Hawza

[3] Accordingly, ḥawzah ʿilmīyah would mean a place where the firm knowledge (of the Muslim religion) is acquired.

The institutions in Najaf, Iraq and Qom, Iran, are the preeminent seminary centers for the education of Shi'a scholars.

However, several smaller hawzas exist in other cities around the world, such as at Karbala, Iraq, Isfahan and Mashhad in Iran, Beirut, Lebanon, Lucknow, India, Lahore, Pakistan, Europe and North America.

[11][12] The modern Qom hawza (since 1340 AH/1921 CE) was revitalized by Abdul Karim Haeri Yazdi and Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi and is barely a century old.

Already in the early 1800s, the Salehiyya madrasa in Qazvin ran a women's section where several female mujtahids were trained.

Founded in 1993 by Shaykh Arif Abdulhussain,[19] who received ijāza of ijtihād from Ayatollah Hussain Amini and Ayatollah Professor Sayyid Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, Al-Mahdi Institute began as an Islamic educational institute (hawza) with the objective of combining traditional seminarian scholarship with modern academic study approaches.

Modeled on the curriculums of the ḥawzah of Qom and Najaf, it offers training in classical Islamic sciences, employing a critical and academic approach.

[22][23] The programme culminates in eligibility for a Master's degree in Islamic Studies from the University of Birmingham.