Thanks to the skillful stewardship of Shaykh `Abdul Karīm Hā’irī...

Thanks to the skillful stewardship of Shaykh `Abdul Karīm Hā’irī, Qum was on its way to becoming the spiritual and intellectual capital of Islāmic Iran, and Muťahharī was able to benefit there from the instruction of a wide range of scholars. He studied Fiqh and Uŝūl - the core subjects of the traditional curriculum - with Āyatul­lāh Ĥujjat Kuhkamarī, Āyatullāh Sayyid Muhammad Dāmād, Āyatullāh Sayyid Muhammad Ridhā Gulpāyagānī, and Ĥajj Sayyid Ŝadr al-Dīn as-Ŝadr.

But more important than all these was Āyatullāh Burujerdī, the successor of Ĥā’irī as director of the teaching establishment in Qum. Muťahharī attended his lectures from his arrival in Qum in 1944 until his departure for Tehran in 1952, and he nourished a deep respect for him. Fervent devotion and close affinity characterized Muťahharī’s relationship with his prime mentor in Qum, Āyatullāh Rūhullāh Khumaynī.

When Muťahharī arrived in Qum, Āyatullāh Khumaynī was a young lecturer, but he was already marked out from his contem­poraries by the profoundness and comprehensiveness of his Islāmic vision and his ability to convey it to others. These qualities were manifested in the celebrated lectures on ethics that he began giving in Qum in the early 1930s.

The lectures attracted a wide audience from outside as well as inside the religious teaching institution and had a profound impact on all those who attended them. Muťahharī made his first acquaintance with Āyatullah Khumaynī at these lectures: “When I migrated to Qum, I found the object of my desire in a personality who possessed all the attributes of Mīrzā Mahdī (Sha­hīdī Razavī) in addition to others that were peculiarly his own.

I realized that the thirst of my spirit would be quenched at the pure spring of that personality. Although I had still not completed the preliminary stages of my studies and was not yet qualified to embark on the study of the rational sciences (ma`qulāt), the lectures on ethics given by that beloved personality every Thursday and Friday were not restricted to ethics in the dry, aca­demic sense but dealt with gnosis and spiritual wayfaring, ­and thus, they intoxicated me.

I can say without exaggeration that those lectures aroused in me such ecstasy that their effect remained with me until the following Monday or Tuesday.