Al-Qazwini family
The family of al-Qazwini (Arabic: آل القزويني, "ʾĀl al-Qazwīnī"), also transliterated in a number of other ways, including al-Qazweeni or al-Qazvini are an Iraqi-Iranian religious Shia family that settled in Karbala from Qazvin, in the late 18th century. The family rose to great prominence in Iraq and later America. Members of the family are notable for being the Ayatollahs of Karbala. Some of its members are founders of a number of Islamic centres in the United States. Additionally the family claim agnatic descent from Muhammad's daughter Fatimah, carrying the honorific title  of Sayyid, and the children of the females of this family whos fathers are non Sayyids carry the title Mirza. History and Lineage. The al-Qazwini family is a religious intellectual family, that followed through for generations. Its patriarch is Sayyid Muhammad-Baqir al-Qazwini, who is known as "muallim al-sultan" (teacher of the sultan) because he was the teacher of Dowlatshah. He emigrated from his hometown, to Najaf in 1771, and then to Karbala, where he settled in 1783. Muhammad-Baqir was accompanied by his brother Muhammad-Ali al-Qazwini. The lineage of the al-Qazwini family  is as follows:ʿAbd al-Karīm bin Niʿmatullāh bin Murtadha bin Radhi al-Dīn bin Aḥmed bin Muḥammad bin Ḥusayn bin ʿAbdallāh bin Muḥammad bin Aḥmed bin Musa bin Ḥusayn bin Ibrāhīm bin Ḥasan bin Muḥammad bin Mājid bin Maʿad bin Ismaʿīl bin Yaḥya bin Muḥammad bin Aḥmed al-Zāhid bin Ibrahim al-Mujāb bin Muḥammad al-ʿAābid bin Musa al-Kāthim bin Jaʿfar as-Sādiq bin Muḥammad al-Bāqir bin ʿAli al-Sajjad bin Ḥusayn al-Shahid bin ʿAli Ibna Abi Talib. Persecution in Iraq. Communism. During the days of the red tide, under the rule of Abd al-Karim Qasim , Sayyid Murtadha al-Qazwini supported Ayatollah Sayyid Muhsin al-Hakim's fatwa deeming communism an infidelity and atheist. He took a strong stance against Qasim, by rejecting to join the iftar he had prepared for the religious convoy in Ramadan, 1960, which lead to his imprisonment, making him the first cleric to become a political prisoner in Baghdad. Baathism. With the advent of the despotic Baathist regime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, The al-Qazwini family and other Shia scholars and clerics increased efforts to educate the masses to combat the regime. Sayyid Mortadha al-Qazwini and his  first cousin, once removed, Sayyid Mohammed Kadhim al-Qazwini were among the leading scholars in engaging in Islamic activism against the regime. After several years, the regime identified the al-Qazwini family as an ideological threat to his regime. In 1980, Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad-Sadiq al-Qazwini, was arrested and imprisoned by Saddam Hussein because he did not support the Baathist regime. Amnesty International deemed him as the oldest political prisoner in the world at the time. Following the few weeks after the collapse of the regime in 2003, the family found documents verifying his death in Saddam's prisons . Pictures. Some of the members of the al-Qazwini family: