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Ali Shariati: The Architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Mehbi Abedi
Mehbi Abedi*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology at Rice University
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Extract

Ali Shariati was born in Azar 2, 1312 (November 23, 1933) to a deeply religious family in the provincial capital of Khurasan, Meshed. His forefathers were all important local religious scholars in the suburb of Sabzavar, one of whom, Allamah Mahmanabadi, received a royal invitation from Naser al-din (1848-1896) to move to Tehran to teach Islamic philosophy in Sepahsalar theological center, which he did for a short period. His father, Muhammad Taqi Shariati, still living, is a well-known religious scholar of national fame and an expert on Quranic exegesis. Muhammad Taqi broke two traditions: he moved to the city for good at the age of 20 and he stopped weaving, as he had been the traditional garb of the ulama. Ali attended modern schools, entered Teachers Training College, the newly founded University of Meshed, and finally left for Paris to study at the Sorbonne on a government scholarship.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3-4 , Autumn 1986 , pp. 229 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1986

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References

Notes

1. Many are under the impression that he was born in Mazinan, a village near Sabzavar. His family name was Mazinani, which he sometimes used as a pen name. Biographers probably also attempted to assign him a humble origin in order to magnify his achievements. Considering that his father had moved to Meshed long before Shariati was born, the place of his birth is more likely to have been Meshed, rather than the village of Mazinan.

2. See Shariati's Kavir, pp. 2-29. See also the interview with Shariati's father in Kayhan-e-Farhangi, No. 11, the issue in which his family tree appears.

3. Ibid.

4. His excellent book Tafsir-e Novin has enjoyed wide popularity in Iran. Besides his expertise in exegesis, he is also famous as one of the founders of a new Shi'i movement in Iran.

5. See his Collected Works, XXXI, pp. 463-522. The letter is in response to Hopkins's invitation of Kashif al-Ghita to attend an anticommunist seminar. The latter refused, but instead, he sent the letter in which Communism is portrayed as a lesser evil than American imperialism.

6. See Yad Nameh Shahid Javid, pp. 7-8.

7. See Col., III, the introduction, and notes on pp. 271-72. Abudharr is Shariati's hero par excellence.

8. See Col., XXXI, p. 7.

9. Three students were killed in the demonstration protesting Nixon's visit to Tehran. They are commonly known as “16 Azar martyrs,” and the day is commemorated as Ruz-e Daneshiu (the day of university student) in Iran. A leftist magazine, published abroad, is entitled “16 Azar,” drawing its name from the incident.

10. See Kavir, p. 83, for example.

11. See, for example, Col., XXVII, pp. 288-90 and Kavir, pp. 78-84.

12. See the interview with Shariati's father in Kavhan-e Farhangi, No. 11 and any biography written by one of his supporters.

13. See Keddie, Nikki R., Roots of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 294.Google Scholar

14. See Algar's, Hamid translation of Gholam Abbas Tavassoli's laudatory biography of Shariati in On the Sociology of Islam: Lecturer by Ali Shari'ati (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1979).Google Scholar

15. See Yad Nameh Shahid Javid, pp. 23-26.

16. Ibid., p. 31.

17. See Maktab-e Mobarez. Vol. XXIII, pp. 131-48.

18. For more details, see Shariati's Totem Parasti.

19. See Akhavi, Shahrough, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), pp. 143-45.Google Scholar

20. See Enayat, Hamid, Modern Islamic Political Throught (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), pp. 155-59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. See Coll., I, pp. 3-41.

22. At least once, an anti-Shariati gathering was held in Yazd in the house of a certain clergyman. Public cursing was, however, more common, and Shariati refers to one of them in his memoirs. See Col., I, pp. 17-18.

23. Almost the entire Collected Works II and IV as well as some other works, including much in XXIII, belongs to this period. See Coll., II, p. 279 and the date of his mutilated Sokhan-e Adam in Coll., XXIII for the gatherings he attended in this period.

24. See Yad Nameh Shahid Javid. p. 55.

25. See his Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 263.

26. The Shilite belief concerning the death of “the fourteen infallibles” as well as many other prominent figures. Similar belief was held for many “mysterious deaths,” such as those of Takhti, Behrangi, Al-Ahmad and many others, during the reign of Pahlavi Dynasty.