Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Muhammad-Taqi Golshan Shirazi Ha'eri (Persian: ميرزا محمدتقى گلشن شيرازى حائرى; Arabic: الميرزا محمد تقي الشيرازي الحائري), also known as al-Mirza al-Thani (transl. the second Mirza; the first being Mirza Shirazi), was a senior Iranian-Iraqi jurist and political leader.[2][3] He led the Iraqi revolt of 1920.[4]
Shirazi was born in 1840, to Mirza Muhib Ali Golshan Shirazi. His uncle was Mirza Habibullah Shirazi, a famous Iranian poet.
He migrated to Karbala in 1854, and began his religious studies there, under scholars such as Sheikh Zayn al-Abideen al-Mazandarani, Sayyid Ali Taqi al-Tabatabaei, and Sheikh Fadhil al-Ardakani. He was granted ijazas by Mirza Husayn al-Khalili, Sheikh Husayn bin Taqi al-Nuri, Sheikh Abbas al-Tehrani, and Mirza Hasan Khan al-Shirazi.[5] He then moved to Samarra along with his mentor and predecessor, Mirza Shirazi, to establish the city, as the new Shi'ite intellectual loci. In Samarra, Shirazi spent his time teaching and delivering lectures at the seminary. After the demise of his teacher, Shirazi took the reins of the seminary in Samarra.
He remained in Samarra until 1916, where the situation began to deteriorate, and Shirazi feared that Samarra was going to end up like Kut, during its siege, so he travelled to Kadhimiya. He remained there for just under two years, until he finally settled in Karbala.[1]
Shirazi had a number of publications, and often used Gulshan as his pen name:
Shirazi died on August 28, 1920, in Karbala at the age of eighty. Sheikh Fatthullah al-Isfahani offered the prayers in his funeral, and then he was buried in the southern chamber in the Imam Husayn shrine courtyard.