Haj Agha Rahim Arbab (1875–1975) was born in Chermahin in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkm ...

, From Isfahan Province, to a family of scholars. Haj agha Rahim Arbab is among the Islamic scholars who never wore the traditional turban. He believed that the turban is for prophets and that he did not possess the scholarly permission to wear a turban. All of his 50 students ranked as Ayatollah after graduation. Among them, Allameh Jalal Homaei, Reza Alishah Tabandeh and Ayatollah Mirdamadi are well known.

Childhood

Haj Agha Arbab grew up in Chermahin, and nature and simple living had a very deep effect on the development of his philosophy and theology. He learned to read and write at the age of four and started reading Persian literature at that age. As is tradition, he started with learning Gulistan and Bostan, the two books of the great Persian poet

Sadi Saadi, Sadī, Sadi, or SADI may refer to: People * Sadi (name) * Saadi dynasty, a dynasty of Morocco Places * Sədi, village in Azerbaijan * Sadi, East Azerbaijan, a village in Iran * Sadi, Marand, a village in Iran * Sadi, Kerman, a village in ...

, along with

Qur'an The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , si ...

ic studies. When he was five his teachers sent him back to his father, Haj Arbab, who was a scholar himself, stating that he had mastered all of the required fields and knew those books by heart. They requested that he be sent to hawzeh (a high level school also known as

Madrassa Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , pl. , ) is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary instruction or higher learning. The word is variously transliterated ...

). This promise encouraged his parents to move to the city of Isfahan.

Formal studies

Haj Agha Rahim Arbab started attending the classes required for the traditional schools at a very young age, along with his cousin, Mirza Abbas Khan Sheida, who was later known as Sheida-ye-Esfahani. He attended the

Sadr The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (; SADR; also romanized with Saharawi; ar, الجمهورية العربية الصحراوية الديمقراطية ' es, República Árabe Saharaui Democrática), also known as Western Sahara, is a ...

and finished his academic studies in jurisprudence (

fiqh ''Fiqh'' (; ar, فقه ) is Islamic jurisprudence. Muhammad-> Companions-> Followers-> Fiqh. The commands and prohibitions chosen by God were revealed through the agency of the Prophet in both the Quran and the Sunnah (words, deeds, and ...

) and its principles ( usul), theosophy ( hekmat), and the other Islamic intellectual (‘aqli) and transmitted (naqli) sciences, under the supervision of philosophers and scholars such as Jahangir Khan Ghashghaei and Ayatollah Akhond Kashi. Ayatollah Haj Agha Rahim Arbab showed extraordinary abilities in formal and informal studies such as Persian and Arabic literature, mathematics, philosophy, mysticism and astronomy. He graduated to the rank of Ayatollah when he was only fourteen.

References

*Arbab Marifat, 1996, Published by Isfahan Municipality. {{DEFAULTSORT:Arbab, Rahim 1875 births 1975 deaths Iranian ayatollahs Mystics from Iran Burials at Takht-e Foulad