Haji-Mirza Hassan Roshdieh

Hassan Roshdieh was an ethnic Iranian Azerbaijani and began studying as a Twelver Shi'a cleric there, Roshdieh abandoned his plans of going to Najaf to study in religious schools after reading an article about the hardships of education in the Persian language from the newspaper Akhtar.

He left for Beirut in 1880 and studied for two years in its Daar ul-Mu'allimeen (teacher school), and then continued with visiting Istanbul and Egypt.

While Ahmad Kasravi has claimed in his book that the primary school was established with the help of Ali Khan Amin od-Dowle, the then Premier of Iran, this cannot be confirmed by the records of Fakhreddin Roshdieh, Mirza Hassan's son.

He finally quit his political and educational activities in 1927 and moved to Qom, where he died in 1944 and is buried.

Roshdieh is mentioned in a famous poem of Nima Youshij, yād-e ba’zi nafarāt (The Memory of Some People).