Modern mystics in the Shiʿi seminary

Ever since the revolution in 1979 and no doubt because of Ayatollah Khomeini's own tastes and commitments, the study and promotion of mysticism (ʿirfān) has been central to the Shiʿi seminary - the ḥawzeh. Works have proliferated on the mystical and ascetic qualities of teachers of what was usually called ethics (akhlāq) in the ḥawzeh. 

This series of programmes - here in Arabic translation - shown on Iranian TV (al-Kawthar) provides a series of biographies using talking heads, many of whom are well known teachers in the ḥawzeh and specialists in ʿirfān. Here is the first of a series of episodes on ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī, crucial because of the association of the study of ʿirfān with the so-called ṭarīqa associated with him, his teachers and his contemporaries including his cousin Sayyid ʿAlī Qāḍī, and Sayyid Hāshim al-Ḥaddād.