Abd alnHusayn Sharaf al Din al Musawi

Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi was a Shia scholar and reformer who is widely considered a social activist and a modern founder of the city of Tyre in Southern Lebanon. He was born in 1872 in Kadhimiya, to a Lebanese family of prominent religious scholars. His father was from the village of Shuhur in Jabal Amel, the Shia area of Southern Lebanon, and his mother was the daughter of Ayatollah al-Sayyid Hadi al-Sadr and the sister of al-Sayyid Hasan al-Sadr. His family's lineage goes back to Ibrahim ibn Musa al-Kazim, the son of Imam Musa al-Kadhim. He studied Islamic sciences in Baghdad and Najaf, where he became a mujtahid (an authority on Islamic law) at the age of 32. He also studied other schools of thought, such as Zaidism and Sunnism. He returned to Lebanon and settled in Tyre, where he founded a religious community center and a school. He also played a decisive role in the political struggle between the Sunni and Shia factions in Jabal Amel after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. He advocated for the unity of Muslims and the preservation of the Arabic language and culture. He wrote many books and treatises on various topics, such as theology, jurisprudence, history, and dialogue. His most famous work is al-Muraja'at, a collection of letters between him and a Sunni scholar, Shaykh Salim al-Bishri, in which they discussed the differences and similarities between the two sects. He also wrote al-Fusul al-Muhimma fi Ta'lif al-Ummah, a book that calls for the reconciliation of Muslims and the revival of Islamic civilization. He also wrote al-Nass wa al-Ijtihad, a book that defends the Shia doctrine of following the Quran and the Sunnah as interpreted by the Imams. He died in 1957 in Lebanon and was buried in Najaf, Iraq. He is remembered as one of the most influential Shia scholars of the 20th century and a pioneer of Islamic reform and dialogue.