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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Imam Khomeini: A Short Biography Childhood And Early Education Ruhullah Musawi Khomeini was born on 20 Jamadi al-Akhir 1320/ 24 September 1902, the anniversary of the birth of Hazrat Fatima, in the small town of Khumayn, some 160 kilometers to the southwest of Qum. He was the child of a family with a long tradition of religious scholarship.

His ancestors, descendants of Imam Musa al-Kazim, the seventh Imam of the , had migrated towards the end of the eighteenth century from their original home in Nishapur to the Lucknow region of northern India. There they settled in the small town of Kintur and began devoting themselves to the religious instruction and guidance of the region’s predominantly Shi’i population. The most celebrated member of the family was Mir Hamid Husayn (d.

1880), author of ‘Abaqat al-Anwar fi Imamat al-A’immat al-Athar , a voluminous work on the topics traditionally disputed by Sunni and Shi’i Muslims. [^1] Imam Khomeini’s grandfather, Sayyid Ahmad, a contemporary of Mir Hamid Husayn, left Lucknow some time in the middle of the nineteenth century on pilgrimage to the tomb of Hazrat ‘Ali in Najaf. [^2] While in Najaf, Sayyid Ahmad made the acquaintance of a certain Yusuf Khan, a prominent citizen of Khumayn.

Accepting his invitation, he decided to settle in Khumayn to assume responsibility for the religious needs of its citizens and also took Yusuf Khan’s daughter in marriage.

Although Sayyid Ahmad’s links with India were cut by this decision, he continued to be known to his contemporaries as “Hindi,” an appellation, which was inherited by his descendants; we see even that Imam Khomeini used “Hindi” as penname in some of his ghazals.[^3] Shortly before the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in February 1978, the Shah’s regime attempted to use this Indian element in the Imam’s family background to depict him as an alien and traitorous element in Iranian society, an attempt that as will be seen backfired on its author.

By the time of his death, the date of which is unknown, Sayyid Ahmad had fathered two children: a daughter by the name of Sahiba, and Sayyid Mustafa Hindi, born in 1885, the father of Imam Khomeini. Sayyid Mustafa began his religious education in Isfahan with Mir Muhammad Taqi Mudarrisi before continuing his studies in Najaf and Samarra under the guidance of Mirza Hasan Shirazi (d.1894), the principal authority of the age in Shi’i jurisprudence.