Editing Ruhollah Khomeini (section)

== Early years ==
=== Background ===
[[File:Ruhollah Khomeini birthplace 5.jpg|thumb|Khomeini's birthplace at [[Khomeyn]]]]

Ruhollah Khomeini came from a lineage of small land owners, clerics, and merchants.<ref>{{cite book |first=Ervand |last=Abrahamian |title=Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin |publisher=[[I.B. Tauris]] |date=1989 |isbn=1-85043-077-2 |page=20}}</ref> His ancestors migrated towards the end of the 18th century from their original home in [[Nishapur]], then part of [[Khorasan province]], in northeastern Iran for a short stay to the [[Kingdom of Awadh]], a region in the modern state of [[Uttar Pradesh]], India, whose [[Padshah-i-Oudh|rulers]] were Twelver Shi'a Muslims of [[Persian people|Persian]] origin.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Algar |first1=Hamid |author-link1=Hamid Algar |editor1-last=Koya |editor1-first=Abdar Rahman |title=Imam Khomeini: Life, Thought and Legacy |date=2010 |publisher=Islamic Book Trust |isbn=978-9675062254 |page=19 |chapter=A short biography}}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ntarP5hrza0C&dq=awadh+persian&pg=PA8 Sacred space and holy war: the politics, culture and history of Shi'ite Islam] by Juan Ricardo Cole</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=7BaVwfpWZgUC&dq=awadh+origin&pg=RA2-PA17 Art and culture: endeavours in interpretation] by Ahsan Jan Qaisar, Som Prakash Verma, Mohammad Habib</ref> During their rule, they extensively invited and received a steady stream of Persian scholars, poets, jurists, architects, and painters.<ref name="Avadh">''Encyclopædia Iranica'', [http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/avadh-english-also-audh-or-oudh-an-ancient-cultural-and-administrative-region-lying-between-the-himalayas-and-the-ganges-i "Avadh"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517012521/http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/avadh-english-also-audh-or-oudh-an-ancient-cultural-and-administrative-region-lying-between-the-himalayas-and-the-ganges-i|date=17 May 2017}}, E. Yarshater</ref> The family eventually settled in the small town of [[Kintoor]], near [[Lucknow]], the capital of Awadh.<ref name="Hamid">Ruhollah Khomeini's brief biography by Hamid Algar</ref><ref name="Iranian">[http://www.iranian.com/Books/1999/June/Khomeini/index.html From Khomein, ''A biography of the Ayatollah''], 14 June 1999, The Iranian</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=rNrMilgHKKEC&dq=Seyyed+Ahmad+Musavi+Hindi&pg=PA199 The Columbia world dictionary of Islamism] by Olivier Roy, Antoine Sfeir</ref><ref name="Moin1999">[https://books.google.com/books?id=B-ihPNR4iaoC&dq=Seyyed+Ahmad+Musavi+Hindi&pg=PA2 Khomeini: life of the Ayatollah, Volume 1999] by Baqer Moin</ref>

Ayatollah Khomeini's paternal grandfather, [[Ahmad Hindi]], was born in Kintoor.<ref name="Iranian" /><ref name="Moin1999" /> He left Lucknow in 1830, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of [[Ali]] in [[Najaf]], [[Ottoman Iraq]] (now Iraq), and never returned.<ref name="Hamid" /><ref name="Moin1999" /> According to biographer [[Baqer Moin]], this migration was to escape from the spread of [[East India Company|British power]] in India.<ref name="moin18">{{harvnb|Moin|2000|p=18}}</ref> In 1834, Seyyed Ahmad Musavi Hindi visited Iran, and in 1839, he settled in [[Khomein]].<ref name="Iranian" /> Although he stayed and settled in Iran, he continued to be known as ''[[Al-Hind|Hindi]]'', indicating his stay in India, and Ruhollah Khomeini even used ''Hindi'' as a pen name in some of his [[ghazal]]s.<ref name="Hamid" /> Khomeini's grandfather, Mirza Ahmad Mojtahed-e Khonsari was the cleric issuing a fatwa to forbid usage of tobacco during the [[Tobacco Protest]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Imam Khomeini's Biography |url=http://english.khamenei.ir/news/2116/Imam-Khomeini-s-Biography |date=21 February 2015 |access-date=17 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403160844/http://english.khamenei.ir/news/2116/Imam-Khomeini-s-Biography |archive-date=3 April 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Moin |first1=Baqer |title=Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah |publisher=[[I.B. Tauris]] |isbn=978-1-84511-790-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2OL9IEXaAgC |orig-date=1999 |date=2009}}</ref>

