Reflecting on the life of Hajj Mohammad Jaafar Qasir—affectionately known to his comrades as Hajj Majed—is to trace the very roots of a forty-year struggle. Born into a generation that planted the seeds of resistance, his journey began not in the halls of power, but in the humble village of Deir Qanoun Al-Nahr. Long before he became a strategic pillar of the Resistance Axis, he was a boy whose identity was forged in the fires of occupation.

In 1982, alongside his older brother Ahmad—the pioneer of the resistance’s martyrdom operations—a young Hajj Majed transported weapons southward, taking up the mantle of struggle at a remarkably early age. The depth of his conviction was laid bare during a harrowing detention by Israeli soldiers when he was barely fifteen years old. Thirsty and exhausted, the young boy steadfastly refused to engage with his captors, rejecting even a simple sip of the cold juice they offered him. That childhood defiance was the quiet promise of a lifetime spent confronting the oppressor.

As the years passed, the boy who refused the enemy’s water grew into a formidable commander. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he honed his military acumen, studying in the Islamic Republic of Iran before returning to the southern front. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with legendary martyred commanders like Rida Hariri and Abu Al-Fadl, and working closely with Sayyed Mohsen Shokor on security affairs, he helped build the nascent missile forces that would eventually shift the balance of power. For Hajj Majed, military advancement was never a pursuit of personal glory, but a solemn duty to protect the oppressed.

From 2005 until his ultimate martyrdom, Hajj Majed took on monumental responsibilities across the Resistance Axis. He masterfully orchestrated military, logistical, economic, and diplomatic affairs, earning the moniker from Western media as the “founder of the Axis’s economic resistance.” Yet, to his brothers-in-arms, he was known more intimately. The great leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah lovingly referred to him as “Hezbollah’s lung,” a testament to how he breathed life, sustenance, and vitality into the very body of the resistance.

Hajj Majed lived a life of jihad woven purely for the sake of the Divine. He often reminded his companions that true devotion demands hardship, saying, “Our highest goal is to attain God’s pleasure, which is not easy to achieve. Attaining it requires taking the most difficult paths to reach the desired objective.” Today, he joins a heartbreakingly long line of dignified leaders who have given their lives so that their homeland’s memory—and its future—remains unbroken. His legacy stands as a beacon of guidance for those who continue to walk the most difficult paths.

Reference: ABNA24

سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ

Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.

Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.

Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.

Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.

Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.

Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.

— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn

The Voice of the Awaited One

This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.

And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.

Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.

The Maqtal — “The Blood That Would Not Settle”

I. This One I Do Not Have to Remember

Every week I have said the same thing to you.

I was not there — but I remember.

Not tonight.

Tonight I was in the house.
I was in the room at the back of it.
And when they carried my father out into the yard, I came out after him, and I was ten years old, and I had no shoes on.

II. Ten Men, Night and Day

Understand what they did to him while he was still alive.

When word went out that my father was ill, the caliph came himself and looked at him.
He set his own physicians on him and told them not to leave.

And then he sent for the Chief Justice of the empire, brought him into his own court, and ordered him to pick ten men from among his associates.

Ten witnesses.
Chosen by a judge.
Sent to our house.

And ordered to stay in it, night and day, until my father died.

Not soldiers.
Not a guard on the gate.
Witnesses — men whose whole job was to be believed afterwards.

They were there so that the state could say, later, that it had watched.

My father spent the last days of his life dying in a room full of men appointed to observe him.
He was twenty-eight years old.
And I was in the house, and they did not know it, and that was the point of me.

III. One Voice, and Then a Face

He died on a morning in the month of Rabi al-Awwal, in the two hundred and sixtieth year.

And the city — the caliph’s own city, built by his family, full of his soldiers — became, in the words of the man who wrote it down, one single clamour.

The son of al-Rida is dead.

The markets shut — all of them.
The Hashimites rode out, the Abbasids among them, and the caliph’s brother was ordered to lead the prayer over my father’s body.

And when the bier was set down, he did something I want you to hold on to.

He bent down and uncovered my father’s face.

And he turned it towards the commanders and the judges and the jurists of the empire, and said: this is al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Rida.
He died a natural death, on his bed.

A state does not certify a death that nobody doubts.

They uncovered my father’s face in front of the whole apparatus of an empire so that men could say afterwards that they had seen it.
Nobody believed them then, and nobody has believed them since.

IV. Thirty-Nine Men, Sitting, Waiting

Now the part written down by a man from the house of al-Abbas — not one of ours, a descendant of the family that had us watched.

He says he was at our house that day.
The bier was brought out and set down.
There were thirty-nine of them, sitting, waiting.

Waiting for what?

For somebody to come out.
Because a son prays over his father — and the whole question in that yard, the question the empire had posted ten men to settle, was whether there was a son at all.

And then I came out.

He describes me.
A boy of about ten.
Barefoot.
A cloak pulled up over my head.

And he writes that when I came out, they all stood up.

Out of awe of him — he says — without knowing who he was.

Thirty-nine men, not one of whom could have named me, stood up.

I went forward.
They fell in behind me in ranks.
I prayed over my father.

And then I walked.

And the man writes the last line the way you would write it if you did not understand what you had seen, which is why I believe him:

and he entered a room other than the one he had come out of.

V. And They Still Could Not Agree

That is all any of you were ever given.

And now hear what my father’s own community did with it.

You spent tonight on two parties — the ones who made us more than we are, and the ones who cut us down below what we were.
You watched my father correct their messenger three times in one afternoon.

When my father died, those same people looked at what had happened in that yard.

And the book says it plainly, and it is our book and not theirs: a group of them went back on the statement of the son.

They had been told.
Some of them had been in that yard.
And when the moment came to stand on it, a group of them put it down.

Both parties failed him on the same afternoon, in the same house — and then again at his grave, where the only thing asked of them was to say that the boy who prayed had been real.

I was real.

I am still real.

And the empire that posted ten men in my father’s house and uncovered his face in front of its judges is now a chapter in a book that children are made to read at school.

I walked out of a room, and into another room, and I have not come back out of it yet.

I was there — and I remember.

And I am not gone.

May our Lord hasten my return.

Pray ardently for my return.

Sources Cited

• Shaykh al-Tusi, Kitab al-Ghayba, report 226 — Ahmad ibn Abdullah al-Hashimi, of the descendants of al-Abbas: the bier, the thirty-nine men, the barefoot boy, the prayer, and the other room.

• Shaykh al-Tusi, Kitab al-Ghayba — the final illness: the caliph’s visit, the physicians, the Chief Justice and the ten appointed men; Samarra as one clamour; the caliph’s brother uncovering the face before the commanders, scribes, judges and jurists.

• al-Kulayni, al-Kafi, Volume 1 — a group of them went back on the statement of the son.

• Shaykh al-Tusi, Kitab al-Ghayba, the chapter on the evidence of the birth of the Master of the Age, report 216 — Kamil ibn Ibrahim, and the two parties who sent him.

Two years after his tragic martyrdom, a profoundly personal side of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been unveiled to the world. In a moving tribute to the late Secretary-General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a new book titled Memories of My Father offers an unprecedented glimpse into the private life of a man who reshaped the modern Middle East.

Originally written in Arabic (Dhikrayati ma‘a Abi) by his son, Sayyed Mohammad Mahdi Nasrallah, the book has recently been translated into Persian by Bushra Sahebi and published by Amirkabir Publications in Tehran. Released to honour the second anniversary of his martyrdom, this work stands as the first official, intimate written account of Nasrallah by his own family.

While the world knew Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as a towering figure of the Axis of Resistance—renowned for his captivating speeches and unwavering strategic leadership against Israeli aggression—this memoir strips away the political and military spotlight to reveal the man behind the resistance.

A Father First

The book is thoughtfully divided into two main sections: “What I Heard from My Father,” featuring profound recollections, and “What I Saw While Accompanying Him,” drawn from the author’s direct experiences. Across 82 distinct narratives, readers are invited into the Nasrallah household.

The memoirs shed light on the martyr’s deeply affectionate nature, his hands-on approach to raising his children, and his role as a devoted father and grandfather. Far from the harsh realities of conflict, the book highlights his simple lifestyle, his profound love for reading, and the quiet, grounding moments of his daily life. It also provides a rare look at how he maintained his dignity, faith, and family bonds while enduring years of extreme security pressures and hardship.

A Legacy Immortalised

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah led Hezbollah for over three decades, guiding the movement through the 2000 liberation of southern Lebanon and the historic 2006 war. His life was tragically cut short on September 27, 2024, at the age of 64, during intense Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut—a strike that also claimed the lives of several senior commanders.

Yet, while his public life was followed globally, his personal life remained fiercely protected. Memories of My Father bridges that gap, offering followers of the resistance and lovers of martyrdom literature a deeply humanising portrait. It reminds us that the greatest leaders of our time were not just strategic masterminds, but humble servants of God, dedicated family men, and spiritual guides whose light continues to shine brightest in the hearts of their children.

