Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Jurisprudence (fiqh)

Introduction

The study of jurisprudence is one of the most extensive studies in Islam. Its history is older than all the other Islamic studies. Ithas been studied on a very wide scale throughout the whole of that time. So many jurisprudents have appeared in Islam that their numberscannot be counted .

The Word Jurisprudence (fiqh) in the Qur’an and the Traditions

The words fiqh and tafaqquh, both meaning “profound understanding”, have been often used in the Qur’an and in the Traditions. In the HolyQur’an we have been told:

“Why should not a company from every group of them go forth to gain profound understanding (tafaqquh) in religion and to warn their people when they return to them, so that they may beware. “ (9:122)

In the Traditions, the Holy Prophet has told us: “Whoever from my nation learns forty Traditions; God will raise him as a faqih (jurisprudent) an alim (a man of 'ilm or knowledge).”

We do not know for sure if the 'ulema and fuzala, the learned and distinguished, of the Prophet's companions were called fuqaha (jurisprudents), but it is certain that this name was applied to a group since the time of those who had not witnessed the Prophet but had witnessed those who had (tabi'in).

Seven of the tabi'inwere called 'the seven jurisprudents'. The year 94 A.H. which was the year of the departure from this world of Imam Ali ibn Husayn (d,) and the year in which Sa'id ibn Masib and Orwat ibn Zubayr of the “seven jurisprudents” and Sa'id ibn Jabir and others of the jurisprudents of Medina also passed away, was called the 'year of the jurisprudents'. Thereafter the word fuqahawas gradually given to those with knowledge of Islam, especially of the laws of Islam.

The holy Imams have repeatedly made use of these words. They have commanded some of their companions to profound understanding (taffaqquh) or have termed them as a master of jurisprudence or fuqaha (the plural of faqih, a jurisprudent). The prominent pupils of the Imams during that same periodwere known as Shi'ite fuqaha.

The word jurisprudence (fiqh) in the terminology of the 'ulema

In the terminology of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, fiqh is the extensive, profound knowledge of Islamic instructions and realities and has no special relevance to any particular division. In the terminology of the 'ulema, however, it gradually came to be especially applied to the profound understanding of the Islamic laws. The 'ulema of Islam have divided the Islamic teachings into three parts:

First, the realities and beliefs: the aim of which is awareness, faith and certitude, and which are related to the heart and the mind, containing issues like the issues related to the unseen past and the unseen future, to Prophethood, revelation, angels and Imamate.

Second, morality and self-perfection: the goals of which are the spiritual qualities of how to be and how not to be, containing issues like cautiousness of God (taqwa), justice ('idalat), generosity, courage, fortitude and patience (sabr) being satisfied and content with God (riza) firmness on the true path (istiqamat) and so on.

Third, the laws and issues of actions: whichis related to the special external actions that human beings must perform and how the actions they perform are to be and how they are not to be.

The jurisprudents of Islam have termed this last division, fiqh (jurisprudence), perhaps from the viewpoint that since the early days of Islam the laws were the most subject to attention and queries. Therefore, those whose specialty was in this subject came tobe known as the fuqaha (jurisprudents).

Two Types of Law

It is necessary that we mention some of the special terms of the jurisprudents. Amongst these is the names of the two divisions the jurisprudents have made of the Divine Laws: the laws of (human ) duty (hukm taklifi) and the laws of (human) situations (hukm waz'i).

The laws of duty include those duties which contain obligation, prohibition, desirability, undesirability, and, simple permissibility.

These five laws are termed as “the five laws” (ahkam khamsah).

The jurisprudents say that in the view of Islam no single action is empty of one of these five laws.Either it is obligatory (wajib), meaning that it must be done and must not be left undone, like the five daily ritual prayers, or it is forbidden (haram), meaning that it must not be performed and must be refrained from like lies, injustice, drinking alcohol and such like; or it is desirable (mustahab) meaning that it is good to do but leaving it undone is not a crime or sin, including such things as praying in a mosque; or it is undesirable (makruh), meaning that it is bad to do but if done no sin is committed, like talking about worldly affairs in a mosque which is a place of worship; or it is permissible (mubah), meaning that the doing of it and the not doing of it are exactly equal, and this includes most actions.

The laws regarding situation are not like the laws regarding duty. The laws regarding duty consist of “do's” and “don'ts”, commands and prohibitions, or the giving of permissions, while the laws of situation regard situations like marriage and ownership and the rights thereof.

Types of Obligation

Another issue is that the obligations, the things that are obligatory,are divided into many different classifications. Firstly, theyare divided into ta'abbudi and tawassuli.

Ta'abbodi means those things, the correct and valid performance of which depends upon the intention (niyyat) of nearness of God. That is, if the obligatory actionis performed solely with the intention of approaching the Divine without any worldly, material motive, it is correct and valid, and if not, it is not valid. Prayer and fasting are both “wajib ta'abbudi”

Wajib tawassuli, however, is that in which, even if performed, imagine, without the intention of nearness to God, still the obligationhas been met and one's duty fulfilled.Obeying one's parents, for example. Or the performance of responsibilities towards society, like if a person undertakes to do a certain work in return for a certain payment, the doing of that work.And , in fact, absolute loyalty to all one's promises is the same way.

Another way in which the obligationsare divided is into 'aini and kafa'i. An 'aini obligation means that which is obligatory on each and every individual, like prayer and fasting, and kafa'i obligation is that which is obligatory on the general Muslim population, and which, when performed by one or a group of them, is no longer obligatory on any of them. Such types of obligation include the needs of the community like the need for doctors, soldiers, judges, farmers, traders and so on. In the same class is the burial procedures of deceased Muslims that the general Muslim population is commanded to perform, which, when performed by some, are no longer obligatory on any.

Another way the obligationsare divided is into t'ayini and takhiyiri. A t'ayini obligation is that a special specified thing must be performed, like the daily prayers, fasting, Hajj, khums, zakat, commanding to what is recognized as good (amr bi m 'aruf), struggle (jihad), etc.

A takhiyiri obligation on the other hand, means that the duty-bound is to perform one thing out of two or several things. For example, if a person has intentionally not fasted one day during the holy month of Ramazan, it is a takhiyiri obligation for him either to free a slave, or to feed sixty poor people or to fast consecutively for two months.

Yet another way the obligationsare divided is into nafsi and muqaddami. A nafsi obligation means that the duty itself is the concern of the Shari'ah, and it is for its own sake that itis demanded , while a muqaddami obligation is obligatory for the sake of something else.

