Ruhollah Mousavi was born to Ayatollah Seyyed Mostafa Musavi and Hajieh Agha Khanum, also called Hajar, in the town of Khomein, about 300 kilometers south of the capital Tehran, Iran, possibly on May 17, 1900 or September 24, 1902. He was a Seyyed from a religious family that are descendants of Prophet Mohammad, through the seventh Imam, (Imam Mousa Kazem). His paternal grandfather was Seyyed Ahmad Musavi, whose third wife, Sakineh, gave birth to Mostafa in 1856. Imam Khomeini's maternal grandfather was Mirza Ahmad Mojtahed-e Khonsari, a high-ranking cleric in central Iran whose Fatwa for banning usage of Tobacco in opposition to a monopoly granted by Shah to a British company, led to cancellation of the concession. Imam Khomeini's father was murdered when he was five months old, and he was raised by his mother and one of his aunts. Later, when he was 15, his mother and aunt died in the same year. At the age of six he began to study the Quran, Islam's holy book. He received his early education at home and at the local school, under the supervision of Mullah Abdul-Qassem and Sheikh Jaffar, and was under the guardianship of his elder brother, Ayatollah Pasandideh, until he was 18 years old. Arrangements were made for him to study at the Islamic seminary in Esfahan, but he was attracted, instead, to the seminary in Arak, which was renowned for its scholastic brilliance under the leadership of Ayatollah Sheikh Abdol-Karim Haeri-Yazdi (himself a pupil of some of the greatest scholars of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq) (Source: Khamenei.ir).
Grand Ayatollah Ruh Allah Khomeini: Leading Figure of Islamic Revolution
