In continuation of the article titled “History of Shia Jurisprudence and Jurists”, we shall mention other Shia jurists accordingly.
Muhammad ibn Makki, known as Shahid Awal (“the First Martyr”), is one of the great Shia jurisprudents. He is of the rank of Muhaqqiq Hilli and Allamah Hilli. He was from Jabal ‘Amel, an area in today’s south Lebanon which is one of the oldest centers of Shias and still is today a Shia area.
Shahid Awwal was born in 734 A.H., and, in 786 A.H., according to the fatwa of a jurisprudent from the Maliki sect which was endorsed by a jurisprudent of the Shaf’i sect, he was martyred. He was a pupil of the pupils of Allamah Hilli, amongst them Allamah’s son, Fakhr ul-Muhaqqeqin. The famous books of Shahid Awwal on jurisprudence include Al-Lum’ah which he composed during the brief period he remained in prison awaiting his martyrdom. Amazingly, this noble book was subject to a commentary two centuries later by another great jurisprudent who suffered the same fate as the author. He too was martyred and thus became called Shahid ath-Thani (“The Second Martyr”).
The famous book Sharh ul-Lum’ah which has been the primal textbook of the students of jurisprudence ever since is the commentary of Shahid th-Thani. Other books of Shahid Awwal include Durou, Thikra, Bayan, Alfiyeh, and Qawa’id. All of the books of the First Martyr are among the priceless writings of jurisprudence.
Shahid Awwal came from a very distinguished family, and the generations that succeeded him preserved this honour. He had three sons who were all ‘ulema and jurisprudents, and his wife and daughter were likewise jurisprudents. Shaykh Ali ibn Abul ul-Ala Karaki, known as Muhaqqiq Karaki or Muhaqqiq Thani.
One of the Jabal ‘Amal jurisprudents and one of the greatest of the Shia jurisprudents. He perfected his studies in Syria and Iraq and then went to Iran and for the first time, the position of Shaykh ul-Islam went to Iran when it was entrusted to him.
The order that the ruling king of Iran (Shah Tahmaseb) wrote in Mutaqqiq Karaki’s name in which the king gave him complete control, declaring himself to be only his agent, is famous. A well-known book that is often spoken of in jurisprudence is Muhaqqiq Karaki’s Jam’i ul-Muqasid, which is a commentary on the Qawa’id of Allamah Hilli.
The arrival of Mutaqqiq Thani in Iran and his establishing a religious university in Qazvin and then in Isfahan, together with his training of outstanding pupils in jurisprudence, caused Iran for the first time since the time of the Saduqayn to become a center of Shia jurisprudence.
He died between the years 937 A.H. and 941 A.H. He had been the pupil of Ibn Fahd Hilli, who had been the pupil of the pupils of Shahid Awwal, such as Fazlel Miqdad.
Shaykh Zayn ud-Din known as Shahid Thani, the “Second Martyr”, was another of the great Shia jurisprudents.
A master of several sciences, he was from Jabal ‘Amal and a descendant of a man called Saleh who was a student of Allamah Hilli.
Apparently, Shahid Thani’s family was from Tus, and sometimes he would sign his name “At-Tusi Ash-Shami”.
He was born in 911 A.H. and martyred in 966 A.H. He travelled widely and experienced many teachers.
He had been to Egypt, Syria, Hejaz, Jerusalem, Iraq, and Istanbul, and wherever he went he learnt. It has been recorded that his Sunni teachers alone numbered twelve.
Besides jurisprudence and principles, he was accomplished in philosophy, gnosis, medicine, and astronomy. Very pious and pure, his students wrote that he used to carry wood at night to support his household and, in the mornings, sit and teach.
He compiled and wrote many books, the most famous of them in jurisprudence being Sharh Lum’a, his commentary on the Lum’a of Shahid Awwal.
He was a pupil of Muhaqqiq Karaki (before Muhaqqiq migrated to Iran), but Iran was one place that he himself never went to.
