Musa al-Sadr

Mūsá aṣ-Ṣadr (Persian: امام موسى صدر‎‎, Arabic: السيد موسى الصدر‎, also Musā-ye Sader and Moussa Sadr; 4 June 1928 – disappeared in Libya on 31 August 1978) was an Iranian-Lebanese philosopher and Shī‘ah religious leader who went missing in Libya. Many theories exist around the circumstances of his disappearance, none of which have been proven. Due to the lasting influence of his political and religious leadership in Lebanon, he has been referred to by Fouad Ajami as a "towering figure in modern Shi'i political thought and praxis."

Early life and education

Mūsá aṣ-Ṣadr was born in the Cheharmardan neighborhood of Qom, Iran, on 4 June 1928. He came from a long line of distinguished clerics tracing back their ancestry to Jabal Amel. His great-great-grandfather S. Salih b. Muhammad Sharafeddin, a high-ranking cleric, was born in Shahruhr, a village near Tyre (in modern-day Lebanon). Following a turn of frantic events related to an anti-Ottoman uprising, he left for Najaf. Sharafeddin's son, Sadreddin, left Najaf for Isfahan, which was then the most important centre of religious learning in Iran. He returned to Najaf shortly before his death, which occurred in 1847. The youngest of his five sons, Ismail (as-Sadr), was born in Isfahan, in Qajar Iran, and became eventually a leading mujtahid. The second son of this Ismail, also known by the name of Sadreddin, born in Ottoman Iraq, also decided to decisively settle in Iran. He whould become the father of Musa al-Sadr. While settled in Iran, Sadreddin married a daughter of Ayatollah Hussein Tabatabaei Qomi, an important Iranian religious leader, who would thus become the mother of Musa al-Sadr.