A Border Guard’s Story: The Story of a Man Who Devoted His Entire Life to the Border

When the enemy reaches the borders, many are still peacefully asleep: some are thinking about their own lives, some are caught up in everyday tasks, and some are occupied with the plans they have for their future. The border, however, allows no such respite. Someone must remain awake there: someone to monitor the enemy’s movements, anticipate his next step, plan to counter his advance, and sometimes spend an entire lifetime keeping this watch. A true border guard expends everything at his disposal to keep the enemy away from the border. At the very hour when others are pursuing their own lives, comforts, and pleasures, he has only one concern: protecting the border.

This is the story of one of those border guards: a man whose own life, and the life of his family, became bound up with defending the borders. With limited resources, under the strain of illnesses that tormented him, and amid hardships each of which could have kept a person from continuing along the path, he did not abandon his watch for a single moment.

He was a son of Iran, but destiny led him to pursue his studies in India. Anyone who heard only the accounts written about this man might picture a tireless commander: someone his contemporaries could not match, those who came after him lagged behind, and even many of the great figures of a century earlier could not be compared with. It has been said of him that he surpassed them all and spent his entire life guarding the borders. Another statement about him is shorter, yet weightier: he sacrificed everything he had in the service of this watch.

Yet the further we go, the stranger the clues become. In the account of this battle, we hear of precious books instead of ammunition depots; of copying and borrowing books instead of combat supplies; and of letters sent from one city to another, and even from one land to another, instead of operational plans. It is as though this border guard had been fighting on another battlefield: one where his weapon was the pen, his stockpile was books, and his watch was kept through study.

More than one hundred and sixty years ago, in an age when the printing industry either did not exist or had not attained its present flourishing, and travel and communication were not as easy as they are today, this man set about collecting rare books and manuscripts. His surviving letters show that he wrote to borrow books, strove to have works copied, and sometimes purchased a rare book at a higher price to keep it from falling into the hands of opponents—even though he himself lacked sufficient funds to buy it. Some letters clearly reveal his regret at not having the money to purchase certain valuable books.

Elsewhere, in a letter, he asks that an iron chest be purchased for him from the port, probably Basra or Jeddah—a chest that contained a rare book. And when, among his sources, he encounters an acknowledgment by a non-Shi‘i scholar who regarded the hadith enjoining adherence to Abu Bakr and ‘Umar as invalid, he is so delighted that his joy remains recorded in his writings.

Letters from him to government officials and people in positions of power in India also survive; in them, he requests that the entire book “تمام المطاعن الخالفه الاول” be printed and made available to everyone. The scope of his search does not stop even at the boundaries of the Islamic world. When he learns that valuable works have been printed in Germany, he writes requesting that a catalogue of those historical and biographical books be sent to him from Germany.

These efforts eventually led to the establishment of a large library, containing more than thirty thousand rare volumes, which came to be called the Nasiriyya Library. More importantly, he did not collect only the books of those who shared his views; he also gathered the books of opponents of his denomination so that he could read their arguments in their own texts and respond to them.

Here, the initial image falls apart. This man was neither the commander of a military unit nor a guerrilla guarding his frontier with a rifle. The enemy he monitored was doubt and distortion; his front was the realm of thought; his stronghold, the library; and the frontier he spent his entire life defending was the frontier of belief.

Now a statement made by one of the scholars about this great defender acquires its full meaning:

By elucidating the wisdom underlying the Imamate, Allamah Mir Hamid Husayn Hindi sought to demonstrate the truth that the Imamate is established by divine designation and cannot be the outcome of human choice. The culmination of this scholarly struggle was the composition of the unparalleled work ʿAbaqāt al-Anwār—a work that constituted not only a firm and scholarly defense of the rightful standing of the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, but also offered an unrivaled model for hadith and doctrinal research.

The comprehensiveness of ʿAbaqāt al-Anwār—in its meticulous examination of chains of transmission, its comprehensive analysis of the meanings and implications of hadiths, its attention to the circumstances in which they were uttered, and its use of authoritative Sunni sources—provided a decisive and irrefutable response to the distortions introduced by ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Dihlawi in Tuḥfa-yi Ithnā ʿAshariyya. His methods, including the systematic critique of fabricated hadiths and the identification of distortions, were not intended solely to answer the doubts raised in his own time; this approach also blocked the way for similar efforts in the future. He demonstrated that the virtues of the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, are a truth that not only remains immune to distortions but also becomes clearer through scholarly and ethical arguments.