The author of M’alim which is about the Shia ‘ulema was Shahid Thani’s son.
Muhammad ibn Baqer ibn Muhammad Akmal Bahbahani, known as Wahid Bahbahani, who came in the period after the fall of the Safavi dynasty of Iran. After that overthrow, Isfahan was no longer the center of religion, and some of the ‘ulema and jurisprudents, amongst them Seyyid Sadr ud-Din Razawi Qumi, the teacher of Wahid Bahbahani, left Iran as the result of the Afghan turmoil and went to the atabat, the holy centers of Iraq.
Wahid Bahbahani made Karbala the new center and there he tutored a number of outstanding pupils, many of them famous in their own right.
Besides this, it was he who led the intellectual combat against the ideas of the akhbariyyin, which in those days were extremely popular. His defeat of the akhbariyyin and his raising of so many distinguished mujtahids has led to him being termed as “Ustad ul-kul” (“The General Teacher”). His virtue and piety were perfect and his students maintained profound respect for him.
Shaykh Morteza Ansari, a descendant of Jaber ibn Abdullah Ansari, is one of the great companions of the Holy Prophet himself. On a visit with his father to the atabat of Iraq at the age of twenty, the ‘ulema, appreciating his genius, asked his father to let him stay.
He remained for four years in Iraq and studied there under the leading teachers. Then, due to a series of unpleasant events, he returned to his home. After two years he went once more to Iraq, stayed for two years, and again returned to Iran, this time deciding to benefit from the ‘ulema in Iran.
He set off to visit Mashhad and on the way visited Hajj Mulla Ahmad Nuraqi the author of the famous Jam’i S’adat in Kashan. This visit became a long stay as he benefitted from the teachings of Mulla Ahmad in Kashan for three years.
He then went to Mashhad and stayed there for five months. He also journeyed to Isfahan and to Burujerd in Iran and the aim of all these trips was to learn from men of knowledge.
Around 1202/3 A.H. he went for the last time to the atabat and began giving lessons. After the decease of Shaykh Muhammad Hasan, he became recognized as the sole authority for referral for verdicts.
Shaykh Ansari is called the Khatim ul fuqiha walmuitahidin (the seal of the jurisprudents and the mujtahids). He was one of those who in the precision and depth of his views have very few equals. Two of his books, Risa’il and Mukassib are today’s textbooks for (higher) religious students, and many commentaries have been written on his books by later ‘ulema.
After Muhaqqiq Hilli and Allamah Hilli and Shahid Awal, Shaykh Ansari is the first person whose books have been so regularly subject to commentaries. He passed away in 1281 A.H., in Najaf where he is buried.
Hajj Mirza Muhammad Hasan Shirazi, known as Mirza Shirazi. His preliminary studies took place in Isfahan and he then went to Najaf and took part in the lessons of Shaykh Ansari and became one of the Shaykh’s leading and outstanding students.
After Shaykh Ansari’s demise, he became the leading authority of the Shia world, and he remained thus until his demise about 23 years later. It was by means of this great man’s prohibition of tobacco that colonialism’s famous monopoly agreement in Iran was broken.
Hajj Mirza Husayn Naini, one of the great jurisprudents and master of principles of the fourteenth-century hijrat, a pupil of Mirza Shirazi, became a highly valuable teacher.
His fame is mostly in Principles, into which he introduced new views. Many of today’s jurisprudents were his pupils.
He died in 1355 A.H. in Najaf. One of the books he wrote was in Persian and was called Tanaziyeh al-ameh or Hukumat dar Islam, which he wrote in defense of constitutional government and its roots in Islam.
Summary and Review
In total, we have introduced sixteen of the faces of the recognized jurisprudents from the time of the minor occultation until the end of the 13th-century hijrat.
We have only mentioned the jurisprudents that in the world of jurisprudence and principles are very famous, whose names and fame have been continually mentioned in lessons and books from their own times until today.
Of course, there are many other such names we could have mentioned, but from those we have reviewed, certain points became clear:
First, ever since the third century A.H., jurisprudence has had a continuous existence.
