Fazlollah Nouri

Hajj Shaykh Fazlollah Nouri (24 November 1843 – 31 July 1909) was a Twelver Shia jurist of Qajar Iran. Trained in the shrine cities of Iraq under Mirza Hasan Shirazi, he became Tehran's leading scholar and jurist, first supported the Constitutional Revolution on condition that it be bound by the shari'a, then broke with it and campaigned for absolutism over secularism, and was hanged by the victorious constitutionalists in 1909. ^{1 2}

His birth date is split between the sources: the Encyclopaedia Iranica anchors it to 2 Dhu'l-Qa'da 1259 and converts it to 24 November 1843, while English Wikipedia gives 24 December 1843. This record follows the Iranica reading, with the variant stated. ^{2 1}

He was born at Lashak, a village in the Kojur district of Mazandaran, the son of the local cleric Mulla Abbas Kojuri. After his early education in Kojur and Tehran he left at an early age for the Shi'ite shrine cities, the Atabat, in Iraq, where he studied under the prominent Shi'ite theologian Mirza Hasan Shirazi. In about 1882-83 he returned to Tehran and gradually emerged as its leading scholar and jurist. ²

In Tehran he lived primarily on his fees from his shari'a duties — conducting marriages and contracts, handling the wills of wealthy men and collecting religious funds — while notables, merchants and officials referred their legal cases to him, and he held regular classes as a teacher. He wrote works on jurisprudence, usul and philosophy. ^{2 1}

Drawn into politics by the Qajar government's concessions to foreign businessmen, Nouri played a part in the movement against the Tobacco Concession of 1890-91, which ended with Mirza Hasan Shirazi's fatwa banning tobacco and the concession's cancellation. His argument, drawn from his mentor, was that in the absence of the Imam of the Age, government is a shared responsibility of the ruler and the ulama. ²

When the constitutional movement came, he at first acquiesced in a majles understood as an Islamic institution. He drafted the proposal that became Article 2 of the Supplementary Fundamental Law of 1907, under which legislation would be reviewed by a council of high-ranking mojtaheds for conformity with the shari'a. His own definition of the assembly the ulama had sought was one meant "to serve and assist the Twelver Shi'ite government, and to protect the rights of the followers of the Ja'fari faith". ²

He nevertheless broke with Behbahani and Tabataba'i, took sanctuary with his followers at the shrine of Shah Abd-al-Azim in June 1907, and campaigned against the Majles in printed leaflets, arguing that the shari'a covers all the regulations of government and that the people had thrown out the law of the Prophet ﷺ and set up their own law instead. He sided with Mohammad Ali Shah, issued fatwas against the parliament's supporters, and was accused by the Najaf marja's — Akhund Khurasani, Mirza Husayn Tehrani and Abdallah Mazandarani — of causing trouble and sedition. ^{1 2}

After the constitutionalists took Tehran in 1909, Nouri was arrested, tried before a tribunal headed by Shaykh Ibrahim Zanjani, and found guilty of "sowing corruption and sedition on earth". He was hanged on 13 Rajab 1327, 31 July 1909. The Islamic Revolution Document Centre reports that he refused the chance to save himself by taking refuge in the Russian Embassy or flying the Russian flag over his house. ¹

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 he has been celebrated in the Islamic Republic of Iran as a defender of the shari'a and portrayed in school textbooks as a martyr, while historians have also criticised his opposition to constitutional government and his incitement of violence; a Tehran expressway bears his name. ¹

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