For those seeking to understand the soul of the resistance beyond the battlefield, this memoir is an essential and deeply moving read.

Reference: Tehran Times

“Mojtaba was a moon.” That is how artist Parisa Rashidi describes Sayyed Mojtaba Sajedifar, the three-day-old infant whose life was brutally cut short before it could even begin to bloom.

In the early hours of March 15, 2026, at around 4:36 a.m., a US-Israeli airstrike targeted an ordinary family home in Amrabad, a village in the Masumieh district near Arak, central Iran. In this unprovoked act of aggression during the 40-day war against Iran, four members of the Sajedifar family were martyred while they slept.

Sayyed Mojtaba was martyred in the arms of his mother, Somayeh Mohammadi. The strike also claimed the lives of his two-year-old sister, Fatemeh Noura, and their grandmother, leaving one other family member injured. There were no military positions or installations near the site; the missiles deliberately struck a rural home where an ordinary family lived in peace.

Echoes of Karbala

For the family, Mojtaba’s arrival was a moment of profound joy. Long before his birth, they had prepared for him, imagining the beautiful life that lay ahead. During his mother’s pregnancy, the family had planned to bring their newborn to the Worldwide Hosseini Infants Gathering, held annually on the first Friday of Muharram to commemorate Hazrat Ali Asghar (AS), the infant son of Imam Husayn (AS) who was martyred at the Battle of Karbala.

Tragically, when the gathering took place four months after the airstrike, the family that had hoped to introduce Mojtaba to the world was instead mourning four martyrs. For the people of Arak, the martyrdom of a newborn in his mother’s arms evoked deep historical and spiritual wounds, drawing painful parallels to the timeless tragedy of Karbala and the suffering of innocent children throughout history.

A Deep Wound for the Community

The massacre of an entire family in a single moment has left a deep scar on the local community. “The martyrdom of a three-day-old infant may be just a news story to many people around the world, but for us, it is a deep wound,” one young student from Arak shared.

Parents across the region were heartbroken. One mother expressed her anguish, asking what threat an ordinary family could possibly pose to the US and Israeli regimes. “Imagine an entire family being wiped out in a single moment. They were simply an ordinary family living in their home,” she said. The deliberate targeting of residential neighbourhoods and children has only reinforced the belief among Iranians that the military campaign is a cowardly attempt to intimidate and harm civilians.

“Heroic Innocence” Immortalised in Art

During the sacred month of Muharram, artist Parisa Rashidi unveiled a portrait painted in the newborn’s memory, later presenting it to his grieving father. Titled Heavenly Infant, Three-Day-Old Martyr, the artwork depicts the baby surrounded by stars, flowers, and a crescent moon, with a Simurgh rising behind him and the Iranian tricolour wrapped gently around his body.

Rashidi explained that the imagery merges themes of Ramadan, innocence, Iranian identity, and the mourning traditions of Shia Islam. The Simurgh represents the ascent of the infant’s pure soul, while the stars signify the enduring light of truth.

“My aim was not simply to depict a face, but to narrate a form of ‘heroic innocence,’” Rashidi stated. “This work was my tribute to the great spirit of this little man. He was never given the opportunity to live, yet through his innocence, he left in history an eternal narrative of sacrifice.”

Today, Sayyed Mojtaba Sajedifar stands as the youngest martyr of this brutal war. His name has transcended the fleeting nature of news cycles, becoming a lasting symbol of innocent blood spilled by aggressors and a testament to the unwavering spirit of a nation that refuses to be broken.

Reference: PressTv

سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ

Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.

Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.

Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.

Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.

Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.

Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.

— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn

The Voice of the Awaited One

This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.

And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.

Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.

The Maqtal — “The Blood That Would Not Settle”

I. A Man Asked About a Grave

There was a man who came to my forefather Jafar the son of Muhammad with a question about a grave.

Not an unusual question.
People asked him about graves constantly — whether to go, how often, what it was worth, whether the stories they had heard were true.

He asked about the grave of my forefather Husayn.

And my forefather answered him with four things.
Visit him, and do not neglect him.
He is the master of the martyrs.
He is the master of the youth of the people of paradise.

And then the fourth thing, which is why I am here tonight.

And he is the likeness of John the son of Zechariah — John the Baptist.

II. The One He Was Likened To

You were told about him an hour ago.
The boy whose name nobody had ever carried.
The one God announced to an old man in a prayer-chamber by telling him that no one had been called this before.

God gave him the Book as a child and told him to take it with strength, and gave him tenderness out of His own presence in the same breath, and said of him — and I want you to hold this, because everything that follows turns on it — that he was not a tyrant, disobedient.

That is not a small thing to have said about you.

It means that in a world arranged by tyrants, there was a man who was not one.

III. What a King Wanted

There was a king in his days.

I am not going to tell you the whole of what that king wanted, because the accounts of it do not agree with one another and I will not build on a stone I cannot stand on.
You will have heard a version of it.
Leave it aside.

Here is what is not in dispute.

A man who was not a tyrant stood where a tyrant could reach him.
And a request was made — the kind of request a court makes when it is pleased with someone and wants to show it — and the request was for his head.

And the king granted it.

They brought him at night.
They brought a basin of gold.
And they killed the prophet of God into it, the way you would kill an animal you intended to eat, and then they took the basin out and poured it onto the ground.

IV. The Blood That Would Not Settle

And the ground would not take it.

The blood came up.
It rose, and it kept rising.

So they brought earth and threw it over the blood, and the blood came up through the earth.
And they threw more, and it came up through that.

They did not stop because they were merciful.
They stopped because it did not work.

And it was still there generations later.
Still rising.
Long enough that a conqueror came through that country, and saw it, and asked what it was, and had to hunt through the whole city before he found one old man whose father had told him the story his grandfather had told him.

That is the blood of John the son of Zechariah.
John the Baptist.

And the conqueror said: then I will kill over it until it settles.

Seventy thousand.

That is the number the report gives.
Seventy thousand, and then the ground was quiet.

Think about what that means.
The earth of that place had been asked to absorb one man, and it refused, and it went on refusing across generations and would not be argued with — and it took the blood of seventy thousand to buy the silence of one.

V. And Then There Was Another

Now you know why my forefather Jafar the son of Muhammad said what he said.

Because there was a second man that the sky would not be quiet about.

They killed him on a plain by a river.
They cut him as John was cut, by a tyrant’s word, because a court wanted it.
And the men who did it believed that this was the end of the matter.

The sky has wept for two men.
Only two.
Forty mornings each, rising red and setting red, and in all the centuries between and since it has not done it for anybody else.

And the Messenger of God said there is a station in the Fire that no one has ever deserved except two men — the one who killed John the son of Zechariah, John the Baptist, and the one who killed Husayn son of Ali.

One station.
Two occupants.
Nobody else in the history of the world qualified.

They thought they were ending something.

Both times, they were beginning it.

You have spent tonight learning that men in other houses asked our question long before we did — why do you go to a grave, and what are you doing when you get there.

Here is the answer my family gives.

You go because some blood does not settle.
Because the ground itself refused to close over it.
Because the sky changed colour and stayed that colour for forty mornings, twice in the history of the world, and both times it was over a man who would not be what the room around him had agreed to be.

They are still there.
They are still speaking.

And every one of you who has ever stood at a grave and said peace be upon you was answering something.

I was not there — but I remember.

And I am not gone.

May our Lord hasten my return.

Pray ardently for my return.

Sources Cited

• Ibn Qulawayh, Kamil al-Ziyarat, the chapter on the weeping of the heavens and the earth
  — visit him and do not neglect him, for he is the master of the martyrs and the master of the youth of the people of paradise and the likeness of Yahya ibn Zakariyya, and for the two of them the sky and the earth wept

• Ibn Qulawayh, Kamil al-Ziyarat, the same chapter
  — the sky wept for these two alone, forty mornings, rising red and setting red

• Ibn Qulawayh, Kamil al-Ziyarat, the same chapter
  — the Messenger of God on the station in the Fire deserved by no one except the killer of al-Husayn and the killer of Yahya ibn Zakariyya (John the Baptist)

• Bihar al-Anwar, volume 14, report 20
  — the golden basin, the blood that rose through the earth, Bukhtnasr - Nebuchadnezzar, and the seventy thousand

• Qur’an, Surah Maryam (the Chapter of Saint Mary) #19, verses 12 and 14
  — take the Book with strength · and he was not a tyrant, disobedientWhat are you building?

In a stirring message addressed to a gathering of seminary students at the Imam Musa Kazem (AS) Seminary in Fars Province, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi has issued a profound call to preserve the sacred legacy of the Islamic Revolution’s fallen heroes.

