Al-Hurr al-Amili

He is best known for his comprehensive hadith compilation known as Wasa'il al-Shia (also known as Wasa’il ush-Shi’a) and as the second of the “Three Great Muhammads” in later Shi’a Islamic history.

He also studied under Ḥusayn b. Hasan b. Yunus Ẓahīr and Ḥasan b. Zayn al-Dīn ʿĀmili (d.1011/1602), who was the great-grandson of al-Shahid al-Thani, in al-Jaba, a nearby village.

[6] He lived during the era of the Safavid Empire, which at the time was pushing Imami Shi’ism upon the people of Iran.

He is credited with a diwān of approximately 20,000 verses, which includes several didactic poems (manẓumas), most of which constitute panegyrics to the Prophet Muḥammad and to his descendants.

[13] However, in two verses, he also expressed his inner struggle between his poetic and scholarly leanings: “My scholarship and my poetry fought one another, then were reconciled / poetry reluctantly surrendering to scholarship” (ʿelmi wa-šeʿri qatalā wa-ṣṭalaḥā / fa-ḵażaʿa al-šeʿro le-ʿelmi rāḡemā); “My scholarship objected to my being considered a poet / poetry, however, conceded that I be regarded as a scholar” (fa-l-ʿelmo yaʾbā an oʿadda šāʿeran / wa’l-šeʿro yarżā an oʿadda ʿālemā).