He narrates...

He narrates: In that majlis in which Imam was also present, I narrated the masaib of Hazrat Ali Akbar (as), and also mentioned it 7 times from the pulpit, connecting it to my lecture. Imam sat throughout the majlis with complete calm. Agha Sayyid Jawad Shabbar had wanted to make the Imam cry with these narrations so that his heart would become light, but he wasn’t successful despite the fact that it (the death of his son) was a major calamity.

A number of people who witnessed the Imam’s state thought that Imam was not crying because he was in a state of shock from the heavy calamity. Therefore, after the majlis they went to the Imam who had returned home and asked: “Agha, you didn’t cry at the masaib today?” He replied: “When he was reciting the masaib he was looking at me, and I was scared that if I cry it would be for other than Allah, i.e.

it would be for the tragedy of my son, and not for the pleasure of Allah.”[^8] Hujjatul Islam Sayyid Murtaza Musawi Ardabili Abarkuhi Why is Hassan dishevelled like this? Imam acted exactly according to all the instructions that he gave from the start, and in actuality, was an embodiment of those very instructions. He himself was the book ‘ Forty Hadith ’ that he had written in his youth.

Suppose he spoke about riya (performing any action for the purpose of other than the pleasure of Allah) and reproached it, he himself would stay away from it with intensity. I remember one day my son entered the house wearing trousers which I had patched up at one knee.

Imam asked: “Why is Hassan dishevelled like this?” I jokingly replied: “It’s the life of poor people, Agha.” Immediately, his face became drawn, and he said: “You don’t want to do riya .” I said: “No, why riya ?” He said: “Be careful. Not paying attention to outward physical appearances has value.

However, if you want to show (people) that I am such and such, it is riya .” Imam said this sentence to me with the same intensity with which he had, at the age of 30 years, written in his book![^9] Fatema Tabatabai (Imam’s daughter-in-law) I have come to wash the dishes * * One day, as it so happened, there were many guests at Imam’s house. After the meal, I collected the dishes and took them to the kitchen. Along with Zahra, the daughter of Agha Ishraqi, we prepared to wash the dishes.

However we saw that Imam himself had immediately come to the kitchen.