The Pen and the Sword of the Intellect
Wednesday, 29 April 2026
Opens 15 minutes before the session begins.
Mahdawiyyah, Part 22 · The Architecture of Guidance, Part 6 · The Brothers of Baghdad, Part 2 of 4 One of the most important books in Shia intellectual history was compiled by a man who insisted on disappearing from it entirely. Sayyed al-Radi died at forty-seven, in 406 AH, having already written three Qur'an commentaries, a Diwan his contemporaries ranked among the finest poetry of the age, and founded Baghdad's Dar al-Ilm, a school open to Shia, Sunni, Mu'tazilite and Ash'arite scholars alike, built decades before the Nizamiyyah usually credited as the model for the Islamic madrasa. None of it is why we remember him. Six years before his death, he finished gathering the scattered sermons, letters and sayings of his ancestor Imam Ali, peace be upon him, into a single volume, Nahj al-Balagha, adding nothing, paraphrasing nothing, letting the words stand on their own. Letter 53 of that book, addressed to the governor of Egypt, reduces the ethics of rule to a single line: every subject is "either a brother to you in religion, or your equal in creation". He held three of the most sensitive offices in the administration at once, returned a gift of a thousand gold dinars sent by the vizier, and refused a caliph's demand that he curse the rulers of Fatimid Egypt — a refusal that cost him every office he held. He died owning nothing; what he earned, he had given away. At his funeral, his own brother was too grief-stricken to lead the prayer. What is a life actually worth? What the evening covers Nahj al-Balagha. Completed in 400 AH: the sermons, letters and maxims of Imam Ali, arranged rather than authored. Letter 53. The governance letter still read in departments of political theory a thousand years later. The refusals. A returned fortune, a curse he would not utter, and the offices it cost him. The funeral. Why his own brother could not bring himself to lead the prayer.
In this session
طُوبى لِمَنْ ذَكَرَ المَعادَ فَاسْتَكْثَرَ مِنَ الزَّادِ.
Blessed is the one who remembers the [Day of] Resurrection and thus increases his provisions.
Ghurur al-Hikam, Ressurection and the hour, Aphorism 1
More in The Lantern of the Path
Shaykh al-Ta'ifa
Imam Hasan al-Mujtaba: A Life of Strategic Sacrifice
The World That Surrounded Them
Sayyed al-Murtada and the Twenty-Three Years
Two Sons, One Mother, One Teacher
The Beneficial One: Shaykh al-Mufid
When the Light Was Hidden: The Preservers
The University of al-Sadiq: Four Thousand Students and a Living Imam
Building Before the Builder Returns
The Antidote Applied
The Poison Identified
The Contemporary Codification