Nusrat Amin

Nusrat Amin al-Dawla Isfahani was born in Isfahan, Iran. The prevailing biographical consensus places her birth in 1886. Amin was also known as Hajiye Khanum Nusrat Amin Begum and wrote under the pen name Banu-i-Irani (Iranian Lady). Nusrat Amin holds a place of reverence in contemporary Shiʿism as a mujtahida (a woman who has the capacity to exert her own judgment on questions of religious law) who received ijaza (permission) certificates from a number of high-ranking ulama (religious scholars). Her work spans from mysticism to ethics. Amin died on 13 June1983; her life crossed both the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, as well as the Constitutional (1905–1911) and Islamic revolutions (1979) in Iran. As literature on female religious authority in Islam has advanced there has been increased interest in Amin’s status as a female mujtahida, particularly in English language scholarship. Conferences on her work and in her memory were held in Isfahan and Qom in 1992, 1993, 2013, and 2017. Amin’s more traditionally conservative viewpoints on women and the complementarity of genders fits well within the ethos of the Islamic Republic. Amin is also a symbol of female religious authority in Iran.