Intellectual biography as a discipline assumes that the life and thought of an individual can shed light on an epoch. This paper examines 1700s Iran via the Shi'i scholar Mohammad Mehdi Niraq (d. 1794). No mention of the Bábí or Bahá'í Faiths.
Abstract: Intellectual biography as a discipline assumes that the life and thought of an individual can shed light on an epoch. In some cases such a claim is justified, especially where the epoch is obscure and the thinker genuinely representative of the culture of a profession in a city or region. I shall argue the validity of this principle with regard to eighteenth-century west-central Iran and Mohammad Mehdi Niraqi (d. 1794), a prominent Imami Shi'i religious scholar who wrote prolifically and authored a huge three-volume work on ethics.