Publish Date: 14 December 2015 - 23:53

Tehran, Dec 14, IRNA – The last day of the month of Safar coincides with the martyrdom of Imam Reza (AS), the eighth Shia Imam whose life has been reviewed in many books written in several centuries.

In honor of Imam Reza (AS), who is being proudly hosted in the Iranian city of Tous, numerous works have been compiled by Iranian authors. Since the first day of the current Iranian year, 72 works with the theme of Imam Reza (AS) have been compiled/and translated, IBNA reported.
Imam Reza (AS), is the eighth Imam of the Twelver Shi’ites. He was born in Medina and died in Tus. Imam Reza lived in an era when the Abbasid Caliphs were faced with numerous problems including the multiple uprisings of the Shiites.
Al-Mamun, the Caliph of the time, was looking for a way to overcome the rebels and decided to get Imam Reza involved in the government and appointed him as the Crown Prince. He later found out about this mistake and decided to poison the Imam to take him out of his way.
On the 30th of the month of Safar, in the year 203 AH, Imam Reza was buried in a village in Khorasan which was later named Mashhad meaning the place of martyrdom. The holy shrine of the Imam (AS) is visited annually by millions of Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims from Iran, Pakistan, Bahrain, Iraq and other countries.
Imam Reza is one of the prominent Imams whose scientific and religious debates are famous in the course of the history. ‘Oyun Akhbar al-Reza’ is one of the books that refer to some of these debates.
Furthermore, many other books have been written by various authors on Imam Reza (AS). But for the present year, based on the figures released by Iran's book House Institute, 72 books on the life and idea of this Imam have been published, among them 40 books have been released for the first Time.
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