On 18^th April 1939, a few months before the outbreak of World War II, the future leader of Islamic Iran was born in the holy city of Mashhad, Khorasan. Sayyed Ali was the second son of the clerical family of Sayyed Javad Khamenei, a humble, poor theological scholar who taught all members of his family how to lead a simple, humble way of life. "My father, though a well-known religious figure, was a bit of an ascetic. We had a hard life. Sometimes for supper we had nothing but bread with some raisins, which our mother had somehow improvised.... our house, some sixty-five square meters, consisted of a single room and a gloomy basement. When visitors came to see my father as the local cleric to consult about their problems, the family had to move into the basement while the visit went on.... Years later some charitable persons bought the small, empty lot adjacent to our house, so we were able to build two more rooms! "

            At the age of four Sayyed Ali, accompanied by his elder brother Mohammad, was sent to maktab ,  an old-fashioned primary-school, to learn the alphabet and the Quran. Later, he was transferred to a newly established, Islamic school to continue his learning. 

After this primary schooling, he pursued his studies at the theological seminary in Mashhad. " The main encouraging factors for this enlightened decision were my parents, especially my father ", says Ayatollah Khamenei today. At Soleiman Khan and Nawwab Religious schools and under the supervision of his father and the tutorships of some great religious scholars, he took up all the 'intermediate level ' curricula including logic, Philosophy and Islamic Jurisprudence in the surprisingly short course of about 5 years and started his ' advanced studies ' called darsi kharij with such eminent scholars and tutors as Grand Ayatollah Milani

            The young sayyed Ali was only eighteen years old when he started his studies at the highest level. In the meantime, he decided to make a pilgrimage to the holy shrines in Iraq, and so he left Iran for Najaf in 1957. He was fascinated by the theological, academic ways of Islamic instructions by such eminent scholarly ayatollahas as Hakim, Shahrudi, Zanjani, Yazdi and Borujerdi. He attended their lessons and was willing to stay there and continue to profit from these excellent teachers. Yet his father made it known that he preferred that his son took up his further advanced studies in the holy city of Qum, near Tehran. Thus, respecting his father’s preference, he returned to Iran in 1958. 

Diligently and enthusiastically he followed his advanced studies in Qum from 1958 to 1964 and benefited from the teachings of great scholars and grand ayatollahs as Borujerdi, Khomeini, Haeri Yazdi and Tabatabai.

But now he learned that his father had lost his sight in one eye and was not able to read properly. This prompted him to return to Mashhad and while being at the service of his father, seek further knowledge from him, from Ayatollah Milani and other important scholars residing in Mashhad. The Young Sayyed Ali who had now become a mujtahid  by having completed his advanced level studies, began to teach various, religious subjects to younger Seminary and University students.

Recalling this important point of departure in his life, the present Leader of the Islamic Iran, has this to say: “ If there has been any successes in my life, they should all go back to God’s blessings favored on me because of my dutiful caring for parents.”

            “In the areas of political and revolutionary ideas and Islamic jurisprudence, I am certainly a disciple of Imam Khomeini”, says Ayatollah Khamenei. He adds: “Yet the very first sparks of consciousness on Islamic, revolutionary ideas and the duty to fight the shah’s despotism and his British supporters, was kindled in my soul at the age of 13 when the brave cleric, Nawwab Safavi, later martyred by the Shah’s regime, came to our school in Mashhad in 1952 and delivered a fiery speech against the Shah’s anti-Islamic, deceitful policies.”

It was in Qum in 1962, however, that Sayyed Ali joined the ranks of the revolutionary followers of Imam Khomeini who opposed the pro-American, anti-Islamic policies of the Shah’s regime.

Dedicatedly and fearlessly he followed this path for the next 16 years which ultimately led to the downfall of the Shah’s brutal regime: persecutions, tortures, imprisonments and exile could not make him waver for a moment.

In May 1963 (corresponding to the holy month of muharram) Imam Khomeini honored the young, brave cleric, Sayyed Ali, with the mission of taking a secret message to Ayatollah Milani in Mashhad and other clergymen in Khorasan province on the ways and tactics of exposing the true nature of the Shah’s regime. He fulfilled this mission properly and travelled to the city of Birjand for further propagation of Imam Khomeini’s policies. Here he was arrested for the first time and spent one night in jail and the authorities ordered him the following day not to speak at the pulpit again! From that moment he knew that he would be under police surveillance all the time. Of course he did not submit to police threats, and as a result of his activities relating to the bloody June 1963 Uprising (15^th of Khordad ) he was again arrested and transferred to Mashhad to spend some ten days in prison under very severe conditions.

In January 1964 ( Ramadhan 1383 ) according to a well-organized plan, Khamenei and a few close friends traveled to Kirman and Zahedan, southern Iran, to expose the phony  referendum the Shah was holding for his so-called reforms. There in the course of many public speeches, he exposed the Satanic, American policies of the Pahlavi regime; This time, therefore, the Shah’s feared Intelligence Agency, SAVAK, stepped in and arrested him one late evening. He was taken to Tehran by an airplane to spend some two months in solitary confinement bearing many types of maltreatment and torture.

