Kadhimiya in the context of "Holy city"

Kufa (Arabic: الْكُوفَة "al-Kūfah"), also spelled Kufah, is a city in Iraq, about 170 kilometres (110 mi) south of Baghdad, and 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) northeast of Najaf. It is located on the banks of the Euphrates River. The estimated population in 2003 was 110,000.

Along with Samarra, Karbala, Kadhimiya and Najaf, Kufa is one of five Iraqi cities that are of great importance to Shi'ite Muslims. The city was founded in 638 CE (17 Hijrah) during the reign of the second Rashidun Caliph, Umar ibn Al-Khattab, and it was the final capital of the last Rashidun Caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib. Kufa was also the founding capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. During the Islamic Golden Age it was home to the grammarians of Kufa. Kufic script is named for the city.

Musa al-Kazim (Arabic: مُوسَىٰ ٱبْن جَعْفَر ٱلْكَاظِم, romanized: Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar al-Kāẓim; 745–799) was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the seventh imam in Twelver Shia Islam. Musa is often known by the title al-Kazim (lit. 'forbearing'), apparently a reference to his patience and gentle disposition. He was born in 745 in Medina to Ja'far al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia imam, who died in 765 without publicly designating a successor to save his heir from the wrath of the Abbasid caliphs. The subsequent crisis of succession was eventually resolved in favor of al-Kazim, with a dissenting group, now known as the Isma'ilis, separating from the mainstream Shia.

After the death of al-Sadiq, Musa al-Kazim remained in Medina, where he kept aloof from politics and devoted himself to religious teachings. He was nevertheless tightly restricted by the Abbasid caliphs and spent much of his adult life in their prisons. To counter these restrictions, he established an underground network of local representatives to organize the affairs of his followers across the Abbasid Empire and to collect their religious donations. His final imprisonment, c. 795, ended with his death in 799 in a Baghdad prison, possibly poisoned at the instigation of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. The shrine of al-Kazim and his grandson, Muhammad al-Jawad, is a popular pilgrimage destination for Twelver Muslims in Kazimayn, Baghdad.