ABSTRACT

Seyyed Mojtaba Navvab-e Safavi was born in 1924 in Khani-Abad, a poor area in the south of Tehran. His father, Seyyed Javad MirLovhi, was at first a Muslim clergyman who, when Reza Shah forced people, including the clergy, to wear Western-style clothes, had to abandon clerical costume and work as a lawyer. Because he challenged Ali-Akbar Davar, the then Minister of Justice, he spent three years in jail. Seyyed Mojtaba’s mother was a descendent of the Safavid dynasty, to which his surname, Navvab-e Safavi, referred. He lost his father in his youth, and was under the guardianship of his maternal uncle, who was also a lawyer. Consequently, Seyyed Mojtaba was brought up in a lower middle class family.