ABSTRACT
Ḥusain Ḥāj Farajullāh Dabbāgh, more well-known by his pen name ʿAbd al-Karīm Surūsh, was born in southern Tehran in 1945. 1 His parents had a pious lower middle class background. Surūsh received his secondary education at the ʿAlawī private high school, a pioneering private institution in Tehran founded by bāzārī merchants with the objective of educating its students in modern natural sciences as well as traditional Islamic disciplines. 2 The principal of ʿAlawī school, Riḍā Rūzbih, had an exam in physics from Tehran University and had also studied fiqh at a ḥauzah-yi ʿilmīyah of Qum. At an early date, Surūsh visited the desert town of Gunabad in Khurasan where he met with Muḥammad Ḥasan Ṣālih ʿAlī Shāh, the Sufi pīr (master) of the Niʿmatullāhī-Saʿādat ʿAlī-Shāhī order. This spiritual guide made an everlasting impression on Surūsh.
