The present study seeks, through a descriptive-analytical method, to elucidate the intellectual foundations of human rights based on the ideology of Shi'a Islam, utilizing the most important Shi'a sources, namely Nahj al-Balāgha, Risālat al-Ḥuqūq, Ṣaḥīfat al-Sajjādiyya, and other narrations transmitted from the infallible Imams of the Shi'a. Human rights, in its terminological sense, even within Western thought and law, does not possess a long historical precedent. The most significant intellectual foundations of human rights in the ideology of Shi'a Islam, mostly discussed in Nahj al-Balāgha, include: the principle of dignity, theistic orientation, the immortality of humankind, the right to life and security, the right to freedom, the right to defense and redress, the right to ownership, the right to religious freedom, the right to self-determination and political freedom, the reciprocal rights of rulers and the people, the right to equality and equity, and the right to citizenship. Through a cursory comparison with the contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was demonstrated that: a) Human rights are not inventions of Western schools of thought; rather, the divine religions—particularly the sublime religion of Islam, which came to establish all rights, including human rights—offered human rights to humanity, and these rights are explicitly emphasized in religious sources such as the Qur'an and Nahj al-Balāgha. However, the term "human rights" is a modern terminology initiated by the West and gained prevalence after World War II. b) Due to the emphasis on intellectual foundations such as theism and the immortality of humankind in Islam and the lack of attention to these aspects in Western human rights, some principles presented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights differ from the intellectual foundations of Islamic human rights. c) The proposition of Islamic human rights is not merely a reactive measure against Western human rights; rather, these concepts have been discussed from ancient times in Islamic law and jurisprudential regulations. d) All that is presented as human rights in Islamic sources, including Nahj al-Balāgha, does not constitute innovative rulings of Islam; rather, part of these concepts belongs to the confirmatory rulings (aḥkām imḍā’ī) of Islam, which, due to their rationality and congruence with human nature, have been endorsed and are recognized from the Islamic viewpoint as obligatory human rights.