TEHRAN - Noor Ali Tabandeh, the spiritual leader of the Gonabadi Dervishes in Iran, died of old age in a hospital in Tehran on Tuesday morning.

Tabandeh, 92, was admitted to Mehr Hospital in Tehran on Thursday due to critical health conditions and physical weakness. 

Tabandeh, also known by the title “Majzoub Ali Shah”, was the spiritual leader or Qutb of the Ni'matullahi (Sultan Ali Shahi) Gonabadi Order in Iran, which is the largest Sufi sect in Iran.

He was born in 1927 in Beydokht of Gonabad, Khorasan Razavi province. 

He finished his BA in law at the University of Tehran in 1948 and moved to Franc where he received his Ph.D. in law in Paris. 

After the victory of Iran’s revolution in 1979, he became deputy minister of culture and Islamic guidance, deputy justice minister and director of Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization when Mahdi Bazargan was the prime minister of the interim government. 

He had requested to be buried in Beydokht, where he was born.  

MJ/PA