As one of Iran’s most revered religious authorities, the Grand Ayatollah emphasised that honouring clerical martyrs is not merely a historical duty, but a spiritual imperative for the younger generation of the clergy.

A Season of Sorrow and Unbreakable Hope

Addressing the assembly, Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi reflected on a turbulent chapter for the Islamic nation. He spoke candidly of the recent sorrows—the assaults on Iran, the devastating human and financial toll, and the profound tragedy of losing “the martyred leader” alongside some of the nation’s most beloved defenders.

Yet, the Grand Ayatollah framed these immense sacrifices as the bedrock of an unbreakable hope. He urged the faithful to transform their grief into an unwavering spirit of conviction, resistance, and steadfastness against the “wicked enemy.” Victory, he assured, lies in the reconstruction of what was destroyed and the building of a future far more prosperous and powerful than the past.

The Sacred Duty of the Seminaries

At the heart of his message was the elevated status of the clerical and seminary martyrs. Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi described them as the “precious assets of Islam,” scholarly figures who did not confine themselves to the pulpit but stepped boldly into the arena of jihad and the defence of divine values. By shedding their blood, they proved the absolute sincerity of their faith to Islam, the people, and the Islamic homeland.

Quoting the Holy Quran, he reminded the students that God Almighty has “purchased their lives and property in exchange for paradise,” promising them high ranks and mercy. He stressed that keeping the names and struggles of these pure souls alive is the most effective way to transmit the culture of sacrifice to future generations, ensuring the continuity of this valuable legacy within the Islamic community.

The Path Forward

The Grand Ayatollah concluded by extending his gratitude to the organisers of the blessed assembly and the steadfast people of Fars Province for their enthusiastic support of the Islamic Republic during trying times. He closed with a resounding prayer for the dignity of Islam, the elevation of the ranks of all martyrs—especially the fallen scholars and the martyred leader—and the ultimate triumph of the resistance.

For those walking the path of martyrdom, his message from Qom is clear: the blood of the martyrs is the ink with which the future of the Islamic community will be written.

Reference: ABNA24

The ultimatum of today

“Brothers and sisters! Today they tell us: submit to America and its project, recognise Israel, accept its dominance and become its slaves — or we declare war on you, besiege you, sanction you, place you on lists of terrorists, and send suicide bombers to your mosques, your Hussainiyas, your churches, your schools and your markets.” And if you refuse, they say, then bear the consequences of your position — the position of freedom, of independence, of sovereignty.

The same words, spoken in Karbala

“Was this not what was said to Husayn (peace be upon him) in Karbala?” Either pledge allegiance to Yazid and Ibn Ziyad — despite all they embodied of despotism, arrogance, tyranny and corruption — or death: heads cut off, bodies torn apart, property plundered, women taken captive. Didn’t that happen? That is exactly what happened.

The two choices

Husayn (peace be upon him) knew where he must stand, and his position was decisive. He left his school this lesson:

“This impious man, son of an impious man, has left me between two choices: the sword or humiliation — and far be it from us to be humiliated.” Either allegiance or death. Either humiliation or death. Either submission to the will of the oppressors — or death. And Husayn taught us to answer: “I swear by God, I see death as nothing but happiness, and life with oppressors as nothing but torment.”

Our position, tonight

“On this night, we remember history, we remember this battle and its true essence — and we take our position.” Today, facing Israel’s threats, warnings and wars, we answer as Husayn answered in Karbala: if the choice is between war and humiliation — then no. There will be no humiliation. Heyhaat min al-dhilla.

A thousand times over

“If we knew that they would kill us, then burn us, then scatter our dust to the winds; then we would live, and be killed again, burned again, scattered again; then live again — and be killed again, burned again, scattered again… if all of this happened to us a thousand times, we would still not leave you, O Husayn.”

No one retreats

“In this battle, with this truth and this clarity, we cannot retreat, abandon it, or turn back. And I tell you frankly: whoever even thinks of retreating is like the one who left Husayn (peace be upon him) on the night of Ashura, in the middle of the night.”

The lesson

Ashura, as the Sayyed taught it, is not history remembered — it is a position taken. That dignity is never negotiable; that truth demands a stance; and that whoever stands with Husayn never kneels. Between the sword and humiliation, the followers of Hussein choose death standing — and life that never bows.

Far be it from us to be humiliated.

History is rarely made only on the battlefield. Long before the banners of the Islamic Resistance were raised over the liberated soil of Southern Lebanon, and long before the world knew the name of the Master of the Martyrs of our era, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the resistance was being quietly forged in the heart of a teenager.

We often look at the grand architecture of historical movements and focus only on the towering figures at the top. But in the tradition of the Ahlul Bayt (AS), great movements are born in the quiet corners of seminaries, through humble prayers, and via the invisible, spiritual bonds between a teacher and his student.

A profound oral history recounted by Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Gharavi recently unveiled this hidden architecture, revealing how a single letter of introduction to the great Martyr Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr altered the destiny of Lebanon, the Axis of Resistance, and a young boy from the village of Bazouriyeh.

The Sanctuary in Tyre

In the years preceding the Islamic Revolution, the Najaf seminary was under immense pressure from the Baathist regime. Recognising that the light of the Ahlul Bayt (AS) could not be extinguished by political tyranny, Martyr Baqir al-Sadr began strategically planting seeds of knowledge in the surrounding lands. He dispatched his trusted student, Ayatollah Gharavi, to the city of Tyre in Lebanon to assist Imam Musa Sadr and nurture the spiritual life of the Shia in Jabal Amel.

It was in the mosque at Tyre that Ayatollah Gharavi noticed a thirteen-year-old boy. While other youths his age were distracted by the worldly affairs of the city, this young teenager was consistently present for congregational prayers, asking deep, searching questions about his faith.

“He was a young man connected to religion, which was very rare in Lebanon at that time,” Ayatollah Gharavi recalled.

Seeing the pure potential in this boy, the elder cleric asked him if he ever considered travelling to Najaf to study the sacred sciences. The boy, Sayyed Hassan, expressed a deep yearning to do so but confessed his family’s poverty. Taking the boy’s spiritual destiny into his own hands, Ayatollah Gharavi provided him with travel funds and did something that would echo through the decades: he wrote a letter to his master, Martyr Baqir al-Sadr.

The Entrustment of a Soul

When young Hassan arrived in Najaf and handed the letter to Martyr al-Sadr, divine decree was already at work. Present in that very gathering was another great scholar who would eventually lay down his life for the resistance: Martyr Sayyed Abbas al-Mousawi.

Martyr al-Sadr read the letter, looked at the young student, and then turned to Martyr al-Mousawi. In a moment that beautifully illustrates the spiritual chain of our martyrs, al-Sadr said:

“I entrust the guardianship of this young man to you; take care of this young man.”

Years later, Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah would return to Lebanon and recount this meeting to Ayatollah Gharavi with tears of reverence, saying, “May God have mercy on the Sayyed, for he opened a path for us.”

This was not merely an administrative introduction; it was the passing of a spiritual torch. Martyr al-Sadr, Martyr al-Mousawi, and Martyr Nasrallah were bound together in a single chain of Wilayah long before they ever held weapons or commanded armies.

The Humility of the Master

Perhaps the most striking lesson from this oral history is not one of military strategy, but of Islamic etiquette (adab) and the humility required of true leadership.

Decades later, long after Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had become the undisputed leader of the Lebanese Resistance, he met with his old mentor, Ayatollah Gharavi. As their meeting drew to a close, Ayatollah Gharavi made a humble request: “Dear Sayyed, do not forget me on the Day of Judgment.”

The great leader paused, the weight of his lifelong sacrifices evident in his eyes, and replied:

“You have a right over me; you have a share.”

In the political world, leaders demand loyalty and project invincibility. But in the school of the Ahlul Bayt (AS), a leader’s stability in the most formidable storms stems from his “ethical and educational” roots. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah never forgot the “right of upbringing” owed to the scholars who nurtured his soul. He taught the entire resistance movement that humility before one’s mentor is not weakness; it is the very capital of spiritual authority.

The Eternal Bond of Wilayah

This profound understanding of Wilayah is exactly what guided Martyr Nasrallah’s leadership following the passing of Imam Khomeini (RA).

When the time came to guide the Shia of Lebanon in their religious duties, Sayyed Hassan did not rely on popular opinion or political convenience. He sought jurisprudential counsel from trusted scholars like Ayatollah Shahroudi, who confirmed the unparalleled qualifications of Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Based entirely on this spiritual and jurisprudential truth, Martyr Nasrallah firmly guided his people to follow the Supreme Leader, cementing the unbreakable bond between Beirut and Tehran.

Reflection

The path to Shahada (martyrdom) is paved long before the final strike. It is built on the prayers of a mother in Bazouriyeh, the generosity of a teacher in Tyre, the vision of a master in Najaf, and the humility of a student who never forgot those who guided him toward the Divine.

