Mohammad-Reza Hakimi

Mohammad-Reza Hakimi was born in Mashhad on 14 Farvardin 1314. He entered the Khorasan seminary as a young man and spent about twenty years studying the traditional Islamic sciences. His teachers included Adib Neyshaburi II, Mojtaba Qazvini, Hashem Qazvini, and Seyyed Mohammad-Hadi Milani. His acquaintance with and apprenticeship under Mojtaba Qazvini were particularly important in shaping his intellectual inclination toward the Khorasan school of religious knowledge, later known as the School of Separation.

Hakimi was among the best-known contemporary advocates and theorists of the School of Separation. This school emphasizes the need to distinguish among three paths of knowledge—revelation, philosophy, and mysticism—and to avoid blending authentic religious teachings with philosophical and mystical systems. Hakimi wrote on this view in works such as Maktab-e Tafkik, Maqam-e Aql, Ijtihad and Taqlid in Philosophy, and Divine Theology and Human Theology.

Another major dimension of Hakimi’s thought was his exceptional emphasis on social justice, poverty eradication, and the defense of the deprived. In his view, justice was not merely an individual virtue or an ethical recommendation, but a fundamental criterion by which a religious society should be judged. This emphasis led some writers to regard him as a pioneer of anti-poverty thought in contemporary Iranian religious discourse, seeing his commitment to justice, alongside his attachment to the School of Separation, as a defining feature of his work.

Hakimi’s most important work is the multivolume collection al-Hayat, compiled in collaboration with his brothers Mohammad and Ali Hakimi. By collecting and organizing Qur’anic verses and hadiths, the work seeks to offer a systematic account of Islamic teachings on the human being, society, economics, justice, and life. His other well-known works include The Western Sun, al-Hayat, Maktab-e Tafkik, The Red Intellect, Literature and Commitment in Islam, Qur’anic Social Formation, Awakeners of the Realms of the Qibla, and Divine Theology and Human Theology.

Hakimi also developed an ornate and epic style in Persian prose and addressed a general audience, especially younger readers, in much of his writing. His works gained a distinct place in contemporary Iranian intellectual and religious life through their connection of Shi‘i teachings, social concerns, and the question of justice.

Mohammad-Reza Hakimi died in Tehran on 31 Mordad 1400, aged 86. His intellectual legacy is known above all for three themes: defense of the epistemic independence of revelation through the School of Separation, insistence on justice and the elimination of poverty, and an effort to present Islamic teachings in a social and contemporary form.