Once freed, he started holding lessons on the exegeses of the Quran, the Prophetic Traditions and Islamic ideology in Mashhad and Tehran, which were most welcome by the revolutionary Iranian youth. As he was sure now that SAVAK was watching him closely, he was forced to go underground in 1967; Yet he was arrested again for holding such classes and Islamic discussions.

Ayatollah Khamenei has himself explained the reasons for such measures by SAVAK:

“From 1970 onwards, grounds for an armed movement were being laid. Accordingly the regime’s sensitivity and severity of action against me increased. They could not believe that the armed actions were not connected with a sound, Islamic ideology. They thought that there must be links between these revolutionaries and people like me because of my intellectual and purposeful activities. Despite all this, after I was released, more and more people attended my classes on the Quranic teachings, and many were present at our clandestine gatherings. “

            Throughout the years 1972-1975, Ayatollah Khamenei was holding classes on Quranic, Islamic ideology in three different mosques in Mashhad. These classes together with his lectures on Nahjulbalaqa of Imam Ali (AS) attracted thousands of the conscious, political-minded youth and students; The lectures were circulated, in hand-written or typed forms, in nearly towns and cities. His students travelled to distant cities to spread his lessons and ideas. All this frightened the Shah’s SAVAK agents, and so, in the winter of 1975, they broke into his home in Mashhad, arrested him for the 6^th time and confiscated all his books and notes. Now he was detained in Tehran’s notorious “Police-SAVAK Joint Prison” for many months. This had been his most trying imprisonment, and Ayatollah Khamenei has this to say about the barbarous treatment of the detainees: “These conditions may be understood only by those who suffered them!”

 In the autumn of 1975, he was freed and sent back to Mashhad and he was now completely banned from delivering lectures or holding classes.

His clandestine activities, however, prompted SAVAK to apprehend him in the winter of 1976 and sentence him to exile for some three years. This difficult period came to an end earlier in the latter part of 1978 due to prevailing conditions, and Khamenei could return to Mashhad months before the triumphant Islamic Revolution. He persistently followed his political, Islamic activities in the epoch-making period of civil unrest and mass demonstrations throughout Iran, and thus, after some 15 years of bearing all sorts of tortures and maltreatments at the hands of the agents of the Shah’s bloodthirsty regime, he could now witness the fall of the tyrannical Pahlavi regime and the rise of an Islamic Republic in Iran.

              Shortly before the  actual triumph of the Islamic Revolution (February 11, 1979) and before Imam Khomeini’s victorious return to Iran from Paris, an Islamic Revolutionary Council was formed at the behest of the Imam. Ayatollah Khamenei was appointed as a member of this Council together with other important, Islamic figures as Ayatollahs Motahhari, Beheshti, and Hashemi Rafsanjani. He, therefore, left Mashhad for Tehran to take up his new responsibilities.

The following is a chronological list of the services he has rendered to the Islamic Republic since that time:

1980- Founding member of the Islamic Republic party, together with such Religious and Mujahids as Beheshti, Rafsanjani, Bahonar, and Musavi-Ardebili.

-         Deputy-Minister of Defence.

-         Supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

-         Imam of Tehran’s Friday Congregational Prayers, by Imam Khomeini’s decree.

-         Elected Tehran MP in the  Majlis(Consultative Assembly)

1981- Imam Khomeini’s representative at the High Council of Defence.

-         Active presence at the fronts of the Iraqi-imposed war on Iran.

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1982- Elected President of the IRI ( after the martyrdom of President Mohammad Ali Rajai; Khamenei was himself the target of an assassination attempt at Abudhar mosque in Tehran which hospitalized him for a few months.)

-         Appointed Chairman of the Revolution’s Cultural Council.

1986-  President of the Expediency Council.

-         Reelected President for a second, 4-year term.>

1990-  Chairman of the Committee for Revision of the Constitution.

-         Elected by the Majlis of Islamic Experts as the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran after the demise of Imam Khomeini.

            To complete this very brief biography, let us take a glimpse at the list of Ayatollah Khamenei’s written works:

Authorship:

1. Islamic Thought in the Quran (an outline)

2. The Profundity of Prayer

3. A Discourse on Patience

4. On the 4 Principal Books concerning the Biography of Narrators.

5. Guardianship (wilaaya)

6. The Islamic seminary of Mashhad (a general report)

7. Imam Al-Saadiq (AS)

8. Unity and Political Parties

9. Arts: Personal views

10. Understanding Religion Properly

11. Struggles of Shi’ite Imams (AS)

12. The Essence of God’s Unity

13. The Necessity of Returning to the Quran

14. Imam Al-Sajjad (AS)

15. Imam Reza (AS) and his appointment as crown prince.

16. The Cultural Invasion (Collection of speeches)

17. Collections of speeches and messages ( 9 volumes )

           Translations: (from Arabic into Persian)

1. Peace Treaty of Imam Hassan (AS) , by Raazi Aal-yasseen

2. The Future in Islamic Lands, by Sayyed Gutb

3. Muslims in the Liberation Movement of India, by Abdulmun’im Nassri

4. An Indictment against the Western Civilization, by Sayyed Gutb