This jewel was not easily won. It is related that, as a result of writing so much, Mir Hamid Husayn lost the use of his right hand. Late in life, he wrote with his left hand, or sometimes dictated while others wrote. But his illness did not stop there. In his final years, he could no longer sit; he would lie on his back, place a book on his chest, and read or write. In the last days of his life, when neither hand had the strength to write, he would hold the pen in his mouth and continue composing his work.

Ayatollah Marʿashi Najafi, quoting Mir Hamid Husayn’s son, Sayyid Nasir Husayn, states:

The author of ʿAbaqat had devoted his days and nights to writing and research. He would rise from his place only for essential tasks, eat and sleep only as much as necessary, and even in religious observances and acts of worship, confine himself to the obligatory duties. It is related that when his young son died, he entrusted the shrouding and burial, the funeral procession, and the mourning gathering to others, so that his time would be spent solely on composing ʿAbaqat al-Anwar. This account is emphasized once again in the text, an indication that the writer wishes to make the intensity of this scholarly dedication indelible in the reader’s mind.

The crucial point lies here: amid these very hardships and tribulations, the late Mir Hamid Husayn wrote a book of which it has been said that no work like it has ever been composed in the Islamic world.

His difficulties were not confined to illness and physical incapacity. Rebellions and plundering also intruded upon his life. In some of these incidents, precious books for which he had undertaken arduous journeys and paid exorbitant prices were looted. The late Mir Hamid himself writes:

Elsewhere, he speaks as follows of his straitened circumstances and the hardships of his life at the height of his scholarly work:

Yet the most remarkable aspect of these complaints is that his principal anguish is not hunger, insecurity, or hardship in making a living. Continuing the same account, he adds:

In the writings of this tireless striver, alongside these difficulties, there is also mention of slanders, grievances concerning certain men of learning, the affectation of some scholars, and, finally, illnesses and bodily pain and suffering. Despite all this, he did not abandon study, research, authorship, or the defense of the doctrinal boundaries of Shiʿism. He continued studying until the final days of his blessed life and did not cease his work until the last moments of his noble life, so much so that even after his death, the marks of years of study could still be seen on his body.

ʿAbaqāt al-Anwār was not merely the product of one author’s suffering; it was the written embodiment of a long vigil guarding the boundaries of faith. Through this work, ʿAllāmah Sayyid Mir Hamid Husayn developed a robust, scholarly defense of the rightful standing of the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, and proposed a rigorous method for research into hadith and doctrine. He scrutinized chains of transmission, examined the implications of hadiths from various perspectives, considered the circumstances in which they were uttered, and drew upon authoritative Sunni sources in constructing his arguments, so that his response to ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Dihlawi’s distortions in Tuḥfah-yi Ithnā ʿAshariyyah would be more than a sectarian objection: it would be an argument grounded in sources and research methodology.

In pursuing this course, he systematically critiqued fabricated hadiths and identified distortions. The original text assesses this effort as having not only discredited Dihlawi’s objections but also barred the way to subsequent efforts of a similar kind. Through this method, Mir Hamid Husayn demonstrated that the virtues of the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, constitute a truth that does not disappear in the face of distortion and becomes clearer through scholarly and ethical reasoning.

He followed the same logic in collecting sources. He gathered the books of opponents of his school of faith in order to respond to them, pursued sources in distant places, preserved precious copies from the danger of dispersal and destruction, and established a network of correspondence, purchasing, borrowing, and copying. The Nasiriyyah Library, with more than thirty thousand precious copies, was one of the results of this endeavor; it was as though a guardian of the frontier, preparing for a long war, had filled his arsenal with documents and books rather than bullets.

At the end of this account, the image of the guardian introduced at the beginning of the story is now entirely clear. With courage and steadfastness, Allamah Mir Hamid Husayn exposed numerous distortions and slanders and paved the way for those seeking reason and truth. In the words of the original text, “opponents descended from Saqifah and Umayyad in character” constantly sought to create ambiguity and contaminate the scholarly atmosphere; yet his scholarly jihad pierced this darkness and revealed the rightful standing of the Commander of the Faithful, peace be upon him, and the Pure Imams, peace be upon them.

For this reason, he is more than the defender of a particular view or the author of a great book; the text presents him as an eminent and enduring model for researchers and seekers of truth. His jihad in defense of religion and the truth of Islam has made him a great and illustrious champion in the history of Shiism and among Islamic scholars.

Perhaps no closing image of this life could be more eloquent than this account. The late Ayatollah Mar‘ashi Najafi related the following from the son of the late Mir Hamid Husayn, author of ‘Abaqat al-Anwar:

The source cited for this account in the text: Khisht-i Avval magazine, issue 8, p. 37.