As we reflect on the legacy of the Master of the Martyrs of our time, we are reminded that the Islamic Resistance owes its endurance not just to its rockets or its tactics, but to the quiet, hidden “human chain” of faith, mentorship, and Wilayah that birthed it.

Zainab Hassouna remembers the day before October 7 as “the last day of life” — the last day of everything beautiful in this world. The family ate together on Gaza’s beach, sat together, laughed together, “as if, somehow, we were saying goodbye to everything beautiful.”

Soon after, their home in Shuja’iyya would be a hole in the ground, and four of her five daughters would lie beneath the white shrouds of the martyrs.

A home warm, safe and beautiful

Zainab, 38, describes a childhood like any other child’s: a house full of grandparents, a father and a mother who loved each other deeply, a school with a good atmosphere. Married young, she rebuilt the home she had been raised in — “warm, safe and beautiful” — and poured into it the dream she herself was denied: education. She enrolled her children in kindergarten while they were still tiny, because her dream was their schooling.

Seven children filled that house: Gharam, Nagham, Zaid, Ghassan, Jannat, Sarah and little Bara’a, only a year and a half old.

The night the sky fell

When evacuation orders came, Zainab fled with her children to a piece of land by the road, spending a night in the street without knowing where they would sleep. There was no place that was safe. Later, her brother came to visit, and the girls begged to go with him as he went to sell fuel. Zainab stepped outside the door to lock it.

That moment divided her life in two.

“All I saw was fire exploding from the house,” she recalls. “Fire. Black smoke. Rubble fell on us. I ran downstairs faster than a missile.” Where her home had stood, there was only a hole, a huge hole. At its edge, by the stairs, she found one of her daughters. She carried her, thinking of nothing except hugging her.

Four shrouds, and one small breath

Four of her daughters — Gharam, Nagham, Jannat and Sarah — were martyred. Bara’a, the youngest, was pulled from the rubble still alive, her body burned all over, torn by shrapnel. At the crowded clinic, staff told the mother to pray for her, to accept, to be patient.

Zainab’s answer is now part of Gaza’s eternal testimony: “I buried four. I need to hold her.”

They finally allowed it. She placed her hand under her daughter’s head, hugged her, and whispered, “May God have mercy on you, my love. May you and your sisters be in heaven.” And then — a miracle in the middle of the morgue-quiet — Bara’a screamed her name. “Mama.” The entire clinic shook with Allahu Akbar. Thank God, she is alive. Her two sons, Zaid and Ghassan, injured that day, also survived.

Survival as resistance

What followed was famine: no flour, no water, no vegetables; only barley, corn and wheat, cooked over fires fed with plastic and old clothes. She burned herself three or four times cooking. She walked long distances to carry a single bucket of water. And yet from her mouth comes not defeat but defiance: “The strongest women in the world are the women of Gaza. They are stronger than men. They endured.”

Today her dream has been reduced to its barest geometry: “To see a wall standing. To lean my back against a wall. To see a roof above me to sleep under.” Because now, they are all just in tents.

In memoriam

To the roll of names we add four little ones from Shuja’iyya: Gharam Hassouna. Nagham Hassouna. Jannat Hassouna. Sarah Hassouna. Sisters. Daughters of Zainab. Children of Palestine.

Their mother’s whispered du’a at the clinic is now their epitaph: “May God have mercy on you, my love. May you and your sisters be in heaven. May God be pleased with you.”

And her promise, kept every day since, is their monument: a mother still standing, still speaking, still strong — because the strongest women in the world are the women of Gaza.

Based on Zainab Hassouna’s testimony in Press TV’s documentary series “Women of Resistance,” hosted by Sakina Datoo.

سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ

Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.

Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.

Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.

Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.

Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.

Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.

— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn

The Voice of the Awaited One

This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.

And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.

Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.

The Maqtal — “Come and Look at Him”

I. A Man Carried Through a City

I was not there — but I remember.

I remember a city on a river, and a body being carried through it, and a man walking in front shouting so that people would come out of their houses.

He wanted a crowd.
That is the part I want you to hold.
He was not hiding anything — he was calling people out to look.

II. The Dates

They had my forefather Musa ibn Ja’far four years in prison before they were finished with him.

Four years.
Moved from jail to jail so nobody would learn where he was and gather at the wall.
He was fifty-four, and he had been the proof of God on this earth for thirty-five of them.

And at the end they sent him dates.

A tray of them, from the caliph’s own hand, with a message attached that made refusing impossible — the Commander of the Faithful has eaten from these and kept the rest for you, and I ask you to eat them all, because I chose them for you myself.

One of them had been threaded through with a poisoned needle, over and over, until the man doing it was satisfied.

There was a dog in that palace that the caliph loved.
It broke its chain and came to my forefather, and he put the poisoned date on a stick and gave it to the animal — and it died in front of him, there on the floor.

And then he ate the rest.

He was sent a tray with death in it and told to finish it.
He finished it.

It took him three days.

III. Two Cries in One Street

And then they did the thing I cannot put down.

They did not bury him quietly.
They took his body out into Baghdad and put criers in front of it, and the criers called out:

This is the leader of the Shia.
Come and know him.

And when they reached the guard post they put four men on it, and the four of them called together:

Whoever wants to look at this wicked man, the son of a wicked man — come now.

That is what a body was for, to them.
Something to walk through a city so people would see what happens.
They were not disposing of him.
They were using him.

And somebody heard it.

Not one of ours.
The caliph’s own uncle, in his own house by the water, who asked his servants what the noise in the street was and was told.

And that old man sent his sons and his household out into the road, and they took the body off them by force — beat them for it, tore the black off their backs — and put new criers in front of the same body, in the same street, on the same afternoon.

And this is what the new criers said:

Whoever wants to look at the purest of the pure — at Musa ibn Ja’far — come now.

The same man.
The same street.
The same hour.

Only the cry had changed.

They washed him and they shrouded him in cloth with the Book written on it. And the caliph’s uncle walked behind him to the grave with no shoes on his feet and no turban on his head and his shirt torn open at the front, the way a man walks behind his own son.

They put him in the burial ground of the Quraysh, on the west side of the city.

And the caliph wrote a letter afterwards, saying it was nothing to do with him.

I was not there — but I remember.

IV. Go and Stand There Now

Go and stand in that burial ground now.

It has a name now.
It is called Kadhimayn, after him and after his grandson who lies beside him, and there is not a soul in Baghdad who cannot tell you where it is.

They carried him through a city to shame him, and it is the reason the city is proud of him.

They shouted come and look at this wicked man — and people have been coming ever since, through every empire that has held that river.

Nobody comes for the man who sent the dates.

You walked past him this week.
He is at Tus, under the same roof as my forefather al-Rida, and you could not find him if you tried.

He had the treasury of the world and he could not buy one visitor.

V. What Are You Building?

There was a stone once that the builders looked at and threw aside.
Wrong shape.
Not worth the lifting.

And it became the head of the corner — the one the whole wall is set by.

That is what none of them have ever understood.
You cannot tell, by looking at a thing, what it is going to hold up.

They looked at a body in a street and called it wicked.
Men with better eyes came and called the same body pure.
It was the same body.

They looked at a caliph in a golden tomb and a prisoner in a borrowed grave, and they were certain they knew which one would be remembered.

They were wrong.

So look at what you have thrown aside this week.
And look at what you have been lifting into place.

Because one of them is going to hold up the wall, and it is not the one you think.

I was not there — but I remember.

And I am not gone.

May our Lord hasten my return.

Sources Cited

• Uyun Akhbar al-Rida, volume one, the chapter on the death of Abu Ibrahim Musa ibn Ja’far

• Al-Kafi, volume one, the Book of Proof

• Psalms, chapter one hundred and eighteen, verse twenty-two

What are you building?

Some stories transcend the boundaries of time, etched not merely in memory, but in the very soul of humanity. The Asgari family was a tapestry of profound devotion, woven together by faith, warmth, and an unbreakable bond. At the heart of this beautiful family was Zahra Asgari, a thirty-two-year-old kindergarten teacher whose gentle spirit and boundless compassion touched every life she encountered. To her students, she was a guiding light; to her family, she was the very heartbeat of their home.

Zahra’s life was a testament to service. Beyond the walls of her classroom, she dedicated her time to documenting the struggles of families shattered by wars of aggression, travelling from Gaza to Lebanon and across Iran. She listened to their stories, holding their pain in her heart, hoping to preserve their experiences so the world would never forget. Yet, despite her vast empathy for the world, her greatest calling remained within her own home.

“Of all the things I can do,” she once quietly confessed to a friend, “I have chosen motherhood.” She was a devoted mother to Abbas, a brave twelve-year-old; Ali Akbar, a bright ten-year-old; and little Noura, a joyful five-year-old.

