Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Dutch politician and State Secretary in the fourth Balkenende cabinet
Arthur Henry Hardinge, the British ambassador to Iran, wrote about him:"As I have previously mentioned, the most intellectual and enlightened Shia scholar that I've met in Tehran was Mirza Abutaleb Zanjani with whom we usually had debates about religion and politics. I personally think that Mirza Abutaleb worked on the same aspiration for Islamic unity as Abdul Hamid II ... although he himself had less faith to these principals".