Sayyid Jamal al-Din Va'iz

Sayyid Jamal al-Din "Va'iz" Esfahani (Persian: سید جمال‌الدین واعظ اصفهانی‎; also known as Seyed Jamal Vaez ["The Preacher"], 1862–1908) was a popular pro-constitutional preacher and writer in Iran. He was one of the founders of a constitutional movement in Isfahan in 1890s. He wrote for the reformist newspapers - especially for Al Jamal. He wrote mostly about the economy and the financial autonomy of Persia, which he compared it to jihad.

Sayyid Jamal al-Din ca. 1905

He is the father of Iranian writer Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh.

Opponent to Shah o Qajar

Va'iz was an opponent to Mohammad-Ali Shah Qajar. "As to the ulama in the constitutional revolution, there were varying degrees of support for a constitution and of awareness of its implications. Among the popular preachers there were a number in the tradition of Afghani — men brought up with a religious education and filling, more than Afghani, religious functions, notably preaching, but who were not themselves believers in any usual sense. These included most notably two preacher friends from Isfahan — Malek al-Motakallemin[1] and Sayyed Jamal ad-Din Esfahani, the former the father of the historian of the constitutional revolution, Mehdi Malekzadeh, and the latter the father of Iran's first great modern short-story writer, Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh. Malek al-Motakallamin was long an Azali Bábí, although by the time he became a preacher in the revolution he appears to have lost even this belief, while Sayyed Jamal ad-Din Esfahani was described by his son as a freethinker. They both recognized the appeal of Islam to the masses and bazaaris, however. [...] In Tehran, the two became major preachers of the revolutionary and constitutional cause, explaining it in familiar Muslim terms emphasizing such Islamic concepts, particularly central in Shi'ism, as Justice and Oppression. Mohammad-Ali Shah considered them among the most dangerous of his enemies and had them both killed in 1908, as he did the editor of Sur-e Esrafil, Mirza Jahangir Khan, also of Bábí background."[2][3]

Publications

• Lebas ot taqva - against import of goods
• The True Dream with Majd al- Islam Kirmani (1872–1922)

See also

• Sadr (name)

Bibliography

• Bayat, Mangol (1991). Iran's first revolution: Shi'ism and the constitutional revolution of 1905-1909. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506822-X.
• Ansari, Sarah F. D.; Martin, Vanessa (2002). Women, religion and culture in Iran. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon in association with the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. p. 223. ISBN 0-7007-1509-6.
• Kian, A. The Secularisation of Iran (Travaux et memoires de l'Institut d'etudes iraniennes). Peeters Publishers. p. 55. ISBN 90-429-0032-6.
• Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh (1999). Frontier fictions: shaping the Iranian nation, 1804-1946. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 98, 255. ISBN 0-691-00497-8.

References

1. Media:Malek al-Motakallemin.jpg
2. Nikki R. Keddie, with a section by Yann Richard, Modern Iran - Roots and Results of Revolution, updated edition (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003), pp. 179 and 180.
3. "After an unsuccessful attempt on his [Mohammad-Ali Shah's] life, the shah achieved, following a failed coup, a successful coup d'état with the help of the Russian-led Cossack Brigade in June 1908. The majles was closed and many popular nationalist leaders, especially those of more advanced views, were arrested and executed. The radical preachers Jamal ad-Din Esfahani (caught while trying to flee), Malek al-Motakallemin and the editor of Sur-e Esrafil, Mirza Jahangir Khan (the last two had Azali Bábí ties), were among those killed. Taqizadeh along with some others found refuge in the BritishLegation, whence he went abroad for a time." Nikki R. Keddie, op. cit., p. 70.