Throughout the whole of these eleven centuries, schools have operated with no period of stand-still and the relationship between teacher-student in all that time has never been severed.
If we start with my own teacher, the late great Ayatollah Burujerdi, we can trace the line of his teachers back over a thousand years to the period of the Imams.
Such a constant chain seems to have existed in no culture and civilization other than the Islamic one.
Of course, as we stated before, we did not appoint the third century to begin with for the reason that Shia jurisprudents began then,
But because the period previous to that period was the period of access to the holy Imams, and during that time the brilliance of the Shia jurisprudents was always dimmed by the brilliance of the Imams, and the jurisprudents had no independence of their own.
Otherwise, the beginnings of ijtihad and jurisprudence amongst the Shias and the composing of books about jurisprudence occurred amongst the companions.
The first treatise on jurisprudence was written by Ali ibn Ali Raf’i who was the brother of Abdullah ibn Abi Raf’i, the scribe and accountant of Amir ul Muminin, Ali (‘a) during the period of the Imam’s caliphate.
Second, contrary to the perception of some, the Shia sciences, amongst them jurisprudence, have not been developed and systemized solely by the ‘ulema and jurisprudents of Iran.
The ‘ulema of Iran and the ‘ulema of other lands have both shared in this great work, and, until the commencement of the tenth century and the emergence of the Safavi dynasty, non-Iranians were predominant.
It is only since the middle of the Safavi period that predominance has been gained by Iranians.
Third, likewise, the center of jurisprudence and of the jurisprudents has not always been Iran.
At first, Baghdad was the center of Shia jurisprudence, and then, by the action of Shaykh Tusi, the center was transferred to Najaf.
It was not long before Jabal ‘Amal in today’s south Lebanon became the center. Then Hilleh, a small town in Iraq, and then for a while Halab, one of the districts of Syria.
During the time of the Safavids, it was transferred to Isfahan, while at the same time Najaf was revived by Muqaddas Ardebili and other greats and still functions today.
Of the towns of Iran, it is only Qum that in the first centuries of Islam, due to men like Ali ibn Babawayh, was a minor center of jurisprudence and related studies while Baghdad was the main center.
During the time of the Qajar dynasty, Qum was revived due to the efforts of Abul Qasim Qumi and it was revived a second time in 1340 A.H.
(i.e. 61 years before this translation) by the late Shaykh Abdul Karim Ha’iri Yazdi, and today it is one of the two great centers of Shia jurisprudence.
Fourth, the jurisprudents of Jabal ‘Amal played an important role in the development of Safavi Iran. The Safavi dynasty, as we know, was inclined to Sufism. Their path was originally based on the methods and customs peculiar to Sufism.
If they had not been corrected by the profound and unchallengeable understanding of the jurisprudents of Jabal ‘Amal, and if a profound center of Islamic studies had not been established by those jurisprudents, things would have led in Iran to the same kind of condition that now exists in Turkey and Syria. This action of theirs had many effects.
Firstly, the population and government of Iran remained immune from that deviation, and, secondly, Shia Sufism likewise followed a more reasonable path. Thus, for founding the religious university in Isfahan, the jurisprudents of Jabal ‘Amal-Muhaqqiq Karaki and others – have a lot to be thanked for.
Fifth, as has been pointed out by others, Shi’ism in Jabal ‘Amal existed for an age before it did in Iran, and this is one of the definite proofs and reasons for rejecting the views of those who consider Shi’ism to have been formed in Iran. Some believe that the Shia penetration into Lebanon was due to the great companion of the Prophet, the mujahid Abuzar Ghaffari.
During his stay in ancient Syria which included all or part of present Lebanon, at the same time as stiffly opposed the misappropriation of public wealth by Mu’awiyyah and the rest of Bani Umayyad, Abuzar also used to propagate the holy platform of Shi’ism. The other is Najaf, despite the way it has been weakened and reduced by the Ba’ath regime of Iraq.
