Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) (Persian: دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد) is a university in Northeastern Iran named after the great epic poet Ferdowsi who is the author of Shahnameh. The FUM campus is in Mashhad, the capital city of the Razavi Khorasan province, which is most famous and revered for housing the tomb of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam. The university was established in 1949 with the title of Razavi University, making it the fourth oldest major university in Iran in the modern sense (there are however other academic colleges established before (e.g. West Minster Medical College before Urmia University). FUM offers 180 bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. programs to 26,000 international and local, male and female students studying under about 900 faculty members with the aid of 2,500 staff employees. Foreign students especially from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq make the university a popular institution in attracting non-Iranian students so that the university could be ranked first in Iran amongst other universities in recruiting foreign students, after the efforts made during the presidency of Ahmadinejad who declared Mashhad as "Iran's spiritual capital".
