Brief Biography

Allamah Sayyed Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai was born in Tabriz in 1321(1892) in a family of descendants of the Holy Prophet(S) which for fourteen generations has produced outstanding Islamic scholars. He received his earliest education in his native city, mastering the elements of Arabic and the religious sciences, and at about the age of 20 years, came to the hawza of Najaf to begin more advanced studies.

In the great city, Allamah Tabatabai, sought to master both branches of the traditional sciences, the transmitted and the intellectual.  He studied fiqh and usul with two of the great masters of that day, Mirza Muhammad Husayn Na’ini and Shaykh Muhammad Husayn Isfahani.  He became such a master in this field, that had he kept completely to jurisprudence, he would have become one of the foremost mujtahids of the time.

But such was not his destiny; he was more attracted to the intellectual sciences, and he studied assiduously the whole cycle of traditional mathematics with Sayyed Abu’l Qasim Khwansari and Islamic philosophy with Sayyed Husayn Badkuba’i.

In addition to formal learning, Allamah also devoted time acquiring gnosis through which knowledge turns into vision of the supernal realities. He was fortunate in finding a great master of Islamic gnosis, Mirza Ali Qadhi, who initiated him into the Divine mysteries and guided him in his journey toward spiritual perfection.

Allamah Tabatabai once remarked that before meeting Qadhi, he had studied the Fusus al-Hikam of Ibn al-‘Arabi and thought that he knew it well.  When he met this master of real spiritual authority he realised that he knew nothing.  He also commented that when Mirza ‘Ali Qadi began to teach the Fusus it was as if all the walls of the room were speaking of the reality of gnosis and participating in his exposition.

Thanks to this master, the years in Najaf became for Allamah not only a period of intellectual attainment but also one of asceticism and spiritual practices.  This enabled him to attain that state of spiritual realisation - often referred to as becoming divorced from the darkness of material limitations (tajrid).  He spent long periods in fasting and prayer and underwent a long interval during which he kept absolute silence.

Due to financial problems, Allamah Tabatabai returned to Tabriz in 1934.  He worked as a farmer for 10 years to alleviate his family’s financial difficulties.  In those years he continued to teach a small number of disciples, but he was as yet unknown to the religious circles of Iran at large. It was the devastating events of the Second World War and the Russian occupation of Iran that brought Allamah from Tabriz to Qum in 1945.

In his quiet and unassuming manner, Allamah began to teach in this holy city, concentrating on Qura’nic commentary and traditional Islamic philosophy and theosophy, which had not been taught in Qum for many years.  His magnetic personality and spiritual presence soon attracted some of the most intelligent and competent of the students to him, and gradually he made the philosophical teachings of Mulla Sadra once again a cornerstone of the traditional curriculum.

The activities of Allamah since he came to Qum also included frequent visits to Tehran. After the Second World War, when Marxism was fashionable among some of the youths in Tehran, he was the only religious scholar who took the pains to study the philosophical basis of Communism and supply a response to dialectical materialism from the traditional point of view.  The fruit of this effort was one of his major works, Usul-e Falsafah Wa Ravish-e Ri’alism (The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism), in which he defended realism in its traditional and medieval sense against all dialectical philosophies.  His eminent student, Shahid Murtada Mutahhari, wrote footnotes and explanations to this work, thus making it easily comprehensible to the average man.

In addition to a heavy program of teaching and guidance, Allamah occupied himself with writing many books and articles which attested to his remarkable intellectual powers and breadth of learning within the world of the traditional Islamic sciences. His fame rests on his various academic works - the most important being his great exegesis of the Qur’an, al-Mizan fi Tafsiri’l-Qur’an.

A third book Shi`ah Dar Islam (Shi`ah in Islam), was first published in Persian; later it was published in English also, with the title, Shi’ite Islam.  This book is based on Allamah’s discussions with Professor Kenneth Morgan of Colgate University, held in the summer of 1384 (1963) about Shi’ism.

This great savant and wali of God passed away in 1413 (1981) and is buried in the Masjid-e Bala Sar in the shrine of Lady Fatema Masuma(A) in Qum.

Taken from: “Stories from the life of Allama Tabatabai(R) by Ahmad Luqmani, Allameh Tabatabai, Meezane Ma`refit”, translated by S.K. Yusufali, Qum, Iran, 2006.