For example, to save a respected person's life is obligatory but this obligation is not a preparation for some other obligation. However, the actions needed in preparation for saving him, such as acquiring a rope or boat or other means of saving a person who, let us say, has fallen in a river and cannot swim, are also obligatory, not for their own sakes but as a preparation for a different obligation, the obligation of saving the man's life.

Or , for example, the actions of the Hajj are themselves obligatory, but the acquiring of a passport and ticket and the other preparations are obligatory in preparation. Prayer is a nafsi obligation, while to take Wuzu or ghusl or tayammum as their substitute in order to enter the state of cleanliness necessary for the prayer are not obligatory until the time of prayer has begun, and then not for themselves, but as an obligatory preparation for the obligatory prayer.Thus the Hajj and the ritual prayers are both nafsi obligations, while acquiring a passport or taking ablution are muqaddami obligations.

Brief History of Jurisprudence and Jurisprudents

As we mentioned in the previous lessons, one of the preparations for learning about any field of knowledge is to pay attention to the famous personalities of that field, theviews and ideas of whom were important, and to its important books.

Jurisprudence, the jurisprudence in which books have been classified and compiled that are still studied today, has a history of eleven hundred years, meaning that for eleven centuries, without a break, centers for the studying of jurisprudence and the related studies have existed. Masters have trained students and those students in their turn have trained other students, and this has continued down the ages until today. Furthermore, this relationship between master and pupil has never been broken.

Other fields, of course, like philosophy, logic,arithmetic and medicine have been studied for far longer, and books exist on.these subjects that are older than the books that exist on jurisprudence. Perhaps in none of these subjects, however,can the guarding of the same kind of ever-present relationship between master and pupil be shown that has existed in jurisprudence. Even if such constant relationships existed in other subjects, still they are particular to the fields of Islamic studies. Only in the Islamic world does the system of teaching and studying have a continuous uninterrupted history going back over a thousand years.

The Shi'ite Jurisprudents

We will begin the history of the Shi'ite jurisprudents from the period of the Imam's “minor occultation” (260-320 A.H.), and this we will do for two reasons:

First, the period previous to the “minor occultation” was the period of the presence of the holy Imams, and in the period of their presence, although there were jurisprudents and mujtahids who were able to make their own verdicts, who had been encouraged by the Imams to do so, yet due to the presence of the Imams they were nevertheless outshone by the brilliance of the Imams. That is, the referral of problems to the verdicts of the jurisprudents is because of there being no access to the Imams. In the period of the Imams' presence, however, people tried as far as possible to refer to the original sources of the Imams. Similarly, even the jurisprudents, bearing in mind distances and other difficulties, used to place their own problems before the Imams whenever they could.

Second, in the formal, classified jurisprudence, we are limited to the period of the minor occultation, for none of the actual books in jurisprudence from that period has reached us, or, if any have,I have no information about it.

All the same, amongst the Shi'ites there were great jurisprudents during the days of the holy Imams, whose value can become apparent and determined by comparing them with the jurisprudents of their period from other sects.The Sunni, ibn Nadin writes in his book Fihrist about Husayn ibn Sa'id Ahwazi and his brother, both notable Shi'ite jurisprudents, “They were the best of those of their time in knowledge of jurisprudence, effects (i.e. writings and compilations) and talents,” and, about 'Ali ibn Ibrahim Qumi he writes, “Amongst the 'ulema and jurisprudents,” and, about Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Ahmad ibn Walid, “And he has amongst books the book Jam'e fil-fiqh”.

Apparently these books were compiled of traditions on the varying subjects of jurisprudence that the compilers considered to be reliable, and to which they acted in accordance, together with the comments of the compilers.

The scholar Hilli, in the introduction to his book M'utabar wrote, “Bearing in mind that our jurisprudents (God be pleased with them) are many and their compilations numerous and to narrate the names of them all is not possible, I will content myself with those who are the most famous in merit, research and good selection, and with the books of those paragons whose ijtihad is mentioned in other undoubtable books as reliable.

“Those I will mention include, from the 'earlier' period (i.e. the period of access to the Imams), Hassan ibn Mahboub, Ahmad ibn Ali Nasr Bazanti, Husayn ibn Sa'id, Fadl ibn Shathan, Yunis ibn 'Abd ur-Rahman and, from the later period, Muhammad ibn Babawayh Qumi (Shaykh Saduq), and Muhammad ibn Y'aqub Kulayni and from the authors of verdicts (fatwas) Ali ibn Babawayh Qumi, ibn Jamid Iskafi, ibn Ali 'Agil, Shaykh Mufid, Syed Murtadha.'Alam ul Huda and Shaykh Tusi . “

Notice that although the firstgroup are quoted as having their own views and good selection and ijtihad, yet they are not mentioned as being masters of verdicts.

This was because their books, even though they were the summaries of their ijtihad, were in the form of collections of traditions and not in the form of verdicts.

Now we will look at the history of Shi'ite jurisprudents, as I have said, from the period of the Imam'soccultation .

Ali ibn Babawayh Qumi, died in 329 A.H. buried in Qum. The father of Shaykh Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Babawayh known as Shaykh Saduq, whois buried near Tehran. The sonwas learned in Traditions, the father in jurisprudence and compiled a book of his verdicts. Normally this father and sonare called Saduqayn.

'AyashiSamarqandi, lived at the same time as Ali ibn Babawayh or a little before. The author of a famous commentary of the Qur’an, though his specialty was commentary, heis still numbered amongst the jurisprudents. He wrote many books in different fields including jurisprudence. Ibn Nadim writes that the books of this man were largely available in Khorasan, butI have not yet seen his views related anywhere, and his books on jurisprudence no longer exist.

'Ayashi was originally a Sunni Muslim but later became a Shi'ite. He inherited vast wealth from his father, and this he spent on collecting and copying books and on teaching and training his students.

Ibn Jamid-Iskafi, one of the teachers of Shaykh Mufid. It seems he passed away in 381 A.H. and itis said that his books and writings numbered fifty. His views have ever been subject to consideration in jurisprudence and still are to this day.

Shaykh Mufid. His name was Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Naman. He was both a mutakalam (theologian) and a jurisprudent. Ibn Nadim, in the section of his book Fihrist in which he discusses Shi'ite mutakalamin, calls him “ibn Mu'alim” and praises him. Born in 336 A.H. he passed away in 413. His famous book in jurisprudence, Muqna'ah,is still used today.

