Story 3

Removing Severe Problems of Āyatullāh al-Najafī al-Qūchānī

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The late Āyatullāh al-Najafī al-Qūchānī (ra)1 was an eminent and pious scholar, and among the prominent students of Sheikh al-Ākhūnd al-Khurāsānī2. In his memoirs, he wrote the following about his time in Esfahan3:

One night, during my time in Esfahan, I saw “death” in a dream in the form of an animal the size of a one-year-old lamb, with three or four of its young ones, walking behind her elevated in the air. While walking, it passed over our house in Qūchān, and one of the lambs stopped above our house. I wrote to my father, asking him to send me a letter explaining the situation, as I was worried about him. No sooner had I sent the message, I received one from my father saying that his wife had passed away. In this letter, my father also wrote that about ten years ago, he borrowed twelve tomans to cover his travel expenses for pilgrimage to the holy shrines. However, due to interest, the loan grew to eighty tomans, an amount my father could not afford. I decided to recite Ziyārat ʿĀshūrāʾ for forty days, from the rooftop of the Safavid Sultan Mosque, and I asked for three things:

  1. To repay my father’s debt.
  2. To seek Allah’s forgiveness.
  3. To increase my knowledge and diligence.

It would take me about two hours, and I would finish before midday. A month after the forty days had passed, my father wrote to me saying: Imām Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar (as) has paid off my debt.

I wrote back: No, it was Imām Ḥusain  who paid it off; nevertheless, “they are all one light.”

Footnotes

  1. Āyatullāh Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusain al-Najafī al-Qūchānī (1295/1878 – 1363/1944 AH/CE) was a righteous scholar who reached the level of Ijtihād at the age of thirty. He has many books, but there are two that are very famous, written in Persian. One is Siyāḥat Gharb (A Journey to the West), on the fate of souls after death, and the other is Siyāḥat Sharq (A Journey to the East), which is kind of an autobiography and the difficulties he had in his life while pursuing knowledge. ↩

  2. Sheikh Muḥammad Kāẓem Khurāsānī (1255/1839 – 1329/1911 AH/CE), known as Ākhūnd Khurāsānī was a very prominent scholar and master of fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh. He taught many scholars who themselves became great Marājiʿ taqlīd, and his books are still being taught in Ḥawzahs. ↩

  3. He lived in Esfahan for four years between 1314–1318 AH. ↩

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