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Since the change of political regime in Iraq in 2003, the ziyāra of Arba‘īn, an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, in Karbala, has grown massively in scale, with some 20 million people flocking to the shrine each year. The Shi‘i institutional actors that have taken over its regulation have strived to facilitate the access of the faithful to the holy sites and ensure their material well-being and safety in a particularly challenging geopolitical context. The arrangements put in place illustrate the extent to which the management of the secular aspects of major Muslim pilgrimages is dependent on sovereignty disputes over holy places.