazdi, three of his students, followed by Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, led the seminary.