Rajab Bursi


al-Hafiż Raḍī al-Dīn Rajab b. Muḥammad b. Rajab al-Ḥillī al-Borsi was an 'Iraqi Shia theologian, mystic, hadith narrator, writer, and poet. Bursi was born in contemporary Iraq, near Hilla, in the village of Bors, and moved to the Iranian province of Khurasan, to escape accusations of heresy, later in his life. Some sources indicate that he might have been murdered by the Timurids during the Shia persecutions.

Early life

Rajab al-Bursi was born in 1333, in the small village of Borsippa, which also contains a large Ziggurat, identified as the Tower of Babel. Not much is known of his early life, save that he may have been of Iranian descent. Writing on his origins, Bursi states:
عُمانيًّا مُراديًّا مَجوسيًّا يَهوديًّا لِهذا قَد غَدا يُبغِضُ
Omani, Moradi, Magian, Jew. For this, hatred may soon arise
لِهذا قَد غَدا يُبغِضُ زَكيَّ الطِّينِ كوفيًّا، وفي المَولِدِ والمَحتِدِ بَرسِيًّا
For this, tomorrow he may hate the pure clay of Kufa, and in both birth and lineage, of Bors and of Hillah.

Education and Later Life

Bursi received a traditional juristic education in the town of Hillah, being accomplices with Fakhr al-Muhaqqiqin, al-Shahid al-Awwal, and al-Karaki, however he is never mentioned in any hagiographical works until the 17th century "Wasail al-Shia" by Hurr al-Amili.
Bursi was also a Mujtahid, and allegedly wrote a full treatise on Fiqh, making him an Ayatollah by modern standards.
Rajab al-Bursi was eventually forced out of Hillah by a "group of envious monkeys", most likely a group of heavily orthodox jurists, and he eventually migrated to Sabziwar in Khorasan, then to Mashhad, which at the time was under the Sarbedars following the Ilkhanate collapse. There is a story pertaining to Bursi: that as he was being oppressed in Hillah, he received a vision of a "large light" coming from the East, which prompted him to travel. Bursi wrote most of, if not all of his works in Mashhad, as all manuscripts have been traced or found in Mashhad.
After the Sarbedars collapsed, Bursi once again fled, from Mashhad all the way to Ardestan, to a small village, known as Beheshtabad, where he died, and is currently buried. He is known by the people of the village as "Shaykh-e-Biyabani". His tomb is in poor condition but receives thousands of pilgrims yearly.

Theology

Rajab al-Bursi evidently had access to many archaic Twelver works, such as the source material of the famous Kitab al-Wahida by Ibn Jumhuur. The source of most controversy upon him, however, has been the many sermons in his magnum opus, where Ali purportedly makes various gnostic declarations, such as the self-declaration of "I am the First, I am the Last". However, these sermons are fairly tame among the "high maarifah" strain of Twelver Imamism, and have had a fair share of theologically conform interpretations. The Shaykhi Hierophant, Kazim al-Rashti, wrote a multi-voluminous commentary on one of these sermons.
Bursi believes that God, ineffable and transcendent, beyond all form and likeness, in an almost neo-platonic sense where the One is the Monad, created the "Word", which is the Kalimah, Qalam, and Light of Muhammad identified across Islamic literature, and that Word was used to create creation. It is through this belief that he receives the most criticism, along with his alleged Sufi-tendencies due to him quoting a hadith of Junayd al-Baghdadi in his work Mashariq al-Amaan.
These sermons are: Khutbatul Tutanjiyyah, Khutbatul Iftikhariya and Hadith al-Nawraniyya.

Works

  1. Arcana of the Imams
  2. Arcana of Letters
  3. The Sixteen Doors on Hadith
  4. The Two Thousand
  5. The Establishment of Tawḥīd and the Blessings upon the Prophet and His Guiding Imams
  6. Exegesis of Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ
  7. The Special Virtues of Allah’s Beautiful Names
  8. The Precious Pearl: Five Hundred Verses Revealed from the Lord of the Worlds on the Virtues of Our Master, the Commander of the Faithful, According to Most Interpreters of Religion
  9. The Oriental  Lights of Certainty in the Realities of the Arcana of the Commander of the Faithful – His Most Famous Work
  10. The Illuminating Glimpse of the Revealer in the Secrets of Names, Attributes, Letters, and Verses, and What Corresponds to Them in Supplications and Words
  11. The Glowing Lights of Glorification and Its Comprehensive Secrets in Tawḥīd 'In Speculative Theology and Tenents of Faith
  12. The Rising Lights of Security and the Essence of the Realities of Faith
  13. The Births of the Imams and Their Virtues
  14. The Mahdī’s Lamentation and the Imāmī Condolence
  15. The Unity of Existence – A Book on Philosophy
  16. A Treatise on Sending Blessings upon the Prophet and the Imams
  17. A Treatise on the Visitation of the Commander of the Faithful ' - رسالة في زيارة أمير المؤمنين )