After the victory of the revolution...

After the victory of the revolution, the Council continued to play an extremely important role in the course of events, even after the setting up of the provisional government, indeed right up to the formation of the new Majlis. Murtada Mutahhari was born in a village some forty kilometres from Mashhad in 1338/1919­20.

After a primary education mostly at the hands of his father, he entered, still a child, the hawza­yi `ilmiya, the traditional educational establishment, of Mashhad, but he soon left for Qum, the centre for religious education in Iran.

Even during the time of his elementary studies there he was greatly affected by the lessons in akhlaq (Islamic ethics) given by Ayatullah Khumayni, which Mutahhari himself described as being in reality lessons in ma`arif wa sayr­u­suluk (the theoretical and practical approaches to mysticism) [^4], and he later studied metaphysics (falsafa) with him as well as jurisprudence (usul al­fiqh).

He was especially attracted by falsafa, theoretical mysticism (`irfan) and theology (kalam), the "intellectual sciences", and he also studied these subjects with `Allama Tabataba'i. His teachers in law (fiqh) were all the important figures of the time, but especially Ayatullah Burujirdi, who became the marja` al­taqlid, and also head of the hawza­yi `ilmiya of Qum, in 1945. Murtada Mutahhari studied both fiqh and usul al­fiqh in the classes of Ayatullah Burujirdi for ten years.

He was also deeply affected at about this time by lessons on "Nahj al-Balagha" [^5] given by Mirza `Ali Aqa Shirazi Isfahani, whom he had met in Isfahan. He later said that, although he had been reading this work since his childhood, he now felt that he had discovered a "new world".[^6] Subsequently, Mutahhari became a well known teacher in Qum, first in Arabic language and literature, and later in logic (mantiq), usul al­fiqh, and falsafa.

In 1952, Murtada Mutahhari moved to Tehran, where, two years later, he began teaching in the Theology Faculty of the University. Not only did he make a strong impression on students, but his move to Tehran also meant that he could become involved with such organizations as the anjuman ha­yi islami.

These Islamic Associations were groups of students, engineers, doctors, merchants, etc., set up during the fifties and sixties; they formed the nucleus of the movement that was to become, eventually, the revolution.