Sayyid Razi had obtained expertise in all the...

Sayyid Razi had obtained expertise in all the above-mentioned sciences even before he reached the age of maturity, and he began to be considered an expert of Arabic language and literature. This young lad, whose fame spread among the common people as well as the nobles regarding his intellectual capacities and his insight, began to compose verse while he was yet ten years old.

When he was twelve he composed a panegyric in the honor of his chaste and accomplished mother, which reflected the extent of his literary merits. A collection of the panegyrics he composed at that age is present and people with literary taste read it and are perplexed at his deep insight, control over the language and God-given intellectual capabilities. He began to write and teach from the age of eighteen. By the time he was twenty he had mastered all the sciences of his age.

Sayyid Razi was very much obsessed about acquiring knowledge. If he had any opportunity to learn something from anybody he did not hesitate to disregard his self-esteem and went ahead to learn it. In this matter he did not discriminate between Shia or Sunni, Muslim or non-Muslim. By the time he was twenty he had become a master of jurisprudence, traditions, exegesis of Quran and other religious sciences in Arabic.

According to Thalabi who was his contemporary: Sayyid Razi was the inheritor of his ancestor Abu Talib as regards his literary arts. This was so because great luminaries of the literary world have appeared in the progeny of Abu Talib. Though many great men of letters lived during the Buwayhid period there was none who could surpass the eloquence and literary merits of Sayyid Razi either in prose or poetry. Sahib ibn Abbad was a scholar and a litterateur of the Buwayhid dynasty.

He served the royalty as a vizier. He had collected the couplets of Mutanabbi, a renowned poet of Arabia that he used to quote now and then. When he heard the verses of Sayyid Razi, he sent a messenger to him with instructions that he should compile the verses of Sayyid Razi for him. At that time Sayyid Razi was twenty-six years old. When he was twenty-three, he composed an ode about Abu Tahir Nasirud Dawla.

Such were the beautiful words and expressions of this composition that the teacher of Sayyid Razi, “Janna” wrote a commentary on the verses. Thus at such a young age he earned great accolades from his teacher. Such a relationship between a teacher and a student is rare.