Hasan Taroumi

Moral role-models, being religious, social, or academic, continue to exert influence on the minds and behaviors of those who look up to those who look up to them. From this perspective, the influence exerted comes from the role-model personality. The higher the personality, the more profound the influence is supposed to prove. On the other hand, the one who is tends to receives the influence should be capable of both appreciating the status of the dignitary in question and the scope of his efforts for which he or she has proved an admirable role-model. Shiite religious history offers a considerable number of such figures who have exerted such influence both in their life-time and after their demise. A prominent Shiite religious scholar, the late Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Abu al-Qasim Musawi Khoie who was indeed an exemplary influential figure. A prominent Shiite mujtahid and marjaʽ al-taqlid in Najaf for over seventy years, he educated many, many students, in fact mujtahids, who have been sources of help in many areas of the lives of Shiites. Among his students one can find a good range of scholars, from outstanding professors to great mujtahids in various Muslim lands, from Lebanon to Indonesia. The present issue of Safinah al-Najah contains the first English translation of a long poem, in Arabic called urjūzah, which the late Grand Ayatollah Khoie composed in honor of Imam ʽAlī's sublime character and career in the Islamic world. Composed in the light of noble Islamic teachings, it offers a survey of the Divine unicity to the prophethood of the Prophet Muḥammad and deals with Imam ʽAlī in detail. He continued working on it until his death. The cases of the life and times of the Grand Ayatollah Khoie and, in this particular instance, his urjūzah show the depth and purity of both the influence he received from the noble teachings of the Infallibles and the array of the impact he made on his contemporaries and students. It can be a worthwhile and life-long project to delve into various aspects of the teachings of the Infallibles and the moral impact they have made throughout Islamic history. This impact can be found from the fountainhead of their discourse in various genres. For clarification of their discourses, the expositions must be sought in the works of prominent Shiite ulema.