The son-in law of Shaykh Mufid, Abu Y'ala J'afari, tells us that Shaykh Mufid slept little at night, and spent the rest in worship, study and teaching or reciting the Qur’an.

Sayyid Murtadha, known as 'Alam ul Huda, born 355 A.H. and passed away in 436 A.H. Allamah Hilli has called him the teacher of the Shi'ites of the Imams. He was a master of ethics,theology and jurisprudence. His views on jurisprudenceare still studied by the jurisprudents of today. He and his brother, Sayyid Razi the compiler of the Nahj ul-balagha, both studied under Shaykh Mufid.

Brief History of Jurisprudence and JurisPrudents (2)

Shaykh Abu Ja’far Tusi, one of the shining stars of the Islamic world, wrote many books on jurisprudence and the principles of jurisprudence, Traditions, commentaries,theology and the transmitters. Originally from Khorasan (in east Iran), he was born in 385 A.H. and after twenty-two yearsemigrated to Baghdad which in those days was the great centre of Islamic studies and culture. He stayed in Iraq the rest of his life and after the demise of his teacher, Sayyid Murtadha, the directorship oflearning and the station of highest reference for verdicts (fatwas) was transferred to him.

Shaykh Tusi remained for twelve more years in Baghdad but then, due to a series of disturbances in which his house and library were ravaged, he left for Najaf where he formed the famous scholasticcentre which still exists today. There, in the year 460 A.H., he passed away.

One of thebooks which were compiled about jurisprudence by Shaykh Tusi was called An-Nahayeh, and was used as a textbook for religious students. Another, Masbut, brought jurisprudence into a new stage and was the most famous Shi'ite book of jurisprudence of its time. In Khelaf, another of his books, he wrote about both the views of the jurisprudents of the Sunni schoolsand also those of the Shi'ite jurisprudents. He also wrote other books about jurisprudence, and, until about a century ago, whenever the name Shaykhwas mentioned the man meant was Shaykh Tusi, and by Shaykhayn was meant Shaykh Tusi and Shaykh Mufid. According to whathas been related in some books, it seems the daughters of Shaykh Tusi were also distinguished faqihat.1

Ibn Idris Hilli, one of the distinguished Shi'ite 'ulema. He himself was an Arab though Shaykh Tusiis counted as having been his maternal grandfather. Heis known for the freedom of his thought; he broke the awe and reverence of his grandfather Shaykh Tusi and his criticisms of the jurisprudents bordered on impertinence. He died in 598 A.H. at the age of fifty-five.

Shaykh Abul-Qasim Ja’far ibn Hasan ibn Yahya ibn Sa'id Hilli, known as Muhaqqeq Hilli. Author of many books about jurisprudence, amongst them: Sharay'e, Ma'arej, Al-Mukhtasar an-naf'i and many others. He was the student of ibn Idris Hilli, and the teacher of Allamah Hilli who we are to speakabout . Injurisprudence he has no superior. Whenever in the terms of jurisprudence the word muhaqqiq isused it refers to him. Great philosophers and mathematicians used to meet with him and used to sit in his lessons of jurisprudence. Thebooks of Muhaqqiq, especially the book Sharay'i, has been a textbook for students and still is, while his books have been subject to the commentaries of many other jurisprudents.

Ibn Hasan ibn Yusef ibn Ali ibn Mutahhar Hilli, famous as Allamah Hilli, one of the prodigies of the age. Books have been written by him about jurisprudence, principles, theology, logic, philosophy, transmitters and still other things. Around a hundred of his books have been recognized, some of which,I like Tathkurat ul-fuqaha are alone enough to indicate his genius. Allamah wrote many books onjurisprudence which have mostly, like the books of Muhaqqiq, been commented on by the jurisprudents who succeeded him. His famous books on jurisprudence include Irshad, Tabsaratol Muta'alemin, Qawa'id, Tahrir, Tathhorat-ul-fuqaha, Mukhtalif ash-shia' and Mutaha. He studied under various teachers: jurisprudence under his paternal uncle, Muhaqqiq Hilli, philosophy under Khawajeh Nasir ud-Din Tusi, and Sunni jurisprudence under the 'ulema of the Sunnis. He was born in the year 648 A.H. and passed away in 726 A.H.

Muhammad ibn Makki, known as Shahid Awal (“the First Martyr”), one of the great Shi'ite jurisprudents. He is of the rank of Muhaqqiq Hilli and Allamah Hilli. He was from Jabal 'Amel, an area in today's south Lebanon which is one of the oldest centers of Shi'ites and still is today a Shi'ite area. Shahid Awal was born in 734 A.H., and, in 786 A.H., according to the fatwa of a jurisprudent from the Malikisect which was endorsed by a jurisprudent of the Shaf'i sect, he was martyred. He was a pupil of the pupils of Allamah Hilli, amongst them Allamah's son, Fakhr ul-Muhaqqeqin. The famous books of Shahid Awal on jurisprudence include Al-lum'ah which he composed during the brief period he remained in prison awaiting his martyrdom. Amazingly, this noble book was subject to a commentary two centuries later by another great jurisprudent who suffered the same fate as the author. He too was martyred and thus became called Shahid ath-Thani (“The Second Martyr”). The famous book Sharh ul-lum'ah which has been the primal textbook of the students of jurisprudence ever since is the commentary of Shahid th-Thani. Other books of Shahid Awal include Durou, Thikra, Bayan,Alfiyeh and Qawa'id. All of the books of the First Martyr are amongst the priceless writings of jurisprudence.

Shahid Awal came from a very distinguished family, and the generations that succeeded him preserved this honor. He had three sons who were all 'ulema and jurisprudents, and his wife and daughter were likewise jurisprudents.

Shaykh Ali ibn Abul ul-Ala Karaki, known as Muhaqqiq Karaki or Muhaqqiq Thani. One of the Jabal 'Amal jurisprudents and one of the greatest of the Shi'ite jurisprudents. He perfected his studies in Syria and Iraq and then went to Iran and for the first time the position of Shaykh ul-lslam went to Iran when itwas entrusted to him. Theorder which the ruling king of Iran (Shah Tahmaseb) wrote in Mutaqqiq Karaki's name in which the king gave him complete control, declaring himself to be only his agent, is famous. A well-known book thatis often spoken of in jurisprudence is Muhaqqiq Karaki's Jam'i ul-Muqasid, which is a commentary on the Qawa'id of Allamah Hilli.

