Early life and education He was born on Friday, 8th of Raj̲ab 1033AH/26 April 1624 CE in the Western Beqaa village of
Machghara in the
ʿĀmil mountains of
Lebanon, a center of Shi’i Lebanese in the region, to Al-Hurr family descended from
Al-Hurr ibn Yazid al-Riyahi al-Tamimi. His early education began with a family of teachers that included his father, his paternal uncle, his maternal grandfather (Shaykh ʿAbd Salām b. Muḥammad), and one of his father's maternal uncles (shaykh ʿAlī b. Maḥmūd; at Ḏj̲abʿ). He also studied under Ḥusayn b. Hasan b. Yunus Ẓahīr and Ḥasan b. Zayn al-Dīn ʿĀmili (d.1011/1602), who was the great-grandson of al-Shahid al-Thani, in al-Jaba, a nearby village. Ḥusayn Zahir was the first to give al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmili
ijaza, a license to teach and transmit
ahadeeth.
Later life and travels Al-Ḥurr Al-ʿĀmili performed the
hajj twice and went on
ziyarat, visiting of holy Shi’a shrines, in
Iraq. Other than these trips, he remained in the Jabal ʿĀmil for the first forty years of his life. He lived during the era of the
Safavid Empire, which at the time was pushing Imami Shi’ism upon the people of Iran. When Sunni ulama fled from the Safavid Empire, specifically the religious centers of Iran, the empire brought in many Shi’i scholars to replace them, a large amount coming from Jabal ʿĀmil. Al-Ḥurr Al-ʿĀmili was one of the many scholars that migrated to take religious leadership positions in Iran at the time, eventually journeying to
Mashhad, Iran and settling there in 1073/1663 where he became
Shaykh al-Islam in the shrine of the 8th Imam,
Ali al-Ridha. He settled after traveling first to
Isfahan, Persia where he became acquainted with
Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, the third of the Great Muḥammads (the first of the Three Great Muḥammads of later centuries is Muhammad Kashani, also known as Muhsin al-Fayz). The meeting between these two scholars left an impression on them both and they mutually granted each other ijāza to transmit hadiths.
Majlisi also introduced al-ʿĀmili to Shah Sulayman of the Safavid Empire. Al-ʿĀmili died in Mashhad on the 21st of
Ramadhan 1104 AH / 26 May 1693 CE and is buried there. He was succeeded by his brother Ahmad (d. 1120/1708-9) as shaykh al-Islam in Mashhad. Some have claimed that al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmili actually died in
Yemen in 1079/1669, but there is no evidence in support of this. Al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmili was not only known as a scholar, but also as a poet. He is credited with a diwān of approximately 20,000 verses, which includes several didactic poems (manẓumas), most of which constitute panegyrics to the Prophet
Muḥammad and to his descendants. However, in two verses, he also expressed his inner struggle between his poetic and scholarly leanings: “My scholarship and my poetry fought one another, then were reconciled / poetry reluctantly surrendering to scholarship” (ʿelmi wa-šeʿri qatalā wa-ṣṭalaḥā / fa-ḵażaʿa al-šeʿro le-ʿelmi rāḡemā); “My scholarship objected to my being considered a poet / poetry, however, conceded that I be regarded as a scholar” (fa-l-ʿelmo yaʾbā an oʿadda šāʿeran / wa’l-šeʿro yarżā an oʿadda ʿālemā). ==Works==