📍Khomein, Markazi Province, Iran
1902 – 1989“I was born Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini on the 22nd of September 1902 in Khomein, a small city in central Iran. I became a Shia cleric, a theologian, and eventually the most politically consequential Islamic scholar of the twentieth century. I opposed the Shah's modernisation programme, was exiled in 1964, and spent fifteen years in Najaf and then Paris. I returned to Tehran on the 1st of February 1979 to lead the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah and established the Islamic Republic — the first theocratic state of the modern era. I issued the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I led Iran through the eight-year war with Iraq. I died in 1989. Khomein and the Shia theological tradition of Qom shaped a man who believed that Islamic governance was both possible and necessary.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Moin, B. Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (1999), Thomas Dunne Books; Abrahamian, E. Khomeinism (1993), University of California Press