The arrival of Mutaqqiq Thani in Iran and his establishing a religious university in Qazvin and then in Isfahan, together with his training of outstanding pupils in jurisprudence, caused Iran for the first time since the time of the Saduqayn to become a centre of Shi'ite jurisprudence. He died between the years937 A.H. a-nsl 941 A.H. He had been the pupil of the pupil of Ibn Fahd Hilli, who had been the pupil of the pupils of Shahid Awal, such as Fazlel Miqdad.

Shaykh Zayn ud-Din known as Shahid Thani, the “Second Martyr”, was another of the great Shi'ite jurisprudents. A master of several sciences, he was from Jabal 'Amal and a descendant of a man called Saleh who was a student of Allamah Hilli.Apparently Shahid Thani's family was from Tus, and sometimes he would sign his name “At-Tusi Ash-Shami”.

He was born in 911 A.H. and martyred in 966 A.H. He travelled widely and experienced many teachers. He had been to Egypt, Syria, Hejaz, Jerusalem,Iraq and Istanbul, and wherever he went he learnt. Ithas been recorded that his Sunni teachers alone numbered twelve. Besides jurisprudence andprinciples he was accomplished in philosophy, gnosis, medicine and astronomy. Very pious and pure, his students wrote that he used to carry wood at nights to support his household and, in the mornings,sit and teach.

He compiled and wrote many books, the most famous of them in jurisprudence being Sharh lum'a, his commentary on the Lum'a of Shahid Awal. He was a pupil of Muhaqqiq Karaki (before Muhaqqiq migrated to Iran), but Iran was one place that he himself never went to. The author ofM'alim which is about the Shi'ite 'ulema was Shahid Thani's son.

Muhammad ibn Baqer ibn Muhammad Akmal Bahbahani, known as Wahid Bahbahani, who came in the period after the fall of the Safavi dynasty of Iran. After that overthrow, Isfahan was no longer the centre of religion, and some of the 'ulema and jurisprudents, amongst them Sayyid Sadr ud-Din Razawi Qumi, the teacher of Wahid Bahbahani, left Iran as the result of the Afghan turmoil and went to the atabat, the holy centers of Iraq.

Wahid Bahbahani made Karbala the new centre and there he tutored numbers of outstanding pupils, many of them famous in their own right. Besidesthis it was he who led the intellectual combat against the ideas of the akhbariyyin, which in those days were extremely popular. His defeat of the akhbariyyin and his raising of so many distinguished mujtahidshas led to him being termed as “Ustad ul-kul” (“The General Teacher”). His virtue and piety was perfect and his students maintained profound respect for him.

Shaykh Murtadha Ansari, a descendant of Jaber ibn Abdullah Ansari, one of the great companions of the Holy Prophet himself.On a visit with his father to the atabat of Iraq at the age of twenty, the 'ulema, appreciating his genius, asked his father to let him stay. He remained four years in Iraq and studied there under the leading teachers. Then, due to a series of unpleasant events, he returned to his home. After twoyears he went once more to Iraq, stayed for two years, and again returned to Iran, this time deciding to benefit from the 'ulema in Iran.

He set off to visit Mashhad and on the way visited Hajj Mulla Ahmad Nuraqi the author of the famous Jam'i S'adat in Kashan. This visit became a long stay as he benefitted from the teachings of Mulla Ahmad in Kashan for three years. He then went to Mashhad and stayed there for five months. He also journeyed to Isfahan and to Burujerd in Iran and the aim of all these trips was to learn from men of knowledge. Around 1202/3A.H. he went for the last time to the atabat and began giving lessons. After the decease of Shaykh Muhammad Hasan, hebecame recognized as the sole authority for referral for verdicts.

Shaykh Ansariis called the Khatim ul fuqiha walmuitahidin (the seal of the jurisprudents and the mujtahids). He was one of those who in the precision and depth of his views have very few equals. Two of his books, Risa'il and Mukassib are today's textbooks for (higher) religious students, and many commentarieshave been written on his books by later 'ulema. After Muhaqqiq Hilli and Allamah Hilli and Shahid Awal, Shaykh Ansari is the first person whose books have been so regularly subject to commentaries. He passed away in 1281 A.H., in Najaf where heis buried .

Hajj Mirza Muhammad Hasan Shirazi, known as Mirza Shirazi. His preliminary studies took place in Isfahan and he then went toNajaf and took part in the lessons of Shaykh Ansari and became one of the Shaykh's leading and outstanding students. After Shaykh Ansari's demise, he became the leading authority of the Shi'ite world, and he remained thus until his demise about 23 years later. It was by means of this great man's prohibition of tobacco thatcolonialism 's famous monopoly agreement in Iran was broken.

Hajj Mirza Husayn Naini, one of the great jurisprudents and master of principles of the fourteenth century Hijrat, a pupil of Mirza Shirazi, who became a highly valuable teacher. His fame is mostly in Principles, into which he introduced new views. Many of today's jurisprudents were his pupils. He died in 1355 A.H. in Najaf. One of the books he wrote was in Persian andwas called Tanaziyeh al-ameh or Hukumat dar Islam, which he wrote in defense of constitutional government and its roots in Islam.

Summary and Review

Intotal we have introduced sixteen of the faces of the recognized jurisprudents from the time of the minor occultation until the end of the 13th century Hijrat. We have only mentioned the jurisprudents that in the world of jurisprudence and principles are very famous, whose names and fame have been continually mentioned in lessons and books from their own times until today. Of course,there are many other such names we could have mentioned, but from those we have reviewed, certain points became clear:

First, ever since the third century A.H., jurisprudence has had a continuous existence. Throughout the whole of these eleven centuries, schools have operated with no period ofstand-still and the relationship between teacher-student in all that time has never been severed. If we start withmy own teacher, the late great Ayatollah Burujerdi, we can trace the line of his teachers back over a thousand years to the period of the Imams. Such a constant chain seems to have existed in no culture and civilization other than the Islamic one.

Of course, as we stated before, we did not appoint the third century to begin with for the reason that Shi'ite jurisprudents began then, but because the period previous to that period was the period of access to the holy Imams, and during that time the brilliance of the Shi'ite jurisprudents was always dimmed by the brilliance of the Imams, and the jurisprudents had no independence of their own. Otherwise the beginnings of ijtihad and jurisprudence amongst the Shi'ites and the composing of books about jurisprudence occurred amongst the companions. The first treatise on jurisprudence was written by Ali ibn Ali Raf'i who was the brother of Abdullah ibn Abi Raf'i, thescribe and accountant of Amir ul Muminin, Ali ('a) during the period of the Imam's caliphate.

