al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki
1465 CE–1534 CE · Karak Nuh (Beqaa)
ʿAli b. al-Husayn al-Karaki, known to later scholars as al-Muhaqqiq al-Thani ("the second careful investigator") and al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki, was a leading Twelver Shia jurist (faqih). He came from Karak Nuh, a village in Jabal Amil (in present-day Lebanon), into a family of legal scholars. His exact birth year is not securely known: sources give either 865 AH (c. 1460-61 CE) or 870 AH (c. 1465-66 CE).
After absorbing the Jabal Amil learning tradition, he studied in the Shiʿite centres of Hilla and Najaf in Iraq, where ʿAli b. Hilal al-Jaza'iri is named among his teachers. In the first decades of the Safavid dynasty (founded 1501), which had made Twelver Shiʿism the state religion, al-Karaki entered the orbit of Shah Ismaʿil and later Shah Tahmasp. He was appointed shaykh al-Islam (a senior religious office) and, by a 1532 decree, given the titles "deputy" (na'ib) of the Imam and seal of the jurists. He is remembered for helping organise the new Shiʿite state: reviving the Friday congregational prayer and training a generation of jurists.
His acceptance of crown land grants and the land tax (kharaj) drew sharp criticism from other Shiʿite scholars, notably Ibrahim al-Qatifi — a dispute later schools cite on both sides. He is also a key early theorist of the jurist's authority. He died in 940 AH (1534 CE) and was buried in the shrine of Imam ʿAli in Najaf. His descendants include the philosopher Mir Damad.
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Karak Nuh (Beqaa)
What they did here
Born into a family of legal scholars at Karak Nuh, a village in the Jabal Amil region (in the Baalbek district of present-day Lebanon). The birthplace is consistently attested as the family seat, but the birth year is disputed between 865 AH (c. 1460-61) and 870 AH (c. 1465-66); a few Western reference works instead say he was 'born in Baalbek,' the regional town. No precise date is securely established.
About Karak Nuh (Beqaa)
Karak Nuh, a village in the Beqaa Valley of modern Lebanon, is traditionally associated with a tomb identified as that of the prophet Noah. It was a place of study for Jabal Amil scholars; the Twelver jurist al-Shahid al-Thani (Zayn al-Din al-Amili, d. 1558) studied there in his youth, and the jurist al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki (d. 1534) took his nisba al-Karaki from it. [NOTE: al-Shahid al-Thani was born in Juba', not Karak Nuh; he studied at Karak Nuh.]
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