Tabriz, a city saturated with the heart’s blood of its scholars and martyrs, tonight hosted a gathering of remembrance and commemoration for the great men who shaped the history of this land with their sacrifice and selflessness.
When the pen of the scholars outlined the path of the martyrs, the blood of the martyrs became the ink that eternally inscribed the lessons of the scholars onto the page of history; this is a reciprocal bond that was never severed, and when that scholar himself achieved martyrdom, it became light upon light.
The starry nights of Tabriz were an opportunity to reflect on the prominent and unparalleled role of the scholars in the Revolution and the Sacred Defense; from the first ‘Martyr of the Pulpit,’ Ayatollah Seyed Mohammad Ali Qazi Tabatabai, who, in the cold winter of ’78, called the people of Tabriz to rise against oppression and was martyred in those very days by the hands of assassins, to Ayatollah Seyed Asadollah Madani, the Friday Prayer Imam who repelled the enemy by wearing his shroud and refused to let Friday Prayers be uprooted from Tabriz.
This city is the cradle of the self-sacrificing and the standard-bearer of unity and faith; a land that His Eminence [the Leader] has often spoken of, reminding us that Azerbaijan is the cradle of martyrs whose path has always been our guiding light.
In this luminous assembly, the memory of the third martyr, Ayatollah Hashemi, a compassionate and people-oriented Friday Prayer Imam, was honored; a man who was present not only on major political stages but also in the smallest concerns of the people, even responding to the message of a schoolchild. A man who considered martyrdom his undeniable right and recorded this truth in his will.
The starry nights of Tabriz told the story of the unbreakable bond between scholars and martyrs; a narrative of the communion of light and sacrifice that still lives in the hearts of the people of this region, keeping the flame of hope and resistance alive.
And now that these great men have attained martyrdom, may their voices reach us from beyond the light and illuminate the path forward.
