Agha Bozorg Tehrani: Guardian of Shia Identity

Mohammad Mohsen ibn Monzavi Tehrani, also known as Agha Bozorg Tehrani, was a Shiite jurist and bibliographer. He was born in Tehran. His father and his grandfather were two of Tehran’s prominent clergies. Agha Bozorg’s great-grandfather, Haj Mohsen, was a merchant who established Iran’s first printing house with the help of Manuchehr Khan Gorji. As a primary student, Agha Bozorg studied in Dangi, Pamenar, and Marwi schools in Tehran, where he learned literature, jurisprudence, logic, and calligraphy. He moved to Najaf in 1897 and studied the science of Hadith under Allameh Mohaddes Nouri. Furthermore, he pursued jurisprudence under the instructions of Akhund Khorasani, Mohammed Kazem Yazdi, Fathullah Shari’at Esfahani, and Mirza Muhammad Taqi Shirazi, and eventually succeeded in attaining the level of ijtihad.

Agha Bozorg’s Greatest Achievement: Al-Dhariʿa ilā Tasanif al-Shiʿa

Agha Bozorg Tehrani moved to Khadhimiya in Iraq in 1911 to begin working on the biggest Shia bibliographic encyclopedia, “Al-Dharīʿa ilā Taṣānīf al-Shīʿa”. Comprised of 26 volumes, Al-Dharīʿa is considered to be a major bibliographic encyclopedia about Shia books. The encyclopedia introduces more than 53000 books, theses, and translations. The books mentioned in Al-Dharīʿa are in Farsi, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, and Gujarati languages, and include a wide range of subjects. In order to prepare the list of contents for Al-Dharīʿa, Agha Bozorg established a printing house in Najaf and called it “Matba al-Sa’ada”, which was eventually shut down by the Iraqi authorities. Hence, Agha Bozorg traveled to a number of places to finish Al-Dharīʿa and visited major public libraries in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Hijaz, etc. The twenty-six-volume book is arranged in alphabetic order and contains over 11000 pages. Agha Bozorg sought assistance from the lists that were produced earlier including that of Sheikh Tusi, that of Najjashi, and other Muslim scholars. To further enhance his work, Agha Bozorg made use of a variety of libraries’ lists and occasionally referred to the printed and manuscript sources that he had personally reviewed. In addition, he also made reference to some trustworthy scientists of his time and used the information he had verbally received.

Another Act of Service by Agha Bozorg: Tabaghat Aa'lam Al-Shia

The Tabaghat Aa’lam Al-Shia is a twenty-volume encyclopedia of Shia scholars from the tenth to the twentieth century, in which Agha Bozorg has discussed the lives and works of the biggest Shia scholars. He inspirationally used Imam Mahdi’s period of occultation to divide the book into eleven chapters, dedicating every century of the Imam’s occultation to a particular chapter. Other works of Agha Bozorg Tehrani include “Mossafi al-Maghal fi Mosannefi Ilm al-Rajal”, “Hadia al-Razi ila al-Mujaddad Shirazi”, “al-Naqd ul-Latif fi Nafy al-Tahrif an al-Qoran al-Sharif”, “Tawdhih al-Irshad fi Tarikh Hasr al-Ijtihad”, “al-Mashikhah”, “Dhia al-Mafazat fi Tariq Mashayekh al-Ijazat” and “Mustadrik Kash o-Dhunun”.