=== Childhood ===
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]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Ruhollah Khomeini's birth date |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ruhollah-Khomeini/additional-info#Researchers-Note |website=britannica.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230412021509/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ruhollah-Khomeini/additional-info#Researchers-Note |archive-date=12 April 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–1989) |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/khomeini_ayatollah.shtml |access-date=20 June 2013 |website=bbc.co.uk |publisher=[[BBC]]}}</ref> 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.<ref name="rei310">{{Harvnb|Reich|1990|p=310}}</ref>

Ruhollah began to study the [[Qur'an]] and elementary Persian at the age of six.<ref name="rei311">{{harvnb|Reich|1990|p=311}}</ref> The following year, he began to attend a local school, where he learned religion, ''noheh khani'' (lamentation recital), and other traditional subjects.<ref name="moin18" /> Throughout his childhood, he continued his religious education with the assistance of his relatives, including his mother's cousin, Ja'far,<ref name="moin18" /> and his elder brother, Morteza Pasandideh.<ref name="mil85">{{harvnb|Milani|1994|p=85}}</ref>

=== Education and lecturing ===
[[File:خمینی و همدرسان.JPG|thumb|left|Khomeini as a student with his friends (second from right)]]
[[File:Ayatollah Khomeini young.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Khomeini in 1938]]

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, Iran|Arak]]. He was placed under the leadership of [[Ayatollah]] [[Abdolkarim Haeri Yazdi]].<ref>{{harvnb|Moin|2000|p=22}}</ref> In 1920, Khomeini moved to Arak and commenced his studies.<ref>{{harvnb|Brumberg|2001|p=45}}. "By 1920, the year Khomeini moved to Arak..."</ref> 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,<ref name="mil85" /> and took up residence at the Dar al-Shafa school in Qom.<ref>{{harvnb|Moin|2000|p=28}}. "Khomeini's madraseh in Qom was known as the Dar al-Shafa..."</ref> Khomeini's studies included Islamic law (''[[sharia]]'') and jurisprudence (''[[fiqh]]''),<ref name="rei311" /> 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 (noble)|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.<ref>{{harvnb|Moin|2000|p=42}}</ref><ref name="bru46">{{harvnb|Brumberg|2001|p=46}}</ref> However, perhaps Khomeini's biggest influences were another teacher, [[Mohammad Ali Shah Abadi]],<ref>{{harvnb|Rāhnamā|1994|pp=70–71}}</ref> and a variety of historic [[Sufi]] [[mysticism|mystics]], including [[Mulla Sadra]] and [[Ibn Arabi]].<ref name="bru46" />

