The 1st Annual International Symposium on: 

Sey-yed Nourod-din Shah Nematollah Vali 

October 11-12, 2002

Morris Dailey Auditorium

  San Jose State University (SJSU), San Jose, California, USA

       SSNV Paper:

           Shah Nematollah Vali And Expansion Of Sufism In India

A very brief autobiography of Dr. Heshmatollah Riazi

Heshmatollah Riazi was born in 1936 in Garmsar, Tehran, Iran.  After graduation from Teachers College of Tehran, was employed by the Ministry of Education.  While teaching in highschools, he completed his post graduate work in Philosophy and Theology and continued teaching Philosophy, Theology, and Literature in various Universities in Tehran.  Mr. Riazi has published as many as forty books, articles,  research papers and plays in this field and has devoted forty-five years of his life in the path of Nematollahi Gonabadi order.  Since 1993, Mr. Riazi has been serving  the Iranian community in promoting the Persian cultural heritage through teachings of Mowlana and Gnosticism (Irfan) in New York and other parts of US and in Iran.

A glance at Dr. Riazi's speech:

Shah Nematollah Vali, one of the giants of the 15th Century mystical orders whose revolutionary teachings created a strong resistance against the aggressions of Taymoor Goorkan.  Nematollah Vali’s main contribution was bringing  into light the Shiite ideaology as the core of  Sufism while maintaining the essence of  Persian culture.  His fame was recognized by Indian Bahmani kings to the extent that they invited the scholar to their court to continue his teachings.  Shah Nematollah sent his  grandson Nooroddin who was succeeded by his son Shah Khalilollah. For the next two hundred years, the South if India was the sister hub of  Shiite Sufism as was Iran until the eighteenth century when these activities were halted  as the influence of the British grew in India and subsequently, Sufism returned to Iran.