Ayatollah
Ayatollah ( ; fa, آیتالله, āyatollāh) is an Title of honor, honorific title for high-ranking Twelver Shia clergy in Iran and Iraq that came into widespread usage in the 20th century.
Etymology
The title is originally derived from ...
Mirza Husayn Khalili Tehrani (Persian: میرزا حسین خلیلی تهرانی) was an Usuli
Shi'a
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...
jurist
A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Un ...
and among the four
sources of emulation at the time of
Iranian Constitutional Revolution
The Persian Constitutional Revolution ( fa, مشروطیت, Mashrūtiyyat, or ''Enghelāb-e Mashrūteh''), also known as the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, took place between 1905 and 1911. The revolution led to the establishment of a par ...
. He worked alongside
Akhund Khurasani and
Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani to support the first democratic revolution of Asia,
Iran's Constitutional Revolution, and co-signed all major statements issued from the
seminary of Najaf in support of democracy.
[Farzaneh, Mateo Mohammad (2015). “''The Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Clerical Leadership of Khurasani”''. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 13. .]
Career
In 1891, he became a Marja', and by the demise of
Mirza Shirazi al-Mujadid al-Shirazi, ar, المجدد الشيرازي
, birth_name =
, birth_date = April 25, 1815
, birth_place = Shiraz, Qajar Iran
, death_date =
, death_place = Samarra, Ottoman Iraq
, resting ...
in 1895 he was listed among great jurists, and many people from Tehran followed him.
[Hermann, Denis (1 May 2013). “Akhund Khurasani and the Iranian Constitutional Movement”. ''Middle Eastern Studies''. 49 (3): p. 440. . .] When the parliament came under attack from imperial court's cleric,
Shaykh Fazlullah Nuri, Tehrani alongside other jurists of Najaf sided with democracy and acted as a legitimizing force. They invoked the Qurani