Second, contrary to the perception of some, the Shi'ite sciences, amongst them jurisprudence, have not been developed and systemized solely by the 'ulema and jurisprudents of Iran. The 'ulema of Iran and the 'ulema of other lands have both shared in this great work, and, until the commencement of the tenth century and the emergence of the Safavi dynasty, non-Iranians were predominant. It is only since the middle of the Safavi period thatpredominance has been gained by Iranians .

Third, likewise, the centre of jurisprudence and of the jurisprudents has not always been Iran. At first Baghdad was the centre of Shi'ite jurisprudence, and then, by the action of Shaykh Tusi, the centre was transferred to Najaf. It was not long before Jabal 'Amal in today's south Lebanon became the centre.Then Hilleh, a small town in Iraq, and then for a while Halab, one of the districts of Syria. During the time of the Safavidsit was transferred to Isfahan, while at the same time Najaf was revived by Muqaddas Ardebili and other greats and still functions today.

Of the towns of Iran, it is only Qum that in the first centuries of Islam, due to men like Ali ibn Babawayh, was a minor centre of jurisprudence and the related studies while Baghdad was the main centre. During the time of the Qajar dynasty, Qum was revived due to the efforts of Abul Qasim Qumi and it was revived a second time in 1340 A.H. (i.e. 61 years before this translation) by the late Shaykh Abdul Karim Ha'iri Yazdi, and today it is one of the two great centers of Shi'ite jurisprudence.2

Fourth, the jurisprudents of Jabal 'Amal played an important role in the development of Safavi Iran. The Safavidynasty, as we know, were inclined to Sufism. Their pathwas originally based on the methods and customs peculiar to Sufism. If they had not been corrected by the profound and unchallengeable understanding of the jurisprudents of Jabal 'Amal, and if a profound centre of Islamic studies not been established by those jurisprudents, things would have led in Iran to the same kind of condition that now exists in Turkey and Syria.

This action of theirs had many effects. Firstly, the population and government of Iran remained immune from that deviation, and, secondly, Shi'ite Sufism likewise followed a more reasonable path.Thus, for founding the religious university in Isfahan, the jurisprudents of Jabal 'Amal-Muhaqqiq Karaki and others - have a lot to be thanked for.

Fifth, as has been pointed out by others, Shi'ism in Jabal 'Amal existed an age before it did in Iran, and this is one of the definite proofs and reasons for rejecting the views of those who consider Shi'ism to have been formed in Iran. Some believe that the Shi'ite penetration into Lebanon was due to the great companion of the Prophet, the mujahid Abuzar Ghaffari. During his stay in ancientSyria which included all or part of present Lebanon, at the same time as stiffly opposing the misappropriation of public wealth by Mu'awiyyah and the rest of Bani Umayyid, Abuzar also used to propagate the holy platform of Shi'ism.

The Sections and Chapters of the Issues of Jurisprudence

For us to form an acquaintance with jurisprudence it is necessary for us to recognize its different sections. Previously we said that the range of jurisprudence is extremely wide, for it contains all the subjects related to all the actions about which Islam contains instructions.

The famous classification of today is the same classification first introduced by Muhaqqiq Hilli inhis Sharay'i and which Shahid Awal has briefly commented on and explained in his Qawa'id . Amazingly the most proficient of those who have composed commentaries of the book Sharay'i amongst them Shahid Thani in his Masalik, made not the slightest comment or explanation about the classification of Muhaqqiq, and the First Shahid in Lum'a has not even followed Muhaqqiq's system

In any case, Muhaqqiq's classification is that all the issues of jurisprudence are divided into four parts: worship, two-party contracts, one-partycontracts and (other) commands.

This division is based on the fact that the actions that must be performed in accordance to the Shari'iah are either such that a condition of their validity is the intention of nearness to God meaning that they must be done solely for God and if there is any other motivation for their performance the obligation is not fulfilled and they must be done again, or they are not subject to this condition .

If they are of the first type, like prayer, fasting, khums, zakat, Hajj and so on, they are termed in jurisprudence as worship (ibadat).

If, however, they are of the second type and the intention of nearness is not a condition of their validity, and, supposing that theyare performed with a different intention, are still correct and valid, then they are of two types: either their actualization does not depend upon the execution of a special contract or it does.

Acts that do not depend upon the execution of a special contract, like inheritance, punishments, retribution and so on,are grouped together in jurisprudence under the heading commands, (ahkam). If they do depend upon the execution of a contract, then again they are of two types: eitherthe contract must be recited by two parties , or there is no need for two parties and the contract is unilateral.

If they are of the first type, like selling, hire, and marriage, theyare called contract (aqd), in which one party states the contract and the other agrees. If, however, one person can carry it out alone with no need of another party like the changing of one's mind regarding one's due, divorce and so on, itis called unilateral instigation.

In thisclassification all the sections of jurisprudence have been divided into fifty two chapters.Ten chapters of worship, nineteen of contracts, eleven of unilateral instigations and twelve chapters of commands.

One point isnot to remain unmentioned . In the first and second centuries of Islam, the books of jurisprudence thatwere written were related to one or a few of the subjects of jurisprudence, not about all the subjects. For example, it is recorded that such and such a person wrote a book aboutprayer and such and such a person a book about marriage. For this reason, in later eras, when books about all the issues of jurisprudence were written, the different chapters of jurisprudence were all under the heading The Book. The custom is that instead of writing The Chapter of the Ritual Prayer, or The Chapter of the Hajj, we write, The Book of Ritual Prayer or the Book of Hajj.

Now, in the order first used by Muhaqqiq Hilli, we will look at the different sections and chapters of the issues of jurisprudence.

Worship

There are ten books of worship:

The Book of Cleanliness (kitab ut-taharat): Cleanliness is of two kinds: being clean of external, non-inherent, material filth and pollution; and being spiritually clean of inherent pollution. The first type of cleanliness means the body,clothes and other things being clean from the ten types of filth which include urine, feces, blood, sperm, corpses and carcasses and so on and which are termed as najasat.The second type of cleanliness means entering the state of purity by performing the partial ablution, or total ablution or earth ablution, that is a condition of certain forms of worship like prayer and circumambulation of the Ka'ba and certain other things, and which is annulled by a series of natural things like sleep, urination, sexual intercourse and simple sperm discharge, and which must thereafter be re-entered.

