Treatise on superiority of His Holiness Ali (peace be upon him)

The present book is a great work on superiority of the 1^st Shia Imam,   Amir al-Momenin Ali (peace be upon him) with regard to the Koranic verses.

It is written by the pre-eminent Iranian scholar Khajeh Nasir Tousi.

The author

Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Tusi, outstanding scholar, known as “Nasir al-Din”, “Khajeh Tusi”, “The master of man”, “the 11th intellect” and “The 3rd master” (1201 - 1247), Mashhad – Iran.
He was an astronomer and Shia politician, in 1256 lured the assassin leader Rukn al-Din Khurshah into the hands of the Ilkhan Hulegu, accompanied the latter to Baghdad and founded the observatory of Maragha.

He had a strong sympathy with the Twelver Shia, to him a certain degree of mercy was shown during the Mongol holocaust and whose sanctuaries were spared. He wrote on dogmatics, logic and philosophy, law and belles – lettres, and above all on the sciences, in particular on astronomy.
Khajeh Nasir was fully versed at all the common sciences of his own time: theology, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and literature.
He also wrote some poems in Arabic and Persian. He followed the Peripatetic philosophers (pshilosophers who follow Aristotle) and his own philosophy was based on Avicenna’s.

His masters:
1-    Muhammad Ibn Hasan Tusi “his father” (in transmitted sciences)
2-    Ibn Meytham Bahrani
3-    Muhaghegh Helli
4-    Qutb al-Din Mesri
5-    Farid al-Din Damad

Students:
1-    Qutb al-Din Shirazi
2-    Allameh Helli
3-    Ibn Fuwati
4-    Ibn Heytham Bahrani
5-    Seyyed Rukn al-Din Astar Abaadi,  etc.

Works:
70 works in Arbaic and Persian have been attributed to him but it is doubtfull that some of them to be written by Khajeh Nasir. The following list are some of his works:

1-    Abstraction of beliefs (on theology)
2-    Explanation of the book “Isharat” (written by Avicenna, on philosophy)
3-    The rules of beliefs (on the principles of beliefs)
4-    The Tusi ethics (on ethics and the practical philosophy)
5-    The beginning and the end (on the creation and resurrection, in Persian)
6-    Almagest (on mathematics)
7-    Euclid (on geometry)
8-    Abstraction of logic
9-    The base of extraction (on logic, in Persian)

The book structure

The book is composed in Arabic. The author considers the Koranic verses descended superiorities of Imam Ali.  

He mentions the verses about prophets (Noah, Moses, Jesus, Abraham, etc) as well as the verse considered Ali (p .b. u. h)

The following verse descended about Noah the Prophet:  [They were] offspring [of those], whom we put on board with Noah, he was a grateful servant. (17/3)

The following verse descended about Imam Ali (p .b. u. h):

This is your reward, for your effort has appreciated. (76/22)

The following are the virtues of Imam Ali based on the Koranic verses:

1- His superiority in faith (in God)

2- His superiority in having the perfect knowledge on the Koran

3- His superiority in reading the Koran

4- His superiority in patience sake

5- His superiority in spending for God’s (Infaq)

6- His superiority in jihad

7- His superiority in having a perfect knowledge on Divine commandments

The book was translated into Persian by Rashis al- Din Muhammad Watwat.

Sources

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