Abbas Mirza Sharifzadeh was born into a family of a teacher, who taught at Seyid Azim Shirvani's Usul-i Jadid school.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire Kawthari moved to Cairo, then Sham, then returned to Cairo where he edited and brought back into circulation countless classical books of fiqh, hadith, and usul.
He attended the Sadr Madrassa and finished his academic studies in jurisprudence (fiqh) and its principles (usul), theosophy (hekmat), and the other Islamic intellectual (‘aqli) and transmitted (naqli) sciences, under the supervision of philosophers and scholars such as Jahangir Khan Ghashghaei and Ayatollah Akhond Kashi.