Khomeini studied [[ancient Greek philosophy]] and was influenced by both the philosophy of [[Aristotle]], whom he regarded as the founder of logic,<ref name="imamreza">{{cite web |title=Philosophy as Viewed by Ruhollah Khomeini |url=http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?print=4250 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614032732/http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?print=4250 |archive-date=14 June 2011 |access-date=19 March 2010 |website=imamreza.net}}</ref> and [[Plato]], whose views "in the field of divinity" he regarded as "grave and solid".<ref>Kashful-Asrar, p. 33 by Ruhollah Khomeini</ref> Among Islamic philosophers, Khomeini was mainly influenced by [[Avicenna]] and Mulla Sadra.<ref name="imamreza" /> Apart from philosophy, Khomeini was interested in literature and poetry. His poetry collection was released after his death. Beginning in his adolescent years, Khomeini composed mystic, political and social poetry. His poetry works were published in three collections: ''The Confidant'', ''The Decanter of Love and Turning Point'', and ''Divan''.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.irib.ir/Ouriran/imam/writing/html/en/page9.htm |title=Introduction of Iman's works |access-date=29 June 2007 |website=irib.ir |archive-date=15 October 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071015112221/http://www.irib.ir/Ouriran/imam/writing/html/en/page9.htm}}.</ref> His knowledge of poetry is further attested by the modern poet [[Nader Naderpour]] (1929–2000), who "had spent many hours exchanging poems with Khomeini in the early 1960s". Naderpour remembered: "For four hours we recited poetry. Every single line I recited from any poet, he recited the next."<ref>Farhang Rajaee, ''Islamism and Modernism: The Changing Discourse in Iran'', [[University of Texas Press]], (2010), p. 116.</ref>

Ruhollah Khomeini was a lecturer at [[Najaf]] and Qom seminaries for decades before he was known on the political scene. He soon became a leading scholar of Shia Islam.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/khomeini_ayatollah.shtml |title=BBC – History – Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–1989) |website=bbc.co.uk |publisher=[[BBC]] |date=4 June 1989 |access-date=19 March 2010}}</ref> He taught political philosophy,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.irib.ir/Occasions/hejrate%20imam-Kuwait/imam.en.HTM |title=Imam Khomeini to Kuwait |access-date=29 June 2007 |website=irib.ir |archive-date=27 March 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080327052418/http://www.irib.ir/Occasions/hejrate%20imam-Kuwait/imam.en.HTM}}.</ref> Islamic history and ethics. Several of his students, for example [[Morteza Motahhari]], later became leading Islamic philosophers and also ''[[marja']]''. As a scholar and teacher, Khomeini produced numerous writings on Islamic philosophy, law, and ethics.<ref name="Britannica01">{{cite encyclopedia |author=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9045329/Ruhollah-Khomeini |title=Ruhollah Khomeini |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |access-date=19 March 2010}}</ref> He showed an exceptional interest in subjects like philosophy and [[mysticism]] that not only were usually absent from the curriculum of seminaries but were often an object of hostility and suspicion.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.irib.ir/Occasions/imam%20khomeini/ImamKhomeini-en.HTM |title=پایگاه اطلاع رسانی روابط عمومی سازمان صدا و سیما |access-date=29 June 2007 |website=irib.ir |archive-date=15 October 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071015112215/http://www.irib.ir/Occasions/imam%20khomeini/ImamKhomeini-en.HTM}}.</ref>

