Hajiyeh Seyyedeh Nosrat Begum Amin, also known as Banu Amin, Lady Amin (Persian: بانو امين; 1886–1983), was Iran's most outstanding female jurisprudent, theologian and great Muslim mystic (‘arif) of the 20th century, a Lady Mujtahideh. She received numerous ijazahs (permissions) of ijtihad, among them from Ayatollahs Muḥammad Kazim Ḥusayni Shīrāzī (1873-1947) and Grand Ayatullah ‘arif (1859-1937), the founder of the Qom seminaries (hawza).[1]
She also granted numerous ijazahs of ijtihad to female and male scholars, among them Sayyid Mar'ashi Najafi.[2]
She wrote several books about Islamic sciences, among them a tafsir in 15 volumes, and established a maktab in Isfahan in 1965, called Maktab-e Fatimah. The maktab was directed since its inception until 1992 by Banu Amin's most prominent student, Zīnah al-Sādāt Humāyūnī (b. 1917). After 1992, Ḥajj Āqā Ḥasan Imāmi, a relative of Humāyūnī’s, took over the directorship.[3]
Banu Amin was born into a merchant family. Nuṣrat Amīn’s husband was her cousin Haj Mirza, also known as Muīn al-Tujjar. Her father is known by the name of Haj Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī Amīn al-Tujjar. His sister Hāshimīyah al-Tujjar was a mujtahidah herself who received ijtihād degrees in fiqh and uṣūl. Further, Nuṣrat Amīn had a niece, Iffat al-Zamān Amīn (1912-1977), also known as Iftikhār al-Tujjar, who was one of her most prominent students and who received an ijazah of riwāya in Najaf by Ayatullah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.
Banu Amin had eight children, only one of whom survived her (Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī Muʿīn Amīn). She was buried at the Takht-e Fulad Cemetery in Isfahan.[4]
^See Mirjam Künkler and Roja Fazaeli, ‘The Life of Two Mujtahidas: Female Religious Authority in 20th Century Iran’, in Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, ed. Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach (Brill Publishers, 2012), 127-160. SSRN1884209
^See Badry, Roswitha. ‘Zum Profil weiblicher ‘Ulama’ in Iran: Neue Rollenmodelle für ‘islamische Feministinnen’?’, in Die Welt des Islams XL, no. 1. (March 2000), 7-40.
