Mohammad Kazem Khorasani Twelver Shi"a Marja, politician, philosopher, reformer.
Education
Khorasani started his education in Mashhad and Sabzevar where he got familiar with philosophy and continued his education in Tehran where he learnt Logic and Hekmat. In 1861 he moved to Iraq and in Najaf worked on complementary studies under Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi whom he succeeded as marja following Shirazi"s death. He was a lecturer at Najaf seminary for years.
His most famous work is The Sufficiency which ranks "only after Morteza Ansari"s treatice on commercial law" among the legal works written by mullahs in the last two centuries.
In The Sufficiency, Khorasani gathered the jurispurdential ideas such as 'continuity' and "presented them in a yet more rigorous fashion as a unified theory of jurisprudence." Khorasani was not a sayyed but "owed his position almost purely to his intellectual accomplishments.".
Career
He is known for using his position as a marja for political use in the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911). Mohammad Kazem Khorasani was one of the main clerical supporters of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. The reaction to Noori"s execution in Najaf harmed Khorasani and other constitution supporters and led to a rivalry with Mohammed Kazem Yazdi.
Khorasani had a significant role in popularizing the modern concepts introduced by non religious intellectuals of his time.
His most notable student was Ayatollah Mirza Hussein Naini whose ideas are still very much influential among contemporary Iranian religious intellectual circles. He is buried in Najaf.
Views
He emphasised "natural rights" of people and pushed the Iranian government and Shah to defend "natural rights".