Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi

Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Mohammed Hassan Husayni Nouri Shirazi (Persian: میرزای شیرازی‎‎, Arabic: آية الله العظمى السيد محمد حسن الشیرازي) famously known as Mirza Shirazi (1814–1896), was a famous Iranian cleric. He is widely known for his verdict (misunderstood as a fatwa) against the usage of tobacco in what became known as the Tobacco Protest in the Qajar era.

Mirza Shirazi was born in Shiraz. He began his Islamic religious studies at the age of 4, and completed his preliminary-level studies by age eight, and at age 12 he began advanced lessons in jurisprudence and methodology at the Shiraz seminary. He later left Shiraz to study in Isfahan and then Shiite holy city of Karbala in the Ottoman Empire. At age 29 years old, he began studying under Sheikh Morteza Ansari in Najaf. Upon Ansari's death in 1864, Shirazi succeeded him as marja. In 1874, he settled in Samarra, where he established the city's first Shia seminary.

Among his notable students were his son-in-law, Sayyed Ali Akbar Falasiri, who first proposed the boycott to him, Sayyed Mohammed Kazem Yazdi, Mulla Mohammad-Kazem Khorasani, Mirza Mohammad Taqi Shirazi (called as Mirza the second), Sheikh Fazlollah Noori Tabrasi, Mirza Husain Noori Tabarsi and Mirza Ismael Shirazi. He died in Samarra at the age of 82 and his body is buried in the Imam Ali Mosque.

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