Mohammad Hossein Tabatabai

Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Tabatabai, widely known as Allameh Tabatabai, was born in Shadabad-e Mashayekh, near Tabriz, in March 1903 and died in Qom on November 15, 1981. He was a Quranic exegete, philosopher, Usuli jurist, mystic, and one of the most influential Shia intellectual figures in contemporary Iran.

After his preliminary studies in Tabriz, Tabatabai went to Najaf to continue his education, spending about ten years there studying jurisprudence, principles of jurisprudence, philosophy, mathematics, ethics, and mysticism. Among his most important teachers were Mohammad Hossein Naini, Mohammad Hossein Gharavi Esfahani, Seyyed Hossein Badkoubei, and Seyyed Ali Qazi Tabatabai. After returning to Iran, he spent some time in Tabriz managing family affairs and farming, before moving to Qom in 1946.

In Qom, Tabatabai dedicated himself to the revival of Islamic philosophy and Quranic exegesis. His teaching of the Asfar, the Shifa, Sadrian philosophy, and Quranic exegesis gave him a prominent position in the Qom seminary. He also held significant philosophical and theological dialogues with Henry Corbin, the French philosopher and Iranologist, which were influential in introducing Shiism and Islamic philosophy to Western intellectual circles.

The central axes of Tabatabai's thought are Quranic exegesis, Islamic philosophy, Sadrian wisdom, epistemology, Shia theology, theoretical mysticism, and the relationship between reason and revelation. In his Tafsir al-Mizan, he extensively employed the method of 'interpreting the Quran by the Quran,' and in his philosophical works, he sought to reread and strengthen the tradition of Islamic philosophy against currents such as materialism and Marxism.