Inaugurating his teaching career at the age of 27 by giving private lessons on irfan and Mulla Sadra to a private circle, around the same time, in 1928, he also released his first publication, ''Sharh Du'a al-Sahar'' (Commentary on the [[Du'a al-Baha]]), "a detailed commentary, in [[Arabic]], on the prayer recited before dawn during Ramadan by Imam [[Ja'far al-Sadiq]]", followed, some years later, by ''Sirr al-Salat'' (Secret of the Prayer), where "the symbolic dimensions and inner meaning of every part of the prayer, from the ablution that precedes it to the salam that concludes it, are expounded in a rich, complex, and eloquent language that owes much to the concepts and terminology of [[Ibn 'Arabi]]. As Sayyid Fihri, the editor and translator of ''Sirr al-Salat'', has remarked, the work is addressed only to the foremost among the spiritual elite (akhass-i khavass) and establishes its author as one of their number."<ref>Ervand Abrahamian, ''Islam, Politics, and Social Movements'', [[University of California Press]], (1988), p. 269.</ref> The second book has been translated by Sayyid Amjad H. Shah Naqavi and released by [[Brill Publishers]] in 2015 under the title ''The Mystery of Prayer: The Ascension of the Wayfarers and the Prayer of the Gnostics''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Khomeini |first=Ruhollah |url=http://www.brill.com/products/book/mystery-prayer-0 |title=The Mystery of Prayer: The Ascension of the Wayfarers and the Prayer of the Gnostics |publisher=[[Brill Publishers]] |date=2015 |isbn=978-90-04-29831-6 |editor-last=Naqavi |editor-first=Sayyid Amjad Hussain Shah |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170706103106/http://www.brill.com/products/book/mystery-prayer-0 |archive-date=6 July 2017 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Political aspects ===
His seminary teaching often focused on the importance of religion to practical social and political issues of the day, and he worked against secularism in the 1940s. His first political book ''Kashf al-Asrar'' (''Uncovering of Secrets''),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_works.html#answer_kashf_al-asrar |title=Kashf al-Asrar |website=gemsofislamism.tripod.com |access-date=19 March 2010}}</ref><ref>Moin, Baqer, ''Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah'' (2001), p.{{nbsp}}60)</ref> published in 1942, was a point-by-point refutation of ''Asrar-e Hezar Sale'' (''Secrets of a Thousand Years''), a tract written by a disciple of Iran's leading [[anti-clerical]] historian [[Ahmad Kasravi]],<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ruhollah-musavi-khomeini-ayatollah/ |title=Encyclopedia of World Biography on Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, Ayatullah |publisher=[[Ambassadors Group|BookRags]] |access-date=19 March 2010}}</ref> as well as a condemnation of innovations such as international time zones,{{efn|In "A Warning to the Nation" published in 1941, Khomeini wrote, "We have nothing to say to those ... [who] have forfeited them faculties so completely to the foreigners that they even imitate them in matters of time; what is left for us to say to them? As you all know, noon is now officially reckoned in Tehran twenty minutes before the sun has reached the meridian, in imitation of Europe. So far no one has stood up to ask, "what nightmare is this into which we are being plunged?"

Prior to the International [[Time Zone]] system, every locality had its own time with 12 noon set to match the moment in that city when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. This was natural for an era when travel was relatively slow and infrequent but would have played havoc with railway timetables and general modern long-distance communications. In the decades after 1880 governments around the world replaced local time with 24 international time zones, each covering 15 degrees of the earth's longitude (with some exceptions for political boundaries).{{cite book |last=Khomeini |first=Ruhollah |title=Islam and Revolution: Writing and Declarations of Imam Khomeini |url=https://archive.org/details/islamrevolutionw00khom |url-access=registration |others=Translated and Annotated by Hamid Algar |publisher=Mizan Press |date=1981 |page=172}}{{Primary source inline|date=June 2021}}}} 
and the [[Kashf-e hijab|banning of hijab]] by [[Reza Shah]], whom he always blamed for his father's murder. In addition, he went from Qom to Tehran to listen to Ayatullah Hasan Mudarris, the leader of the opposition majority in [[Iran's parliament]] during the 1920s. Khomeini became a ''marja{{'}}'' in 1963, following the death of Grand Ayatollah [[Seyyed Husayn Borujerdi]]. Khomeini also valued the ideals of Islamists such as [[Sheikh Fazlollah Noori]] and [[Abol-Ghasem Kashani]]. Khomeini saw Fazlollah Nuri as a "heroic figure", and his own objections to constitutionalism and a secular government derived from Nuri's objections to the 1907 constitution.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AJ6i2-s7hoQC&q=khomeini+pepsi+roast+in+the+fires+of+hell&pg=PT107 |title=Khomeini's Ghost: Iran since 1979|author=Con Coughlin |date=2009 |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Pan MacMillan]] |isbn=978-0-230-74310-6}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TteJzQyDS5kC&q=khomeini+Shaikh+Fazlollah&pg=PA45 |title=Globalisation, Religion & Development |date=2011 |publisher=International Journal of Politics & Economics |page=45 |isbn=978-0-9568256-0-5}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OeqHjo6JkUsC&q=khomeini+Shaikh+Fazlollah&pg=PA159 |title=A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 3: The Islamicate Period, 1978–1984 |author=Hamid Naficy |date=2011 |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |page=159 |isbn=978-0-8223-4877-1}}</ref>