The 250-Year-Old Human(Second Cycle)

The 250-Year-Old Human (Second Cycle) is a collection of lectures by Ayatollah Khamenei that focuses on the political and revolutionary lives of the infallible Shia Imams. The book is written in Persian and its original text has been reprinted more than 85 times. It has also been translated into several other languages, including Arabic, French, Turkish, German, and Urdu.

The title refers to the 250-year period of the Imamate of the Shia Imams—from the passing of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in 11 AH to the beginning of the Minor Occultation in 260 AH—which Ayatollah Khamenei conceptualizes as the lifespan of a single human being living 250 years. He first presented the core idea of this work in 1986 (1365 SH) at the International Congress of Imam Reza (AS), where he introduced a new perspective on the Imams’ historical movement: a unified and continuous struggle directed toward a single goal. Some time after its initial publication, the material of this book was reorganized and supplemented with additional content from other speeches by Ayatollah Khamenei, resulting in the release of two more volumes titled First Cycle and Third Cycle.

The 250-Year-Old Human consists of 15 chapters. The arrangement of these chapters follows the historical order of the lives of the Imams—from the era of the Prophet to the periods of Imam Jawad, Imam Hadi, and Imam Hasan al-Askari. The content related to these last three Imams is presented together in a single chapter.