Allameh Tabatabaee Dar-ol-Quran Center to Open in Qom

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) -  Allameh Tabatabaee Dar-ol-Quran Center will be inaugurated in the presence of a number of sources of emulation including Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, Grand Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, and Grand Ayatollah Sobhani.

Ali Larijani, Iranian Majlis speaker, and the Supreme Leader’s representative, Ayatollah Seyyed Hashem Rasouli Mahallati will deliver speeches at the event.

Morteza Najafi Qudsi, director of the center referred to the Supreme Leader’s statements regarding Quran and said that materialization of Imam Khamenei’s demands as to fostering the culture of the Holy Quran is the overall objective of opening the Quranic center.

He added that it will be launched in memory of Allameh Tabatabaee pursuing the aim of introducing his precious works to the world.

Muhammad Husayn Tabatabaei (16 March 1904—7 November 1981) was one of the most prominent thinkers of philosophy and contemporary Shia Islam. He is famous for Tafsir al-Mizan, the Quranic exegesis.

Born in Tabriz, Azarbaijan, in northwestern Iran, he studied at Najaf, under masters such as Mirza 'Ali Qadhi (in gnosis), Mirza Muhammad Husain Na'ini, Shaykh Muhammad Husain Isfahani (in Fiqh and Jurisprudence), Sayyid Abu'l-Qasim Khwansari (in Mathematics), as well as studying the standard texts of Avicenna's Shifa, the Asfar of Sadr al-Din Shirazi, and the Tamhid al-qawa'id of Ibn Turkah. Along with Sayyid Husayn Badkuba'i, he was a student of two of the most famous masters of the time, Sayyid Abu'l-Hasan Jilwah and Aqa 'Ali Mudarris Zunuzi.

In his later years he would often hold study sessions with Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in which not only the classical texts of divine wisdom and gnosis were discussed, but also a whole cycle of what Nasr calls comparative gnosis, in which in each session the sacred texts of one of the major religions, containing mystical and gnostic teachings, such as the Tao Te Ching, the Upanishads and the Gospel of John, were discussed and compared with Sufism and Islamic gnostic doctrines in general.

Allameh Tabatabaei, was a philosopher, a prolific writer, and an inspiring teacher to his students who devoted much of his life to Islamic studies. Many of his students were among the ideological founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, namely Murtaza Motahhari, Dr. Beheshti, and Dr. Mohammad Mofatteh. Others like Nasr and Hasanzadeh Amuli remained and continued their studies in the intellectual non-political sphere.

It was in Najaf where Allameh Tabatabaei developed his major contributions in the fields of Tafsir (interpretation), philosophy, and history of the Shi'a faith. In philosophy the most important of his works is Usul-i falsafeh va ravesh-e-realism (The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism), which has been published in five volumes with explanatory notes and the commentary of Morteza Motahhari. If Ayatollah Haeri is considered the reviver of Qom's hawza in an organizational sense, Tabatabaei's contributions to the field of tafsir, philosophy and mysticism represent the intellectual revitalization of the hawza with lasting implications for the curriculum.

His other major philosophical work is a voluminous commentary of Asfār al-'arba'eh, the magnum opus of Mulla Sadra who was the last of the great Persian (Iranian) Muslim thinkers of the medieval age. Apart from these he also wrote extensively on philosophical topics. His humanist approach is underlined by his three books on: the nature of man - before the world, in this world, and after this world. His philosophy is focused upon the sociological treatment of human problems. His two other works, Bidāyat al-hikmah and Nihāyat al-hikmah, are considered among works of high order in Islamic philosophy.

Several treatises on the doctrines and history of the Shi'a remain from him as well. One of these comprises his clarifications and expositions about Shi'a faith in reply to the questions posed by the famous French orientalist Henry Corbin. Another of his books on this topic Shi'ah dar Islam was translated into English by Seyyed Hossein Nasr under the title Shi'a Islam, with the help of William Chittick as a project of Colgate University. These books are claimed to serve as an excellent conduit by which popular misconceptions about the Shi'a faith may be removed further paving the way for a better ecumenical understanding amongst the various Muslim schools of thought.

His written books number forty-four titles overall; three of which are collections of his articles on various aspects of Islam and the Quran.

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