The Book of Prayer (kitab us-salat): In this book the obligatory prayers, i.e. the five daily ritual prayers, the prayers of 'id ul fitr and 'id ul ahza, the prayer for the deceased, the prayer of special signs such as earthquakes and eclipses, etc. and the prayer of the circumambulation of the Ka'ba; the nafilah prayers, i.e. the desirable prayers such as the daily desirable prayers; the conditions, preparations, essentials, preventions, delayers and annulers of prayer; and the qualities of prayer, such as the prayer of a person at home and the prayer of a person ruled as travelling, individual prayer and congregational prayer, the prayer offered at the right time (ida) and the prayer missed and made up for after its time (qaza), are all discussed in detail.

The Book of Zakat: Zakat is a way of paying wealth that is similar to a tax and which is due from ninethings :gold , silver, wheat, barley, dates, grapes, and animals of the cow family, animals of the sheep family, and animals of the camel family. Injurisprudence the conditions for zakat being due from these nine things; the amount of zakat due; and the ways it is to be spent are all discussed and, from the authentic sources and in the recognized ways, determined. In the Qur’an, zakat is mostly mentioned along with prayer, hut only that it is to be given and the ways it is to be spent has been explained; the rest is known from theSunnah .

The Book of Khums: Khums, like zakat, is a way of paying wealth that resembles a tax. Khums means a fifth. In the view of the 'ulema of our Sunni brothers it is only a fifth of the spoils of war that is to be transferred to the Bait ul-mal, or public treasury of Islam, and it is to be spent for the public benefit. In the Shi'ite view, however,spoils of war is just one of the things from which khums must be paid.In addition, profits of mining, the finding of buried treasure and of diving in the sea, wealth that is mixed with illegitimate wealth when unable to discern the amount and/or the owner, land that a thimmi kafir3 buys from a Muslim, and that which exceeds one's yearly expenses from one's yearly earnings, must all be divided into five and one of those fifths be given as khums. Khums in the Shi'ite path of religion is the great budget that can secure the important part of the budget of the state.

The Book of Fasting (kitab us-sawm): As we know, in a state of fasting, one must refrain from eating and drinking, from sexual intercourse, from immersing one's head in water, from breathing in dust (even as far as the throat) and from certain other things. For one month each lunar year, the blessed month of Ramazan, is obligatory for every mature, sane person whois not ruled as an exception (like a ruled traveler or a woman having her monthly period) to fast each day from daybreak until sundown. Other than in the month of Ramazan fasting is generally desirable. On the two festivals, fasting is forbidden, and on certain other days, like the day of 'Ashura, it is undesirable (makruh).

The Book of Taking Seclusion (i'tikaf): This literally means “to reside in a specified place” In the terminology of jurisprudence, however, it means a type of worship whereby a person resides in a mosque for three days or more, not setting foot out of the mosque, and fasting each day. This has laws and conditions that are determined in jurisprudence. In itsessence i'tikaf is desirable, not obligatory, but if it is begun and kept up for two days, the third day becomes obligatory. I'tikaf is tobe performed in the Masjid ul-Haram in Mecca or the Masjid un-Nabi in Medina, or in the masjid of Kufa in Iraq or the masjid of Basreh in Iraq, or at least in the major masjid of a city. I'tikaf in minor masjids is not permissible. The Holy Prophet used to perform i'tikaf during the final days of the month of Ramazan.

The Book of Hajj: Hajj is that famous act of worship performed in Mecca and the outskirts ofMecca that is normally linked to 'umrah.The performance of the Hajj consists of binding ihram4 upon oneself in Mecca, a stay in 'Arafat, a stay for a night in Mash'ar, the symbolic ceremony of throwing stones at the furthest (of three) boulders, the sacrifice, the shaving of the head for men and the cutting of a few curls for women, circumambulation (walking seven times around the Holy Ka'ba), the prayer of the circumambulation, the walking of seven times between the two hills of Safa and Marwah, the final circumambulation, the prayer of the final circumambulation, throwing stones at (all three of) the boulders, and the night stays at Mina.

The Book of Umrah: Umrah is a kind of lesser Pilgrimage. Normally it is obligatory for those about to perform the Hajj to perform the Hajj 'Umrah first. The actions of 'umrah are as follows:

Binding “ihram” on oneself at one of the special places (mi'qat); circumambulation; the prayer of circumambulation; walking seven times between Safa and Marwa; and, finally, the cutting of a few hairs or a fingernail or toe nail.

The Book of Jihad: This book deals with the issues concerning Islamic warfare. Islam is a religion of society and community and of the responsibilities of society, and for thisreason it includes a law of jihad. There are two types of jihad: ibtida'i (tobe begun by Muslims) and defa'i (defensive). In the view of Shi'ite jurisprudence, ibteda'i jihad can only take shape under the direction of the Holy Prophet or one of the twelve immaculate and perfect Imams, otherwise itis forbidden . This type of jihad is obligatory only on men, but the other jihad, the jihad of defense, is obligatory on both men and women whenever the conditions demand it.

In the same way, jihad can be either internal or external. If some of the people for whom obedience to the Imam is obligatory rise up against him, just as the Khawarij at Nahrawan and other places, Talha and Zubayr at the battle of Jamal and Mu'awiyyah and his companies at Siffin all rose up against Amir ul-Muminin, Ali, internal jihad is also obligatory against them.

In jurisprudence, the laws of jihad and of thimmeh, the conditions for allowing non-Muslims to live in the Islamic state as citizens of the state, and of peace between the Islamic state and non-Islamic statesare all discussed in detail.

The Book Commending to what is Recognized:-as good-and Prohibiting from what is Rejected-as bad (amr bi m 'aruf wa nahyan al-munkar): Because Islam is a religion of society and of the responsibilities of society, and sees its orderly environment as the essential condition for the enaction of its heavenly programs and the bestowing of prosperity and fulfillment, it has brought into existence a shared general responsibility. We are all duty-bound to be guardians of virtue and goodness, and to combat evils and wrongs. The guarding of virtue and goodnessis named amr bi m'aruf and the combating of evil and wrongs, nahyan al-munkar. The conditions attached to these duties and their stipulations and regulationsare all stated in jurisprudence.

Here, our concise glimpse at the ten parts of the section of worshipcomes to an end , and it is now the turn of the contracts.

Contracts ('oqud)

The second section, according to our classification, consists of the contracts and includes nineteen books:

The Book of Buying andSelling (kitab ul-bay'i)

This book deals with buying and selling, the conditions which the two parties (the buyer and seller) must meet, the conditions of the two commodities exchanged, the conditions of the contract and the type of transaction: cash transactions; nisiyah transactions which are transactions wherein a commodity is given cash and the payment after a period and salaf transactions which are the opposite of nisiyah transactions, i.e. a sale wherein payment is immediate and the commodity is not put at the buyers disposal until after a period.

Transactions wherein both the payment and the product are to be exchanged after a period arenull and void . Similarly, in the chapter of selling, advantageous transfers, disadvantageous transfers and advantage less transfersare also discussed .

Whatis meant by advantageous transfer (marabihah) here is that a person makes a transaction and then, after having made some profit, transfers it to someone else. A disadvantageous transfer (muwadah) is the opposite, meaning a transaction which, after having suffered some loss and damage, is transferred to someone else.And what is meant by an advantage less transfer (tuwliyah) is that a transaction is transferred to someone else having made no profit nor having suffered any loss.

The Book “Rahn”

Rahn means mortgage. In this book ofjurisprudence the laws of mortgaging are studied.

The Book of the Bankrupt (muflis)

Muflis means “the bankrupt”, i.e. a person whose holdings do not meet his liabilities. In order to investigate the liabilities of such a person, the Hakim-Shari'ah i.e. a mujtahid, can prohibit him from the right to his possessions until an exact investigationis made and as far as possible the liabilities be paid.

The Book of Prohibition (hajr)

Hajr means prohibition. Whatis meant is the prohibition of making use of property. In many cases, the use of property by the original owneris prohibited . As we have seen, the bankrupt is one instance. Another is an immature child (i.e. a girl under nine or a boy under fifteen). The insane, the person sane in other ways but who always spends his money foolishly like spending all his money on clothes when he is desperately in need of food, are other instances.

The Book of Liability (diman)

Liability is that a person accepts the liability of another person's debts. There exists a difference between Shi'ite jurisprudents and the jurisprudents of our Sunni brothers about the reality of liability.In the view of Shi'ite jurisprudents diman is the transference of the obligation of a debt from the debtor to a party that accepts liability, and is only valid with the consent of the creditor, and in Shi'ite jurisprudence, once the liability has been transferred, the creditor has no longer the right to seek it from the person who has made himself liable.

Of course, if theliability was urged on the liable by the debtor , then, once he has cleared the debt, the liable can take that amount from the first debtor. In the view of Sunni jurisprudence, however, it is the annexing of the obligation of the debt onto someone else, who also becomes obliged to repay the debt. Which means that after the contract of liability, the creditor has both the right to seek the debt from the original debtorand also from the person who has made himself liable.

Sometimes two other chapters, hawalih (another kind of liability) and kafalah (a kind of bail system) are also included in this book.

The Book of Peace (sulh)

The sulh (peace) thatis studied in this book is different from the sulh that is studied in the book of jihad. Sulh in the book of jihad means “political agreements”, whereas the Book of Peace concerns property affairs and common rights. For example, if a debtis owed without the amount of the debt being precisely known, the two parties make a sulh agreement and settle on a specified sum. Sulh agreements generally occur as a settlement for arguments and disagreements.

The Book of Partnerships (sharikat)

Sharikat is that a property or a right belongs to more than one person. For example, if some brothers inherit their father's property, then, for as long as they do not divide it, they are partners in that property.

Or , for example, two people together buy an automobile or a house or a piece of land.Or it may happen that a group of people together take possession of a piece of land that belongs to no one by reclaiming, say, and restoring a part of a desert or marshland. Furthermore, a partnership is sometimes accidentally forced on someone, like, for example, when the wheat of two farmers accidentally becomesmixed and to separate the wheat of one from the wheat of the other is not possible.

There are two types of partnership existing in Islam, contractual partnership and non-contractual. The examples previously cited were non-contracted partnerships. A contractual partnership is that two people or a group of people by an agreement, compact and contract, form what in Englishis called a company, such as a trading company, a farming company or an industrial company. Contractual partnerships or companies are subject to manylaws which are still studied in jurisprudence. In the Book ofPartnerships the laws of profit sharing are also discussed.

The Book of the Partnership of Capital and Labor (mudarabah)

A mudarabah is a kind of contractual partnership, but not a partnership of two or more investors. Rather it is a partnership of capital and labor, meaning that one or more partners provide the capital for a trading business and one or more partners provide the labor of the actual trading. Firstly the partners must be in concord as to the division of profits, and then the contract of mudarabah is to be executed, or must at least be formed in practice.

The Book of Agricultural Partnerships (mazaro'at and musaqat)

Mazara'at and musaqat are two more types of partnership. They are like mudarabah, which we have just mentioned, in that they are both types of partnerships between capital and labor. The difference is that mudarabah is relevant to trading whereas muzara'at is for farming. The meaning of this is that the owner of land and water makes an agreement with someone elsewho does the actual farming and they are in concord as to the specified proportion of each party in the division of the profits.

Likewise, musaqat is for the affairs of orchards.This means that the owner of fruit trees concludes an agreement with someone else who becomes responsible for all the work involved in looking after those trees, such as watering them and all the other things effective in fruit production, and, according to the specified proportion they agree upon in the actual agreement, both investor and worker take their share of the profits.

Here there isa point that wish to mention, which is that in partnerships between capital and labor, whether mardarabah agreements or mazara'at or musaqat, any kind of harm or loss the capital is subject to is born by the owner of the capital, the investor. And, likewise, thereis also no certainty of making a profit on the capital, meaning that it is possible a profit will be returned, and it is possible that a profit will not be returned.

The only profit thatis returned to the owner of the capital is in accordance to the profit made by the partnerships and to his specified proportion of those profits. Here it is that the financer, just like the worker, might make noprofit, and it is even possible that he may lose his capital and even become bankrupt.

In the world of today, however, even in most parts of the Muslim world, bankers put their aims into practice by means of usury and as aresult they receive a specified profit in all circumstances, whatever the types of concern they finance. Should one of the concerns that they have financed return a loss instead of a profit, the manager of that concern is absolutely obliged to return the banker's profit, even if he has to sell his house.

Likewise, in the system of most of today's world, the financer never goes bankrupt; on the basis of the system of usury the financer has entrusted his capital to the hands of the manager, which the manager has to repay many times over, and whatever happens the banker demands that profit, even if the capital has suffered a misfortune or even been lost.

In Islam, profiting from capital in the form of usury, i.e. the action of lending money and demanding the repayment of the loan whatever the circumstances with an addition of an amount of profit is strictly and severelyprohibited .