On the second day of March, during the sacred and blessed month of Ramadan, the skies above their home unleashed a torrent of fire. A joint US-Israeli missile strike targeted their sanctuary, reducing walls filled with warmth, laughter, and evening prayers to shattered rubble. The aggressive bombardment rained down upon them while they were observing their fast. In an instant, the home was destroyed, and the family ascended together. They embraced eternity thirsty, just as the revered heroes of Karbala did, achieving the pinnacle of spiritual honour while fasting in the holy month.

Initially, the grieving community counted eight souls who had departed. Zahra had transitioned alongside her loving parents, Davoud Asgari and Ashraf Khaleqi, as well as her cherished brothers, Ali and Hossein. But the heavens held one more sacred secret. Zahra was expecting a child. A ninth pure soul, an unborn baby who never had the chance to see the sun, was cradled in her arms as they departed this world together.

Those who knew Zahra recall a woman of extraordinary spiritual depth and humility. A close friend remembered her declining a simple cup of tea and a piece of chocolate during a visit, carefully placing them back out of a profound religious respect for the property of others. She lived her life with meticulous care, always putting others before herself. Her friend also recalled how Zahra would set aside daily alms, not to ward off worldly misfortunes, but to pray for a purposeful, meaningful transition from this world. The Creator granted her that profound wish, allowing her to ascend alongside every member of her beloved family.

In her final public reflections, Zahra wrote about the nature of wounds. She believed that while art and sincerity could beautify almost anything, a wound required a different kind of grace. Yet, in the scarred faces and injured hands of the survivors she documented, she found a profound, spiritual beauty—the beauty of those who strive and sacrifice for what they believe in. She closed her final thoughts with the timeless words of Hazrat Zainab (AS), who, witnessing the ultimate sacrifices of her family, proclaimed: “I saw nothing but beauty.”

Today, the Asgari family rests together, embraced by the earth but forever alive in the hearts of those who remember them. Their home may have been reduced to dust, but their legacy is an unbreakable fortress of love, faith, and resilience. They departed as one, a beautiful constellation of souls shining eternally in the heavens, reminding us that true beauty is found in devotion and that love, once given, can never be destroyed.

In the quiet neighbourhoods of Zanjan, the loss of a guiding light was felt before it was even announced. On the night of March 27, as a US-Israeli airstrike targeted a civilian neighbourhood in the Koocheh Meshki area, Roqiyeh Shiri, a beloved first-grade teacher, ascended to the ranks of the martyred. She was struck down alongside her husband and her nine-year-old daughter, Fatemeh, becoming the first educator from Zanjan Province to attain martyrdom during the third imposed war.

Even before the news of the aggression was officially confirmed, her colleagues knew in their hearts that tragedy had struck. Samaneh Nasiri, the principal of Esmat Seyrfian School, and a fellow teacher shared a tearful intuition that their cherished Roqiyeh had met her Lord.

Roqiyeh was a woman defined by her immense generosity and selflessness. Just two days before her martyrdom, she had declined her own Nowruz gift card, insisting it be given to a struggling student’s family instead. When presented with a box of traditional sweets, she quietly took them out into the night and left them at a roadside social service stall for those in need.

Inside the classroom, she poured her soul into the next generation. For three years, she devoted herself entirely to first graders, earning the profound trust of parents who requested her by name. She went to extraordinary lengths for her students, fighting to keep a displaced girl enrolled in her class and organising extended family members to help a young child practice reading because the girl’s parents were deaf.

She did not just teach; she nurtured the future of her nation with boundless compassion. Her colleagues remember her constant smile, her gentle jokes, and her unwavering reliability.

Yet, beneath her warm demeanour lay a profound spiritual yearning. Roqiyeh had long harboured a heartfelt wish for martyrdom, viewing it as the highest honour. That sacred wish was fulfilled when the missiles of aggression rained down upon her home. Together with her young daughter, who had grown up in the very halls where her mother taught, Roqiyeh took flight from this world.

Though she is gone, her legacy of sacrifice and her ultimate offering for her homeland remain etched in the hearts of her students, her colleagues, and the resilient Iranian nation. She leaves behind a radiant path of service, proving that true educators shape not only the minds of the youth but also the spiritual fortitude of a nation at war.

سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ

Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.

Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.

Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.

Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.

Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.

Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.

— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn

The Voice of the Awaited One

This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.

And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.

Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.

The Maqtal — “The Stone With No Name”

I. A Road, and a Man Who Was Not Travelling

I was not there — but I remember.

I remember a road going east, and a man on it who was not travelling.

There is a difference. A traveller has somewhere he is going back to.

II. The Road East

They took my forefather al-Rida out of Madinah.

Not in chains — that is what makes it worse.
There was no rope on him.
There was an invitation, and a robe of honour, and a title, and soldiers to make sure the invitation was accepted.

He knew.
He took his leave of his grandfather’s grave the way a man takes leave for the last time, and those who watched him never forgot it.

He left a child behind him in that city.
A boy.
The boy would not see him again.

They took him east — past the towns that knew his name, then past the towns that did not, out to where the language changes and nobody in the street owes you anything.

And at the end of that road they gave him a palace, and a place at court, and the second seat in an empire.
Which is another way of saying they put him where he could be watched.

He was the loneliest man in that kingdom.
Surrounded every hour by men who smiled at him and wrote reports about him at night.

And when they had finished using him, they poisoned him.

He died at Tus.
Far from his father’s grave.
Far from the boy in Madinah.

And then they buried him, and I want you to hear where.

They put him in the ground of a house that already held a grave — the grave of the man who had spent his life hunting my family.
The father of the man who poisoned him.

He was laid down beside his own family’s jailer.

There is no dignity in that.
There was not meant to be.
It was the last thing they did to him, and for a long time it worked.
A stranger, in a strange province, in a stranger’s tomb.

I was not there — but I remember.

III. They Have Never Stopped Coming

And now go and look at it.

Stand in Mashhad on a Thursday night and try to move.
Count the languages.
Count the people who saved for eleven years to stand where you are standing.

They buried him in a stranger’s garden so that nobody would come.

They have never stopped coming.

That is the thing none of them ever understand.
You can take a man from his city, put him at the far end of an empire, lay him down beside the one who hunted him, and think you have finished the sentence.

You cannot stop people coming.

IV. The One They Cannot Come To

So they come.

They come to my forefather at the back of Kufa, who asked for that ground himself before it was his.

They come to Karbala in a single night, in numbers most kings never ruled.

They come to Madinah, where four of my fathers lie under a flattened yard.

They come to Kazimayn.
They come to Samarra, and stand at my father’s grave, and some of them turn afterwards and look at the wall, because they know I was born in that house.

They come to al-Rida at Tus in their millions — in the dark, on foot, having sold things they could not afford to sell.

And of all my house, I am the one they cannot come to.

There is no stone with my name on it.
No dome, no lamp left burning, no keeper at a door.
Nowhere on this earth you can stand and say: he is here, and I have come.

You have a grave for every one of my fathers.

You have nothing for me.

And I hear you anyway.

I hear the ones at their own parents’ graves on a Thursday afternoon, in cities I have never been named in.
I hear the man who says the words after the dawn prayer with his coat still on.
I hear the woman who has never travelled and never will, and who greets me every morning by name.

You think that because there is no address, it does not arrive.

It arrives.

V. What Are You Building?

Long ago, on a plain, men said to one another: come, let us build a tower, and let us make ourselves a name.

That is what they were after.
Not the height.
The name.
Something with their word on it still standing when they were not.

They got neither.

And I have no name written anywhere on this earth.
Not on a stone, not on a door, not over a threshold.
No mason has ever been paid to cut my name.

You will not find me by looking for it.

You will find me the way you were always told to: by getting up, and going, and greeting people who cannot be seen — until the day it is my name they carve, and it is not on a grave.

I was not there — but I remember.

And I am not gone.

May our Lord hasten my return.

Sources Cited

• Al-Kafi, the Book on Dying People, the chapter on Visiting of the Graves

• Kamil al-Ziyarat, the chapter on the Merits of Visiting the Believers

• Uyun Akhbar al-Rida, the chapter on visiting al-Rida at Tus

• Nahj al-Balagha, Saying one hundred and thirty

• Genesis, chapter eleven, verse four

What are you building?

Each year on 3 September, Iranians — and especially the people of the southern coast — commemorate the martyrdom of Rais Ali Delvari, a man who with a handful of fighters and an unshakable conviction stood against the full weight of the British Empire at the height of the First World War.

A Son of Tangestan

Rais Ali was born in 1882 in Delvar, a small port town in the Tangestan region near Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. His father, Rais Mohammad Delvari, was a local chief who had himself confronted foreign encroachment on the coast, and from him the young Ali inherited both his title — rais, meaning chief or leader — and a tradition of defiance. The men of Tangestan were renowned as marksmen and seafarers, and Rais Ali grew into a leader whose authority rested not on wealth but on courage, faith and justice.

