Ahmad Kasravi
Ahmad Hokmabadi Tabrizi (Persian: سید احمد حکمآبادی تبریزی, romanized: Ahmad-e Hokmabadi-ye Tabrizi; 29 September 1890 – 11 March 1946), later known as Ahmad Kasravi (Persian: احمد کسروی, romanized: Ahmad-e Kasravi), was a pre-eminent Iranian historian, jurist, linguist, theologian, a staunch secularist and intellectual.[1][2][3] He was a professor of law at the University of Tehran, as well as an attorney and judge in Tehran, Iran…. more
Ahmad Kasravi, born on September 29, 1890 in Tabriz, Iran. While still in his teens Kasravi warmed to the principles and ideals of the Iranian Constitutional Movement in spite of his ultra conservative religious background and the atmosphere of the poor, backward section of Tabriz in which he grew up. Having reached the status of mullah [priest] at the age of twenty, Kasravi flatly repudiated all that he considered to be unenlightened and repressive in the education, precepts and practices of the Shia branch of Islam and turned wholeheartedly to the pursuit of knowledge, truth and social justice. He taught Arabic at the Presbyterian-run American Memorial School in Tabriz, contributed to the liberal journals in Egypt and Syria, wrote an Arabic grammar book for the Ministry of Education in Azarbaijan…. more
Ahmad Kasravi was one of the most prolific Iranian intellectuals of the first half of 20th century, often presented as a more tolerant nationalist who, for example, while purifying the Persian language of Arabic words did not harbor any enmity to the Arabs themselves. This view is generally accepted, although in recent years there have been some challenges to it, based on his view of the history of Khuzestan…. more
Ahmad Kasravi (1890-1946), one of the most influential Iranian thinkers of the twentieth century, delivers a stinging criticism of Shi’ism and Islam in two works which have been almost completely ignored by secular scholars, despite their immense influence on the thought and writings of Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution as well as Ali Shariati and Jalal Ale Ahmad, its ideological forebears… more