The following is the full text of the speech delivered on December 3, 2012 by Ayatollah Khamenei the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in a meeting with officials in charge of the International Conference on the Life and Works of Allamah Qutb al-Din Shirazi.
In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
It is very valuable to commemorate people like Qutb al-Din Shirazi. I was thinking that it was clever of medical doctors to attach Qutb al-Din Shirazi to medicine because he was primarily a philosopher. He was a student of Khajeh Nasir and he wrote a commentary on Hikmat al-Ishraq and other such books. Of course, he was also a medical doctor, an outstanding medical doctor, and an astronomer. He also participated in building the famous Maragheh Observatory. He was, therefore, a great man.
Dr. Lankarani's comment was a good comment. We should pay attention to the fact that in different Islamic eras, our great religious scholars were experts in different fields. It was not the case that they merely dabbled in different fields. He is an outstanding personality in medicine. As you mentioned, he has written the most important commentary on the Canon of Medicine which was written by Avicenna. In the area of philosophy, he was a philosopher in the real sense of the word. He was a qualified expert in astronomy. He was also a literary man and a poet. He wrote Arabic and Persian poems. And maybe he was an expert in other areas as well.
You should pay attention to the point that specialization in the sense of limiting the mind of individuals is not particularly noteworthy. Specialist fields constantly split into smaller areas and there will be a more limited scope. In one sense, specialization is good because it improves, in that field, the living conditions of people. But in another sense, it limits individuals because the mind of human beings has a great potential and a person can be an expert in all these areas. A medical doctor should not be considered a layman in, for instance, religious areas and in philosophy. How good it is that a medical doctor has, at least, some information in other sciences - in rational sciences, applied sciences and sciences related to the natural world - and how good it is that we can move this matter forward in our country. Of course, this does not at all mean putting an end to specialization, rather it means enabling the minds of specialists to explore areas beyond their specialist fields.
Well, of course Shiraz is an important center and great personalities have been built in Shiraz. The fact that great personalities have been built in different parts of our country is an important point. I made this point on my trip to Shiraz a few years ago. Shiraz is really one of the areas in our country which has an unlimited capacity. If you take a look at Shiraz from different perspectives, you see that Shiraz or Fars province - when we say Shiraz, we mean the entire Fars province as Qutb al-Din Shirazi was from Kazerun - is a rich area in terms of building outstandingly talented individuals. There are poets, literary people, philosophers and scholars, in the modern sense of the word, in this region. In different fields of study - in all fields - certain outstanding personalities have emerged from this area. This is the identity of this area.
The people who are active in the arena of educating and nurturing talented people should pay attention to the point that there are infinite talents in fields related to Islamic studies. Qutb al-Din Shirazi is referred to as Allamah Shirazi. That is to say, he is recognized as an allamah because he was an expert in different areas. Anyway, you should try to introduce these outstanding personalities as role models to today's young generation in our country so that they realize that these people can be their role models. It is not necessary at all that we unearth a person from the dark depths of the Middle Ages in Europe and introduce him as an outstanding personality. We ourselves have such people.
Second, they should pay attention to the fact that the scientific movement in our country achieved blossoming during the time when there was no trace of science in the west and in Europe. Notice what was happening in Europe during the 7th century of the Hijri calendar - that is to say, during the 13th and 14th centuries of the Christian calendar. I say the 7th century because Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi was a scientist in that century. He died in the early 8th century but he is considered as a 7th century scientist. Notice what kind of people were living in Europe during the same era. Europe had not been enlightened with the light of science. This is while there were outstanding personalities in our country during that time, personalities such as Khajeh Nasir and Katebi Qazvini - who was one of Qutb al-Din's teachers and a great and outstanding philosopher - and people like Qutb al-Din Shirazi.
I hope Allah the Exalted helps you to carry out this work well.
Greetings be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessings