Musa al-Sadr

He returned to Najaf shortly before his death in 1847.

The youngest of his five sons, Ismail (as-Sadr), was born in Isfahan, in Qajar-ruled Iran, and eventually became a leading mujtahid.

The second son of Ismail, also named Sadreddin, was born in Ottoman Iraq and also decided to settle permanently in Iran.

He became Musa al-Sadr's father.

While living in Iran, Sadreddin married a daughter of Ayatollah Hussein Tabatabaei Qomi, an Iranian religious leader.

She would become Musa al-Sadr's mother.

Musa Sadr al-Din al-Sadr (موسى صدر الدين الصدر; 4 June 1928 – disappeared 31 August 1978) was an Iranian-Lebanese Shia Muslim cleric and politician.

In Lebanon, he founded and revived many Lebanese Shia organizations, including schools, charities, and the Amal Movement.

Born in the Chaharmardan neighborhood in Qom, Iran, he underwent both seminary and secular studies in Iran.

He belongs to the Sadr family from Jabal Amel in Lebanon, a branch of the Musawi family which traces its roots to Musa Ibn Jaafar, the seventh Shia Imam, and ultimately to the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima.

Therefore, Musa al-Sadr is often styled with the honorific title Sayyid.

Musa al-Sadr was born in the Cheharmardan neighborhood of Qom, Iran, on 4 June 1928.

He had met him previously in 1936 when his family had hosted Abd al-Husayn in Iran.

He attended Hayat Elementary School in Qom where he attended seminary classes informally; he started his official seminary education in 1941.

His teachers considered him a "quick learner and remarkably knowledgeable for his young age".

After a while he started teaching other students "lower-level" courses.

This coincided with the "liberalizing of Iranian politics", the political climate of his time was secular, so that most religious scholars "felt politically and socially marginalized".

To have some influence in the "national life" he concluded that he had to become familiar with "modern science and contemporary world".

As a result, he started a "full secular education" alongside his seminary studies.

He moved to Tehran, where he completed a degree in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and political sciences from Tehran University and learned some English and French.

He then returned to Qom to study theology and Islamic philosophy under Allamah Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai.

Following the death of his father in 1953, he left Qom for Najaf to study theology under Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim and Abul Qasim Khui.

There he had teachers such as: Ayatollah Hakim, Shaykh Morteza al Yasin, Ayatollah Abulqasim Khu'i, Shaykh Hossein Hilli, Shaykh Sadra Badkubahi, and others, some of whom became Marja after Ayatollah Borujerdi's death.

Musa al-Sadr became a mujtahid in Najaf.

In 1955 he traveled to Lebanon where he met Abd al-Hossein Sharafeddin.

The same year he left Iran and returned to Najaf and, in the autumn of 1956, he married the daughter of Ayatollah Azizollah Khalili.

He left Qom for Najaf to study theology and returned to Iran after the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état.

Some years later, Sadr went to Tyre, Lebanon as the emissary of Ayatollahs Borujerdi and Hakim.

From Tyre, he published the periodical, Maktabi Islam.

Fouad Ajami called him a "towering figure in modern Shi'i political thought and praxis".

He gave the Shia population of Lebanon "a sense of community".

On 25 August 1978, Sadr and two companions, Sheikh Mohamad Yaacoub and Abaass Bader el Dine, departed for Libya to meet with government officials at the invitation of Muammar Gaddafi.

The three were last seen on 31 August.

They were never heard from again.

Many theories exist around the circumstances of Sadr's disappearance, none of which have been proven.

His whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

Musa al-Sadr came from a long line of clerics tracing their ancestry back to Jabal Amel.

His great-great-grandfather S. Salih b. Muhammad Sharafeddin, a high-ranking cleric, was born in Shhour, a village near Tyre, Lebanon.

Following a frantic turn of 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.