ABSTRACT
Sayyid Mahmud Taleqani was born in a religious family. Abolhasan Taleqani, Sayyid Mahmud's father, returned from Iraq in 1899 and began his teaching career in Tehran. The elder Taleqani actively participated in political movements of the 1910s and 1920s, a period of rapid change, when Reza Khan engineered a coup, toppled the Qajar dynasty, and gradually managed to crown himself king. Sayyid Mahmud Taleqani spent his early life under the dictatorial grip of Reza Shah's reign. His education began under his father's tutelage in elementary Persian and Arabic grammar and language and Qur'anic studies. In 1953, Taleqani wrote his famous Islam and Ownership. Taleqani's stated purpose in Islam and Ownership is to provide a sustained "Islamic" account of man's economic endeavors. Politics thus part and parcel of religion, Taleqani tacitly develops a short theory of authority that excludes the king and gives supreme political power to religious figures. This theory commences with granting supreme universal authority to God Almighty.
