Ruhollah Khomeini

He left Lucknow in 1830, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Ali in Najaf, Ottoman Iraq (now Iraq) and never returned.

According to Moin, this migration was to escape from the spread of British power in India.

In 1834 Seyyed Ahmad Musavi Hindi visited Persia, and in 1839 he settled in Khomein.

Although he stayed and settled in Iran, he continued to be known as Hindi, indicating his stay in India, and Ruhollah Khomeini even used Hindi as a pen name in some of his ghazals.

Khomeini's grandfather, Mirza Ahmad Mojtahed-e Khonsari was the cleric issuing a fatwa to forbid usage of Tobacco during the Tobacco Protest.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (17 May 1900 or 24 September 1902 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician, and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989.

He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.

According to his birth certificate, Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, whose first name means "spirit of Allah", was born on 17 May 1900 in Khomeyn, Markazi Province although his brother Mortaza (later known as Ayatollah Pasandideh) gives his birth date of 24 September 1902, the birth anniversary of Muhammad's daughter, Fatima.

Born in Khomeyn, in what is now Iran's Markazi province, his father was murdered in 1903 when Khomeini was two years old.

He began studying the Quran and Arabic from a young age and was assisted in his religious studies by his relatives, including his mother's cousin and older brother.

Khomeini was a high ranking cleric in Twelver Shi'ism, an ayatollah, a marja' ("source of emulation"), a Mujtahid or faqīh (an expert in sharia), and author of more than 40 books.

He was raised by his mother, Agha Khanum, and his aunt, Sahebeth, following the murder of his father, Mustafa Musawi, over two years after his birth in 1903.

Ruhollah began to study the Qur'an and elementary Persian at the age of six.

The following year, he began to attend a local school, where he learned religion, noheh khani (lamentation recital), and other traditional subjects.

Throughout his childhood, he continued his religious education with the assistance of his relatives, including his mother's cousin, Ja'far, and his elder brother, Morteza Pasandideh.

After World War I arrangements were made for him to study at the Islamic seminary in Isfahan, but he was attracted instead to the seminary in Arak.

He was placed under the leadership of Ayatollah Abdolkarim Haeri Yazdi.

In 1920, Khomeini moved to Arak and commenced his studies.

The following year, Ayatollah Haeri Yazdi transferred to the Islamic seminary in the holy city of Qom, southwest of Tehran, and invited his students to follow.

Khomeini accepted the invitation, moved, and took up residence at the Dar al-Shafa school in Qom.

Khomeini's studies included Islamic law (sharia) and jurisprudence (fiqh), but by that time, Khomeini had also acquired an interest in poetry and philosophy (irfan).

So, upon arriving in Qom, Khomeini sought the guidance of Mirza Ali Akbar Yazdi, a scholar of philosophy and mysticism.

Yazdi died in 1924, but Khomeini continued to pursue his interest in philosophy with two other teachers, Javad Aqa Maleki Tabrizi and Rafi'i Qazvini.

However, perhaps Khomeini's biggest influences were another teacher, Mirza Muhammad 'Ali Shahabadi, and a variety of historic Sufi mystics, including Mulla Sadra and Ibn Arabi.

His opposition to the White Revolution resulted in his state-sponsored expulsion to Bursa in 1964.

Nearly a year later, he moved to Najaf, where speeches he gave outlining his religiopolitical theory of Guardianship of the Jurist were complied into Islamic Government.

He was Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1979 for his international influence, and Khomeini has been described as the "virtual face of Shia Islam in Western popular culture", where he was known for his support of the hostage takers during the Iran hostage crisis, his fatwa calling for the murder of British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, and for referring to the United States as the "Great Satan" and the Soviet Union as the "Lesser Satan".

Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's first supreme leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he held until his death.

Most of his period in power was taken up by the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988.

He was succeeded by Ali Khamenei on 4 June 1989.

The subject of a pervasive cult of personality, Khomeini is officially known as Imam Khomeini inside Iran and by his supporters internationally.

His funeral was attended by up to 10 million people, or 1/6 of the population, the largest funeral at the time and one of the largest human gatherings in history.

In Iran, his gold-domed tomb in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahrāʾ cemetery has become a shrine for his adherents, and he is legally considered "inviolable", with Iranians regularly punished for insulting him.

His supporters view him as a champion of Islamic revival, anti-racism and anti-imperialism.

Critics accuse him of human rights violations (including his ordering of attacks against demonstrators, execution of thousands of political prisoners, war criminals and prisoners of the Iran–Iraq War), as well as for using child soldiers extensively during the Iran-Iraq war for human wave attacks, estimates are as high as 100,000 for the number of children killed.

Ruhollah Khomeini came from a lineage of small land owners, clerics, and merchants.

His ancestors migrated towards the end of the 18th century from their original home in Nishapur, Khorasan province, in northeastern part of Iran, for a short stay, to the Kingdom of Awadh, a region in the modern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, whose rulers were Twelver Shia Muslims of Persian origin.

During their rule they extensively invited, and received, a steady stream of Persian scholars, poets, jurists, architects, and painters.

The family eventually settled in the small town of Kintoor, near Lucknow, the capital of Awadh.

Ayatollah Khomeini's paternal grandfather, Seyyed Ahmad Musavi Hindi, was born in Kintoor.