Number of mosques in Iran by province in a 2023 report

The same report lists the national totals announced by five bodies, without a year for any of them. The Mosques Affairs Centre puts the number at 79,668. The Coordination Headquarters of Mosque Cultural Centres estimates more than 79,000.

The Prayer Headquarters gives more than 72,000, and the Islamic Development Organization more than 70,000. The Endowment and Charity Affairs Organization records about 85,000 mosques, the highest of the five figures.

The province table adds up to 78,661 mosques. This is about 1,000 fewer than the figure of the Mosques Affairs Centre and about 6,300 fewer than that of the Endowment and Charity Affairs Organization. The report itself estimates the national number at between 70,000 and 90,000.

A news report by ANA in December 2023 quoted the figure of 85,000 from the same report. Several of the five figures are rounded estimates.

A later figure came in February 2025 from the secretary of the Mosques Steering Headquarters of the Islamic seminaries. He said that Iran had about 70,000 mosques, as reported by Mehr News Agency and Shabestan.

East Azerbaijan has the largest number in the report's table, with 7,186 mosques. This is 9.1% of the table total. The ANA report gave the same figure and named East Azerbaijan as the province with the most mosques in the country.

Razavi Khorasan follows with 6,619 mosques, and Sistan and Baluchestan has 6,000. Mazandaran and Isfahan complete the top five, each with more than 4,500. Razavi Khorasan holds 8.4% of the table total and Sistan and Baluchestan 7.6%.

The next five provinces have between 3,100 and 4,000 mosques each. West Azerbaijan leads this group with 3,913, and Khuzestan closes it with 3,158.

Kerman is seventh with 3,485 mosques and Tehran eighth with 3,451. Fars, ninth in the table with 3,175 mosques, was missing from the original data that the report used. The report added the Fars figure from another source.

The three provinces with the most mosques together hold 19,805, or 25.2% of the table total. The five largest hold 36.9%, and the ten largest 58.8%.

The other 21 provinces share the remaining 41.2%. Ten provinces have more than 3,000 mosques each, and four have fewer than 1,000. In all, 17 of the 31 provinces have fewer than 2,000 mosques each.

The average is about 2,540 mosques per province. The middle province in the ranking is Lorestan, with 1,978 mosques. The gap between the largest and the smallest province is 6,732 mosques.

Four provinces fall between 2,000 and 3,000 mosques. Together they hold 9,837 mosques, or 12.5% of the total. Gilan leads this group with 2,803 and Kurdistan closes it with 2,090.

The largest group is the 13 provinces with between 1,000 and 2,000 mosques each. Together they hold 19,918 mosques, about the same number as the three largest provinces. Yazd, with 1,985, heads this group and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, with 1,014, closes it.

Two neighbouring provinces in the north-west, East and West Azerbaijan, together have 11,099 mosques. This is 14.1% of the table total.

The three Khorasan provinces in the north-east have 9,685 mosques, or 12.3%. Razavi Khorasan alone accounts for 6,619 of these. North Khorasan has 1,308 mosques and South Khorasan 1,758. In the centre of the country, Isfahan has 4,541 mosques, more than its neighbours Yazd and Markazi combined, which have 3,888.

The three provinces on the Caspian coast have 9,920 mosques, or 12.6%. Mazandaran accounts for almost half of the Caspian figure, with 4,693. In the south-east, Sistan and Baluchestan and Kerman together have 9,485 mosques, or 12.1%. Sistan and Baluchestan holds almost two thirds of the south-eastern figure.

Tehran province ranks eighth in the table, with 3,451 mosques. This is 4.4% of the table total. Mazandaran and Isfahan, fourth and fifth in the table, each have more than 1,000 mosques more than Tehran province.

A figure for the city of Tehran comes from the head of the urban development committee of the Tehran City Council. In April 2024 he said that the capital had more than 2,100 mosques, as reported by Hamshahri Online and Shargh.

The city figure and the province figure come from different sources and dates, so the two cannot be compared directly. Tehran and Alborz provinces, which border each other, together have 3,951 mosques in the report's table, or 5.0% of the total.

Ilam has the fewest mosques in the table, with 454, followed by Alborz with 500. Semnan has 751 mosques and Qom 980. Ilam and Alborz each hold 0.6% of the table total, and Qom 1.2%.

East Azerbaijan has nearly 16 times as many mosques as Ilam. The five smallest counts add up to 3,699 mosques, or 4.7% of the table total. The ten provinces with the fewest mosques together have 10,089. This is fewer than the 11,099 mosques of East and West Azerbaijan combined.

The ANA report gave the Alborz and Ilam figures the other way round, with 454 mosques for Alborz and 500 for Ilam. This analysis follows the table in the report.