Empire Comes to the Gulf

By the early twentieth century, the Qajar state was too weak to shield Iran from foreign domination. Britain and Russia had carved the country into spheres of influence, and London treated the Persian Gulf as its own lake — a highway for trade, telegraph lines and, once oil was discovered, imperial lifelines. When the First World War erupted, Iran declared neutrality, but neutrality offered no protection. In 1915, British forces occupied Bushehr, determined to secure the Gulf, guard the oilfields and crush any local resistance. For the people of Tangestan, occupation was not an abstraction; it was foreign soldiers on their own soil.

The Uprising

Rais Ali, then in his early thirties, answered with armed resistance. Rallying the fighters of Tangestan, he waged a guerrilla war against the occupation: ambushes on patrols, night raids on encampments, and harassment of supply lines. His riflemen, lightly armed but deeply motivated, inflicted casualties and humiliation on a far more powerful force, and made the coast ungovernable for the occupiers.

British officers, accustomed to purchasing local notables, reportedly attempted bribery — money, weapons and office in exchange for submission. Rais Ali’s answer, preserved in local memory, was refusal: the homeland was not for sale. Wartime intrigue swirled around the region, with German and Ottoman agents also seeking to stir rebellion for their own ends, but the resistance in Tangestan drew its strength from its own soil — the conviction that a foreign flag had no place on Persian shores.

Martyrdom

The empire that could not defeat Rais Ali in the field eventually found another way. On 3 September 1915, he was killed by treachery — shot, according to the most common account, by a man within his own circle who had been bribed by the British. He was around 33 years old.

His killers hoped his death would end the uprising. It did not. Resistance in Tangestan flared on, and the name Delvari became a byword for defiance; the British, for all their gunboats and expeditions, never comfortably pacified the coast. In Iranian national memory, Rais Ali joined the pantheon of martyrs who proved that occupation, however powerful, always carries a price.

Legacy

Today, Rais Ali Delvari’s home in Delvar is preserved as a museum, holding the rifles, documents and relics of the southern resistance. His name is carried by streets and squares across Iran, and his story is told alongside those of other anti-colonial heroes of the era, such as Mirza Kuchak Khan of Gilan. Every 3 September, ceremonies on the Bushehr coast recall not only how he died but how he lived: as a chief who asked nothing for himself and gave everything.

More than a century on, the lesson of his martyrdom remains the one his countrymen repeat each anniversary: empires measure their power in gunboats and gold, but the memory of a people is longer than the reach of empires. The Lion of Tangestan still roars in that memory.

سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ

Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.

Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.

Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.

Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.

Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.

Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.

— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn

The Voice of the Awaited One

This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.

And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.

Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.

The Maqtal — “White Gravel”

I. Four Men Walking

There were four of them.

You would not have seen me.

That is the arrangement, and it is older than you think.

But I know that ground.

Two sons, and two men with them, carrying their father out of Kufa in the dark — past the mosque of al-Ash’ath, out to where the houses stop and the land opens and there is nothing to mark anything by.

Four men, and a body, and no lamp.

They did not take the road.

They kept the city on their right and went out through the burial-ground, which is what you do when you do not want to be seen leaving.

II. What They Did When They Had Finished

They buried him.

And then they did the thing I want you to sit with.

They levelled the ground.

They put the earth back and they pressed it flat and they made it look like the rest of the desert — so that a man walking over it the next morning would walk over it and feel nothing under his foot but stones.

Then they turned round and went home.

And in the morning some of the believers came and asked to be shown the place, and were told there was no place to be shown.

And they came back, and they came back again.

And they said they had dug, and found nothing.

Understand what that means.

It worked.

They did it well enough that it worked on the people who loved him.

III. Because of What They Knew Was Coming

Somebody asked, generations later, why the family had done it.

Why the best of them had hidden his grave.

And the answer that came back was not lest they dig him up.

It was wider than that, and colder.

It was: lest they contrive at harming him.

Not an act.

A capability.

They were not frightened of a shovel.

They were frightened of a house that was coming into power and would use whatever it had — what it could do and what it could say — and they could see it coming from where they were standing, with the earth still soft under their hands.

So they gave him the only protection that was left.

They took away the address.

IV. And When It Came Round to Me

Listen to me now, because this is why I am telling you.

They hid a grave because of what they knew was coming.

And when it came round to me, they did the same thing with a child.

Not a grave.

A birth.

In a house in Samarra with soldiers on the street outside, and a mother, and a father who had perhaps two years left and knew it — and a decision taken quietly, in advance, by the people best placed to take it.

They did not lose me.

They put me somewhere.

And they had done it once before, in Medina, with a grave that has no marker to this day — and that is not tonight’s, and I will not open it.

Three times, in three places, the same arrangement.

A grave levelled flat.

A grave left unmarked.

A child not shown.

My family has never once confused hiding a thing with losing it.

It is only you who cannot tell the difference.

V. What Are You Building?

Four hundred years after those four men walked out of Kufa, an old man came the other way.

He had lost his house and his books and his seat, and he came out to that ground with what he had left, and he sat down beside a grave that his own family had spent a century making impossible to find.

And a city grew up around him.

Not because he announced anything. Because he stayed.

So — what are you building?

Not what have you finished.

Not what has your name on it.

Build the thing that would still be standing if nobody ever knew your name was on it.

That is what those four men built, in the dark, with their hands, and then flattened so that no one would know they had built it.

And it is still standing.

Sources Cited

• Four men carrying him out of Kufa at night, past the mosque of al-Ash’ath — Kamil al-Ziyarat, Ibn Qulawayh al-Qummi, bab 9, Hadith 2, and al-Kafi, Volume 1, Hadith 11, which supplies the two other men and the route through the burial-ground. These are reports Ibn Qulawayh transmits, not sound reports, and the maqtal narrates them as narrative rather than asserting them as verdicts.

• فَدَفَنُوهُ وَسَوَّوْا قَبْرَهُ فَانْصَرَفُوا — they buried him, levelled his grave flat, and turned back — al-Kafi, Volume 1, Hadith 11.

• They dug and could not find anything — al-Irshad, Shaykh al-Mufid, Arabic Volume 1, printed page 16. (The same passage carries the white rock and the shield; a marvel-report, and deliberately left out here rather than sharpened.)

• حَذَراً مِنْ بَنِي مَرْوَانَ وَالْخَوَارِجِ أَنْ تَحْتَالَ فِي أَذَاهُ — lest they contrive at harming him — Farhat al-Ghari, Sayyid Ibn Tawus, printed page 93, read off the page. And the correction the sermon makes is the one this section turns on: it is NOT “lest they exhume it.” Shaykh al-Mufid’s own explanation at al-Irshad printed page 10 — قَبِيحِ الْفِعَالِ وَالْمَقَالِ, vile deed and vile speech — runs the same way and is a different KIND of witness, an author explaining rather than a chain transmitting. The maqtal states the sense and cites neither as a proof-text.

• The birth at Samarra — narrated in the maqtal register, deliberately without elaboration, dating, or the naming of witnesses, per the standing rule. The maqtal says that it was concealed and why. It makes no further claim.

• The grave without a marker at Medina —referred to in a single clause and deliberately not opened. Session Seventy-Five carries that material properly

• The old man who came the other way, and stayed — Shaykh al-Ta’ifa’s migration from Baghdad to al-Ghari in 448, printed in al-Dhari’a ila Tasanif al-Shi’a, Agha Buzurg al-Tihrani, Volume 2, printed page 14, entry 43. The sources give his reason as flight from the strife, and the maqtal does not contradict them — it says only that he came, and stayed, which is what is agreed.

• “A city grew up around him” — Agha Buzurg’s judgement at the same entry, أَوَّلُ مَنْ جَعَلَ النَّجَفَ مَرْكَزاً عِلْمِيّاً, his assessment and not a transmitted report.

• “What are you building?” — the series refrain, answered freshly. Not a report.

On August 30, 1981, a devastating bombing in Tehran abruptly ended the lives of President Mohammad Ali Rajaei, Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, and six other devoted public servants. Today, marking the 45th anniversary of that dark day, Iran commemorates their profound sacrifice during the annual Government Week, celebrating leaders whose time in office was brief, but whose impact was eternal.

A Teacher Who Led a Nation

Mohammad Ali Rajaei was 48 when he made the ultimate sacrifice. Beginning his career as a mathematics teacher, he possessed a deep understanding of the importance of education. Following the 1979 Revolution, he served as Minister of Education, represented Tehran in parliament, and stepped into the role of Prime Minister before being elected as Iran’s second president with an overwhelming mandate. Though his presidency lasted only a few weeks, his dedication to public service left an indelible mark. Today, his legacy lives on through numerous national institutions, including a university, a power plant, a port, and a dam, all named in his honour.

