al-Modarresi studied in the religious seminaries of Karbala, under his father, Sayyid Muhammad-Kadhim and brother Sayyid Muhammad-Taqi, as well as senior scholars such as Shaykh Muhammad-Husayn al-Mazindarani, Shaykh Jafar al-Rushti, and his maternal uncles Sayyid Muhammad al-Shirazi and Sayyid Hassan al-Shirazi.[1] He emigrated to Kuwait with his older brothers in 1971, due to the Bathists anti-Shia sentiment.[7][8] They settled there until 1979, after which they moved to Iran after the Islamic Revolution.[9]