A great
position
in peace

The life of Ayatollah Khamenei began in Mashhad — a city that was both his birthplace and the first ground on which his religious, scholarly, and social character was formed. He was born on 28 April 1939, into a clerical and scholarly family. His father, Ayatollah Sayyid Jawad Khamenei, was a devout and austere scholar devoted to teaching and far from luxury; his mother, Banu Mirdamadi, was a devout and literate woman familiar with the Quran, hadith, history, and literature. His childhood home was a small, simple house in a poor district of Mashhad — a home that, in official accounts, is presented as a symbol of unpretentious life, contentment, and spiritual upbringing. It was in this setting that his first encounters with the Quran, ethics, knowledge, and the hardships of life took shape — a quiet but deeply rooted beginning for a path that would later lead to religious study, struggle, responsibility, and the leadership of the community.

“A small home, yet filled with the Quran, knowledge, contentment, and faith — the beginning of a story that started in Mashhad.”

Ayatollah Khamenei's scholarly path began in his early childhood, and with the Quran. At the age of four, together with his older brother, he went to a maktab to learn the alphabet and the Quran — a simple but decisive beginning for a personality whose later intellectual and social life would be bound to the understanding, interpretation, and articulation of the Quran. He then completed his primary education at Dar al-Ta'lim-e Diyani, one of the first Islamic schools in Mashhad, and became familiar with Quranic recitation and tajwid alongside his formal studies. His strong interest in the religious sciences, encouraged by both parents, led him after primary school to enter the path of the seminary. The Madraseh-ye Soleiman Khan and later the Madraseh-ye Navvab were his first serious stations of seminary study — where a young man risen from a simple home stepped onto a path that began with the Quran and reached toward a deep understanding of faith, thought, and social responsibility.

“This path began with a book — with the maktab, with the Quran, and with the longing that drew a child toward the way of the seminary.”

After the first years of study in Mashhad, Ayatollah Khamenei's scholarly path entered a new stage — a stage of migration, completion, and return. In 1957, on a short journey, he traveled to Najaf and attended the lessons of a number of the great masters of the Najaf seminary; but owing to his father's reluctance to settle in that city, he returned to Mashhad. A year later, in 1958, he set out for Qom to continue his advanced seminary studies — a city in which he benefited from the presence of masters such as Ayatollah Borujerdi, Imam Khomeini, Ayatollah Ha'eri Yazdi, Ayatollah Mohaghegh Damad, and Allameh Tabataba'i. The Qom period was an important one in his scholarly, jurisprudential, usul, and intellectual deepening. But in 1964, an eye affliction of his father led him to leave Qom and return to Mashhad — a return that brought teaching, Quranic interpretation, and the beginning of a new stage of scholarly and social influence.

“From Mashhad to Najaf and Qom, the path of knowledge was for him not merely a passage from one city to another; it was a way of joining knowledge, ethics, and responsibility.”

In the narrative of Ayatollah Khamenei's life, politics and struggle form only one part of the picture. Before his name became tied to great political and revolutionary responsibilities, he was intimate with the book, poetry, history, the Quran, literature, and Islamic thought. From his seminary years he turned to study, research, writing, and translation, and alongside his seminary lessons he formed a serious connection with the novel, the short story, poetry, and history. His presence in the literary circles of Mashhad, his criticism of poetry, his connection with poets and writers, and his choice of the pen name Amin form part of this cultural face. His writings and translations in the years before the revolution were not merely private scholarly works; many were an effort at religious awakening, the articulation of Islamic thought, and an answer to the intellectual needs of the younger generation. This chapter narrates a figure who was a man of struggle, but whose struggle drew its strength from thought, the book, and the word.

“Before the field of struggle had begun, the field of thought, of the book, and of the word had taken shape in his soul.”

Ayatollah Khamenei's entry into the field of struggle was neither sudden nor merely political; it was rooted in a religious upbringing, acquaintance with the awakening currents of Islamic thought, and an intellectual bond with the movement of Imam Khomeini. The first sparks of this path were kindled by his meeting with Sayyid Mojtaba Navvab Safavi in Mashhad — a meeting that, in the official account, is recalled as the beginning of the revolutionary gleams in his mind and heart. With the rise of the Islamic movement in 1962, his activities entered a more serious stage. On the eve of Muharram 1963, he was tasked with delivering the messages of Imam Khomeini to the clerics and religious gatherings of Khorasan, and then in Birjand, through revealing speeches against the Pahlavi regime, he experienced his first official arrest. After that, the years of struggle continued with prison, restrictions, security surveillance, a ban on the pulpit, and finally exile to Iranshahr; but these pressures were not the end of the road — they were part of the formation of his character as a struggler, resilient, and awakener.

“For him struggle was not only protest; it was articulation, it was awareness, it was the pulpit, it was prison, and it was steadfastness.”

Alongside prison, exile, and revealing speeches, a significant part of Ayatollah Khamenei's struggle was formed in the mosque, in the classroom, and in the sessions of Quranic interpretation. He did not see struggle only at the level of political protest; he held it to require intellectual formation, the strengthening of faith, a social understanding of the Quran, and the awakening of the younger generation. In the years before the revolution, his lessons and tafsir sessions in Mashhad — from school and mosque to the home — became a place of regular attendance for school pupils, students, young seminarians, and various sections of the people. These sessions acquainted their audiences with an active, social, and responsibility-forming vision of Islam. The Mosque of Imam Hasan, the Mosque of Qibla, the Madraseh-ye Mirza Ja'far, the home sessions, and later the Mosque of Karamat were each a part of this path — a path that showed how a single session of tafsir could be as awakening and effective as a political action.

“In the heart of the mosque, the Quran was not merely recited; it was understood, bound to life, and called the younger generation to responsibility.”

As the Islamic Revolution approached victory, the role of Ayatollah Khamenei moved beyond local activity, revealing speeches, and intellectual sessions, and reached the level of the revolution's high-level decision-making. In late January 1979, after membership in the Revolutionary Council, he left Mashhad and came to Tehran, where he settled at the Refah School and, alongside figures such as Shahid Beheshti, Shahid Motahari, and Shahid Mofatteh, played a role in the final stage of the revolution's victory and the shaping of the country's future. Responsibility for the Propaganda Committee for the Reception of Imam Khomeini, presence in the Revolutionary Council, the deputyship at the Ministry of Defense, the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Friday imamate of Tehran, a seat in parliament, and an active presence on the fronts at the start of the war are each a part of this eventful period — a period in which the struggler of yesterday became one of the principal directors and articulators of the nascent Islamic Republic.

“The early days of the revolution were days of building in the midst of crisis; from the Refah School to the war fronts, the responsibilities settled on his shoulders one after another.”

After the first years of the revolution, the path of Ayatollah Khamenei's life entered a new stage — a stage in which the experience of struggle, articulation, revolutionary management, and presence in the field of defense was bound to national responsibilities. On 27 June 1981, while speaking after the noon prayer at the Abu Dhar Mosque in Tehran, he was the target of an assassination attempt and was gravely wounded; after treatment he returned once more to the arena of politics and society. A few months later, after the martyrdom of Mohammad Ali Rajai, he was elected president by a broad vote of the people in the presidential elections of October 1981. His presidency was accompanied by the imposed war, the organization of executive structures, the pursuit of cultural questions, connection with the people, domestic travels, and active diplomacy. At the end of this period, after the passing of Imam Khomeini, the Assembly of Experts convened on 4 June 1989 and elected him Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“From the wound at the Abu Dhar Mosque to the responsibility of leadership, this chapter is the narrative of passage through crisis, of steadfastness, and of guidance.”