A Scholar Who Shaped the Constitution

Mohammad-Javad Bahonar was only 47 when his life was cut short. An accomplished Islamic theologian with a doctorate from the University of Tehran, he was a principal architect of the nation’s legal and political framework. As a member of the Assembly of Experts, Bahonar played a crucial role in drafting the post-revolutionary constitution. His vast contributions also included serving as Minister of Education, representing both Kerman and Tehran in parliament, and guiding the Islamic Republican Party as its Secretary General following the passing of Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein Beheshti.

An Enduring Legacy

Both leaders now rest at the Hafte Tir mausoleum in Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, alongside their colleagues who fell on that same day. Four and a half decades later, their story is not just one of tragedy, but of unparalleled dedication. Rajaei and Bahonar remind us that true leadership is measured not by the length of one’s tenure, but by the depth of one’s devotion to the people and the future they fought so hard to build.

Reference: PressTv

On the morning of 27 August 2001, missiles fired from Israeli Apache helicopters pierced the window of an office in Ramallah, killing Mustafa al-Zabri — known to his people and comrades as Abu Ali Mustafa, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

He was 63 years old, and he died as he had lived: at his post, on his land, having refused every suggestion that he shield himself from danger by leaving it.

For those who mourn him, his martyrdom was not an ending but a covenant. In his own words, preserved in his final interviews:

A Child of Arraba

Mustafa al-Zabri was born on 14 May 1938 in the town of Arraba, near Jenin, the son of a farming family of modest means.

He was ten years old when the Nakba swept over Palestine in 1948, and like so many children of his generation, loss, exile and defiance were written early into his memory. At seventeen, he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement, and from that day until his last breath he never left the ranks of the struggle.

After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Abu Ali Mustafa stood among the founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, helping build the organisation that would become one of the pillars of the Palestinian national movement.

In the long years of exile — Amman, Beirut, Damascus — he was the quiet backbone of the Front: a man known less for grand speeches than for discipline, austerity and unshakeable calm.

The Secretary-General of Steadfastness

After thirty years in exile, Abu Ali Mustafa returned to the occupied homeland in 1999, and in 2000 the Front elected him Secretary-General, succeeding Dr. George Habash.

He took the helm as the Second Intifada erupted, and led with the same quiet firmness that had marked his whole life — a leader who lived as simply as his people lived, and who regarded leadership as a burden of responsibility, not a privilege.

In his last interviews, he spoke not of himself but of his people:

Martyrdom at His Desk

Israel, which held him responsible for the Front’s operations during the Intifada, decided to kill him.

On 27 August 2001, helicopter-fired missiles struck his office as he sat at his desk — the highest-ranking Palestinian leader assassinated at that point in the Intifada.

His funeral became a sea of mourners swearing that the barricades would not fall.

He had known for some time that his name was on the list. He refused to change his habits, abandon his office, or leave his land. In that choice lay the whole meaning of his life: the origin is to be in Palestine.

The Barricades Remain

After his martyrdom, the armed wing of the Front took his name — the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades — and carries it to this day.

But more important than any name is the idea he left behind: that resistance does not die with the martyr, because it lives in the people.

“Even if the enemy managed to exterminate all of us, and there remained in Palestine a single child — the resistance is present,” he said. And he told his people, as if speaking to this very hour: “Let the enemy perish if it thought that our barricades have collapsed — our barricades remain.”

Twenty-five years on, the man from Arraba remains what he was in life: a symbol of steadfastness, a leader who never asked of his people what he did not give himself, and a martyr whose covenant, in the words of his brigades, will never fade.

We are the resisting people — and the barricades still stand.

In an era where the truth is frequently targeted, the journalists of Qom made one thing profoundly clear: martyrdom does not bring silence. It brings amplification.

“They Think It Is Over”

Standing among the graves, the atmosphere was heavy with loss but electric with defiance. The reporters of Qom rejected the illusion that eliminating a journalist stops the flow of truth. ABNA reporter Zainab captured the sentiment of the day perfectly, speaking directly to the forces that seek to censor the press through violence.

“They think that by killing one of us, it is over. But one voice, two voices, hundreds of others like us rise again—louder, more passionate, and clearer than ever.”

At the heart of the memorial were poignant symbols of Masoud’s trade: his crushed laptop and shattered mobile phones. These destroyed tools of journalism were laid bare as proof of the brutality he faced. Yet, as Zainab pointed out, while the aggressors may have crushed his physical equipment, his mission remains entirely intact. The tools were broken, but the spirit of the press in Qom remains unbroken.

The Train of Martyrdom

Those gathered in Qom noted that Masoud Salimi is not an isolated tragedy. He is part of a painful but profound lineage of truth-tellers. Journalists at the ceremony referenced the “train of martyrdom” that has claimed the lives of reporters across the region, naming icons of resistance journalism like Shireen Abu Akleh in Palestine and Wissam Qassem in Lebanon.

The consensus among the attendees was grim but resolute: the aggressors have repeatedly demonstrated a blatant disregard for international law and the sanctity of the press. But rather than instilling fear, these coordinated attacks have only hardened the resolve of those left behind to pick up the fallen reporter’s notebook.

A Legacy Carried in Blood and Ink

The vow to continue Masoud’s path extends far beyond his colleagues—it lives on in his bloodline. His cousin, Zahra Salimi, publicly declared her aspiration to follow in his footsteps, aiming to work for the very same news agencies he served.

Most movingly, his wife, Fatemeh Laqaei, shared her vision for the future of their son, Mahdiyar. She vowed to raise him to be a strong man who will carry the torch of his father’s legacy. “May the blood of these martyrs be avenged, and their path continue,” she affirmed, grounding a global struggle in the deeply personal love of a family.

A Divine Mission

For the journalists of Qom, reporting is more than a profession; it is a spiritual duty. Closing the ceremony, Zainab invoked the 39th verse of Surah Al-Ahzab: “Those who deliver the messages of God.”

This verse encapsulates the ethos of the martyr and his peers. To them, their duty is not complete until their last breath, and martyrdom is not a defeat, but the ultimate honour.

“We are not afraid of them; we only fear God, and we are only carriers of His message.”

Masoud Salimi's pen may have been stopped, but his ink continues to flow through every reporter who refuses to bow to tyranny. His duty—and theirs—ends only in martyrdom, never in silence.

Reference: ABNA24

سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ

السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ

Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.

Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.

Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.

Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.

Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.

Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.

— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn

The Voice of the Awaited One

This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.

And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.

Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.

The Maqtal — “The Chair”

I. The Doorframe

I was there when they carried it out.

You would not have seen me. That is the arrangement.

But I was standing in that street in Karkh, in the month of Safar, in the year four hundred and forty-nine — close enough to hear the wood scrape on the doorframe as they turned it sideways to get it through.

A chair.

Two men carrying a chair out of a house, and neither of them looking at it.

They were looking at each other, the way men do when they are not sure they should be doing what they are doing, and are going to do it anyway.

II. A Place Where the Handing Happens

I want to tell you what a chair is.

My grandfather sat to teach. My father sat to teach. When a man sits, and others sit lower, and it is quiet — something is being handed over.

That is all a chair is. A place where the handing happens.

They had given him that seat in the capital of the Muslim world. They had said: sit here, and let them come to you.

And they came. From Nishapur. From Qazwin. From Merv. From places whose names the men carrying the chair could not have found on any road they knew.

Forty years of it. A man sitting down, and a room going quiet.

And then two men, turning it sideways to get it through a doorframe.

III. Three Pieces of White Cloth

They burned the notebooks first, because paper takes.

Then the chair — and wood that old does not burn quickly, so there was time. There was time for people to come out of their houses. There was time for a crowd.

That was the point of it. It was never about the wood.

And then they went back into the house and found the last thing, and I saw the man’s face when he came out holding it, and he was pleased.

Three white banners.

Old cloth. Poles worn smooth in the middle where hands had held them.

Those were carried on the road to my grandfather’s grave. Every year. By people who could not afford the journey and made it anyway, and who sang badly, and who came back sunburnt and happy and full of it.

He carried them out into the street and put them in the fire, and he was pleased.

IV. The Men Asleep with Paper

Now let me tell you what I could see that he could not.

While he stood there, warm and satisfied, a man was asleep in Aleppo who had a licence in his bag.

A man in Tripoli was awake and could not sleep, and was thinking about a legal problem, and had a licence in his bag.

At Rayy. At Qom. At Kashan. Men asleep with paper in their houses, each one a small permission, each one saying: this was given to me by him, and I may give it to you.

Not one of them knew about the fire. Not one of them would hear of it for weeks.

And every single one of them was already out of the city.

The man in the street had done his arithmetic and got it exactly wrong. He had looked at a chair and thought: this is where it sits.

It was never where it sat.

It was where it left from.

V. They Came for a House Before That One

I said fire needs a place. That is its whole weakness.

And now let me tell you how I know that.

