Mohammad Ali Araki

Grand Ayatollah Shaykh Mohammad Ali Araki was born in 1894 in Soltanabad (now Arak). His father was a cleric. He started reading and writing in traditional schools of that time and since the age of eleven attended the religious lessons of the great scholars of Arak. With the arrival of Grand Ayatollah Shaykh Abdolkarim Haeri-Yazdi – the greatest religious scholar of that time – from Karbala to Arak, he benefited from his lessons for a long time and went with him to Qom.

His studies under the supervision of Ayatollah Haeri continued after the establishment of the Islamic Seminary of Qom. After the death of Ayatollah Haeri, Ayatollah Araki studies under Ayatollah Khansari and after his death in 1952, at the request of his students, he began teaching jurisprudence and principles of jurisprudence for high-level seminary students. Moreover, he became the imam of Friday Congregational Prayer held at Feyzieh School, which had been started during the time of Ayatollah Khansari.

After the demise of Imam Khomeini (ra) in 1989, a group of mujtahids asked the followers of Imam Khomeini (ra) to emulate Ayatollah Araki in religious matters. In this way, at the age of 97, he assumed the position of marja’iyyah. He died on November 19, 1994, in Shahid Rajaei Hospital in Tehran. Ayatollah Araki was known in seminaries as “Shaykh al-Fuqaha wa al-Mujtahidin [The Master of the Jurists and Mujtahids].”

Reference: The Encyclopedia of the Islamic Revolution.