About this catalog

What this is

Sayyid Kamal al-Haydari is an Iraqi Shi'i scholar and religious authority (marja') whose lectures span Islamic philosophy and mystical gnosis ('irfan), theology, jurisprudence and its principles, Qur'anic exegesis, the critique of hadith literature, and calls for the renewal of religious thought. Nearly all of it is in Arabic. This site is an independent English catalog of the official YouTube channel, so that English speakers can find, understand and study this body of work.

Videos play from YouTube; this site holds only the catalog data and translations.

Coverage

How translations are made

1. The channel's videos, playlists and descriptions are collected with yt-dlp.
2. Each video's audio is split at natural pauses into segments of about twelve minutes. A multimodal AI model (Google Gemini) listens to the Arabic and writes a complete, faithful English translation. It doesn't summarise. The output has timestamps, speaker labels, Qur'an and hadith quotations marked, and the key Arabic terms noted.
3. A consistent glossary keeps technical vocabulary stable across the catalog, e.g. ijtihad, wilayat al-faqih, asalat al-wujud.
4. From the transcript, the model writes an English title, summary, key points and references, and proposes subject topics. These are then consolidated into a single browsable taxonomy.
5. Videos not yet transcribed are catalogued from their Arabic title and description only; their pages say so.

Limitations

All translations are machine-generated and haven't been reviewed by a human translator. They can mishear names, misattribute quotations, or flatten nuance in technical arguments. Timestamps are approximate. Qur'anic verse references are identified automatically and should be checked. For citation or religious guidance, rely on the original Arabic and the scholar's official publications at alhaydari.com.

This project isn't affiliated with Sayyid al-Haydari or his office. All rights to the lectures belong to their owners.