Not from Karkh. Karkh is late. Karkh is a chair and some notebooks and a man in hiding, and I grieve it — and it is not the first time somebody tried this on my family.

They came for a house before that one.

They came for a door, and there was a woman behind it, and she was the daughter of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, his family, and his righteous companions. And she did not live long after.

And on a plain by a river, in the afternoon, when the men of my house were already lying out on the sand — they set fire to the tents.

Understand what a tent is. It is a place. It is the last place. It is the thin thing between a family and the open — and there were children inside it, and they burned it with the children running out of it.

They left the bodies where they fell for three days.

They took the heads of the men of my house through the streets of two cities on the points of spears, and people came out to watch.

And long after, at a graveyard in Medina, they came with tools and levelled what was left. The graves of my fathers, flattened — because a grave is a place, and a place can be levelled.

So do not tell me about fire.

I have watched them burn everything my family ever stood in.

VI. The Chains That Carried the Testimony

And now I will tell you what they could not do. And it is the same thing I have been telling you all night.

When those tents came down, the thing inside them walked out.

It walked out on the feet of the women.

They put my grandmother’s household in chains and marched them from that plain to Kufa, and from Kufa to Damascus. And at every stop they made a spectacle of them.

And at every stop she opened her mouth.

Zaynab, peace and blessings be upon her.

In a marketplace. In a court. In front of the man who had done it, in his own hall, with his own soldiers standing there.

She stood up, and she told them what had happened.

They had killed every man who could carry it. They had burned every tent it had ever been kept in. And they had put the last carrier of it in chains and walked her hundreds of miles through hostile cities —

and by doing that, they delivered it to every city on the road.

Do you see it?

They thought they were parading a defeat.

They were couriering a testimony.

Every town that came out to gawp at those chains got told, out loud, in the street, exactly what had been done at Karbala — by a witness they could not silence and could not un-see.

The tents were the building. Zaynab was the licence.

And that is why, six centuries later, when they carried a chair out of a house in Karkh and set it alight in front of a crowd — I already knew how it ended.

VII. Already Halfway to Najaf

He went south, the man whose house it was. In fear. With his family.

And he built a house beside my grandfather’s grave, and sat down again, and they came again. And he never went back to Baghdad, and he is buried in that house, and the house is a mosque, and it is standing tonight.

I have watched a great deal burn.

Libraries. Domes. Cities I would have to name for you and you would flinch.

And I will tell you what I have noticed, in all of it, across all these years of watching and not being seen.

Nobody has ever burned a licence.

You cannot. There is nothing to raid. It is in a bag on a road, and then it is in a room in another city, and then it is in a hand that is writing it out again for somebody else.

Fire needs a place. That is its whole weakness.

And they built you a religion with no place in it.

So — you.

You who came tonight, and heard about a chair, and felt something.

I am not asking what you feel. I have never once been short of people who feel things.

What are you building?

Because there is a fire coming for it. There always is. Not necessarily yours, and perhaps not in your lifetime — but it comes, and it comes for whatever is standing in one place with your name on it.

So build the other thing.

Build the kind of thing that walks out of the door in forty directions before anybody arrives with a torch.

Teach one person properly. Not tell them — teach them, until they could teach it without you.

That is a copy that walks. That is a yard of road.

And when they burn what you built — and they will — you will not be standing in the street watching it, warm and satisfied and wrong.

You will be somewhere else.

Already halfway to Najaf.

Sources Cited

• The chair, the notebooks, and the three white banners, Safar 449 — Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam fi Tarikh al-Muluk wa’l-Umam, Volume 16, Page 16, under its own chapter heading.

• He went into hiding, in fear for his life — Ibn al-Najjar, quoted by Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Lisan al-Mizan, Volume 5, Page 135. The same report gives the burning of his books several times over, in the presence of the people.

• The students at Aleppo, Tripoli, Rayy, Qom and Kashan — the geography is secure; the timing is not. Several of the named men followed him to Najaf after the fire, and the Tripoli judgeship plainly postdates it. The maqtal says only that they were dispersed, which is true whichever way the timing falls.

• He was buried in his own house by his own will, and the house was made a mosque— established in the sermon, Point Three.

• The tents fired on the afternoon of Ashura; the bodies left three days; the heads carried to Kufa and to Damascus; Sayyedah Zaynab’s addresses in the market of Kufa and in the court at Damascus — the standard maqtal tradition, as carried in al-Luhuf and the classical maqatil.

• The door of the daughter of the Messenger of God — narrated in the maqtal register and deliberately without elaboration or naming, per the standing rule. The maqtal states that they came, and that she did not live long after. It makes no further claim.

• The levelling of the graves at Baqi’ — referred to without a date, deliberately. Session Seventy-Five carries this material properly.1

• “Nobody has ever burned a licence” — the Imam’s own summation, and the thesis of the sermon it follows. Not a report.

For ten agonising days, the family of Dr. Mahsa Taheri waited in uncertainty. Following a devastating US-Israeli attack on Tehran during the 40-day Ramadan War of 2026, the remains recovered from the seventh floor of a residential building were unrecognisable. It was only through a DNA test, matched with her father’s sample, that the heartbreaking truth was confirmed: their beloved daughter, sister, and one of the brightest scientific minds of her generation, had been martyred.

But Mahsa Taheri’s story cannot be confined to the tragedy of her death. It is a story of a life intentionally lived, of a young woman who possessed the world at her feet but chose to anchor her destiny to the soil of her homeland.

The Scientist Who Outshone Her Counterparts

Born in Arak in 1993, Mahsa’s intellectual journey was one of relentless pursuit. She earned her bachelor’s degree in her hometown, pursued a master’s in Zanjan, and ultimately completed her PhD at Tehran’s prestigious Tarbiat Modares University. There, she balanced university teaching with specialised, high-stakes research in missile technology.

Her brilliance was not merely academic; it was deeply practical and patriotic. Among the belongings she left behind was a metal missile component bearing a profound inscription:

“This missile component is for testing the radar-absorbing and heat-resistant layer. It is the first material developed by Mahsa Taheri and is more complete than its American counterpart.”

In a world that often seeks to drain developing nations of their brightest minds, Mahsa stood as a beacon of resilience. She had received invitations to work in foreign countries, including Norway, and had once considered migration to provide a more comfortable life for her family. Yet, over the final years of her life, a profound shift occurred. The allure of a life abroad faded in the face of a deepening commitment to her country’s scientific independence and dignity.

The Human Behind the Laboratory

To reduce Mahsa to just a scientist would be to miss the vibrant, tender soul that animated her work. Her family remembers a young woman who defied the austere stereotype of the isolated academic.

Her bedroom was a sanctuary of simplicity and warmth: pink curtains, an old wooden table, and a collection of named dolls. Among them was a small, two-sided doll—one side smiling, the other sad. Mahsa would turn the smiling face toward her family when she was happy, and the sad face when she was upset or missing someone. It was her quiet, endearing way of communicating her heart.

That same wooden table served a dual purpose. Due to a childhood knee surgery, Mahsa could not stand for long periods. She would sit on a simple chair by the table, drape herself in a long black-and-white chador, and pray. It was a space where her scientific rigour met her spiritual grounding.

Her brother recalls their bond with affectionate humour, remembering how she would lovingly guide him through his studies and joke about “getting his diploma for him.” She was, above all, a devoted daughter and sister.

A Destiny Foretold

In a haunting twist of fate, just one week before her martyrdom, Mahsa was involved in a severe car accident while travelling to Kahf al-Shuhada (the Cave of the Martyrs) in northern Tehran. The car overturned, yet she emerged miraculously unharmed—not even her chador had become dusty.

Looking back, her brother recognised the profound significance of that moment:

“I realised that martyrdom really was Mahsa’s destiny. Otherwise, there was only a gap of one week between dying in the accident and being martyred.”

It was as if she was being prepared for the ultimate sacrifice, having already chosen the very cemetery in Arak where she wished to be laid to rest.

An Immortal Legacy

In the wake of their unimaginable loss, Mahsa’s family made a deliberate, powerful choice. Rather than keeping her scientific notes, academic plaques, and personal belongings as private keepsakes, they donated them to the Sacred Defence Museum in her home province.

Her father articulated this beautiful sacrifice with profound clarity:

“Today, we entrusted her belongings to the museum not simply to keep them on a shelf, but so that everyone would know that our security today is the result of the pure blood that has been shed in the pursuit of the country’s dignity.”

Now, the metal component she pioneered, the certificates of her academic journey, and even the little two-sided doll that once mirrored her moods, rest in a place where they can inspire future generations.

Dr. Mahsa Taheri was 32 years old. She was a scientist, a teacher, a daughter, and a martyr. Though her life was cut short by the brutality of aggression, her legacy remains unbroken. She chose to build her nation’s future rather than seek refuge in another’s, and in doing so, she ensured that her name—and her smile—will never be forgotten.