The Book of Trusts (wadiy'ah)

Wadiy'ah, or trust, means the entrusting of property with someone and making that person one's agent in keeping andsafe-guarding it. This in turn creates duties for the trustee and, if the property suffers or is lost, and the trustee has performed and observed those duties, he is not liable.

The Book ofLending (ariyah)

Ariyah is that a person receives the property of a second person in order to benefit from its benefits. Ariyah and wadiy'ah are two types of trusts, but inwadiy'ah the owner entrusts his property to be kept and safe-guarded and without his permission the trustee has no right to make use of it in any way. Ariyah, however, is that the owner from the very beginning gives it to the other for him to use and then return.

The Book of Hire (ijareh)

In Islam there are two types of hire, either it is that a person cedes the benefit of his property to another in return for an amount of money which is called “the money of hire” (mal-ijareh), such as the normal practices of hiring out one's house or car; or it is that a person hires himself and, in the terms of jurisprudence, becomes ajir; which means that he makes an understanding that in return for carrying out a special work, like repairing a pair of shoes, cutting a person's hair, or building his house and so on, he will receive a wage. or payment.

Hire is similar to buying and selling in as far as both involve an exchange. The difference is that in buying and selling the exchange is of a thing and money, while in hire the exchange is of the benefit of a thing and money.Hire also has an aspect in common with 'ariyah in that both the hirer and the 'ariyah trustee make use of a benefit, the difference being that the hirer, having paid the price of the hire, is the owner of the benefit, while the 'ariyah trustee is not the owner of the benefit, he only has the right to make use of it.

The Book of Representatives (wakalah)

Sometimes it occurs that one needs to have a representative for thoseworks which demand a contract. Marriage and divorce are good examples, for the contracts of marriage and divorcemust be verbally recited in correct and valid Arabic the person who is represented is called the muwakkil and the representative is called the wakil, while the act of representation itself is called takwil.

The Book of Endowments and Charity (waqf and sadaqat)

An endowment is that which a person sets aside from his property for a special use. In defining waqf it has been said that it meanssafe-guarding the original article of waqf, making it un-transferrable, while freeing its benefits. About whether an intention of qorbat, of nearness to God, is a condition of waqf or not there is a difference of opinion. The fact that it is included in this section is because Muhaqqiq Hilli did not consider the intention of qorbat to be an essential condition. In any case, there are two types of waqf, general waqf, and special waqf. Both these and the commands of charityare discussed in detail.

The Book of Temporary Endowments (sukna and habs)

Sukna and habs are similar to waqf with the difference that in waqf the original property or wealth is guarded forever and there is no longer any possibility of it being someone's property, whereas habs is that a person designates the benefits of his property for a specified period to be spent in a charitable way, and after that period it again becomes his personal property. Sukna however, is that a person designates a dwelling for the use of a poor, deserving person for a period and at the end of that period it becomes exactly the same as the owner's other property .

The Book ofGiving (hebat)

One of the effects of ownership is that one has the right to give one's property to others. Giving is of two types: “in exchange” and “not in exchange”. Not inExchange means that in return for one's gift one receives nothing in return. Giving in Exchange, however, means that one receives something in return for one's gift. Something given in exchange is not retrievable, i.e. itcannot be taken back. When somethingis given not in exchange, however, if it is given between the mahram members of a family, or if the gift itself is lost or broken, it cannot be taken back, otherwise it can, and the giver can nullify the transaction.

The Book of Wagers (sabq and rimayah)

Sabq and rimayah are two forms of betting agreement between the competitors of horse races, camelraces or shooting competitions. Sabq and rimayah are forms of gambling, yet, because they are for practicing the martial arts necessary for jihad,they have been counted by Islam as permissible encouragement for the actual participants . Of course, this permission does not extend to other than the participants.

The Book of Wills (wasiyat)

This bookis related to the enjoinments that a person wills to be performed after his death regarding his wealth or his children, whose guardian he is. Each person has the right to appoint a person as his executor (wasi) to be the guardian of minors amongst his children after his death; to supervise their education and other affairs. In the same way, each person also has the right to have spent after his death up to a third of his wealth in accordance with the stipulations he makes in his will.

The Book of Marriage (nikah)

First the conditions of the actual contract are discussed, such as the muharam, the people for whom to marry each other is forbidden, such as father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, and so on. The two types of marriage are included: permanent and temporary. Disobedience to the husband by the wife and the ill-treating of the wife by the husband and the obligation of the man of the house to economically provide for his wife and children are part of this book.There are a few other issues that are also discussed.

Unilateral Instigations (iyqa'at)

This part, according to the classification we are following, consists of iyqa'at, which, as has been explained,are the actions in need of a contract, but not of a two sided contract; a unilateral contract is enough. There are fifteen of these:

The Book of Divorce (talaq)

Divorce here means the cancelling of the marriage compact by the husband. Divorce is either ba'in or raj'i. Ba'in is the kind of divorce wherein the man has no right to return to the woman. A raj'i divorce is that in which the man can return. What this means is that for as long as the woman's special period of restraint ('iddah) has notcome to an end , the man can return to the woman and thus nullify the divorce.

A divorce is a ba'in divorce either because the wife has no 'iddah, like a divorced woman with whom the husband has not had sexual intercourse, or a woman who has reached the age of menopause, or because, even though the woman must keep 'iddah, the nature of the divorce disqualifies the man's right to return, like the third consecutive divorce of that couple, in which case, until she marries someone else who has sexual intercourse with her and then himself dies or divorces her and she keeps another 'iddah, the first husband cannot re-marry her.

It is a condition of divorce firstly that, at the time of the divorce, the woman is clean of her monthly period. Secondly, there must be two just witnesses present when the contract of divorceis recited . Divorceis divinely detested . The Prophet of God tellsus : ”The most-detested permissible (thing) before God is divorce”.

The Book of DivorceWholly or Partly Instigated by the Wife (khul'a and mabarat)

Khul'a and mabarat are two types of ba'in divorce. A khul'a divorce is a divorce motivated due to the wife being dissatisfied with the marriage and giving the husband something or by releasing him from all or part of the mehr5 so as to persuade him to divorce her. In this case, justby the man divorcing his wife, he is disqualified from returning to her, unless she wants to take back what she ceded, in which case the man has the right to return to her.

Mabarat is also a type of ba'in divorce, like khul'a with the difference that both parties are dissatisfied with the marriage, while the wife still gives the husband a sum to divorce her. The other difference is that the given sum in khul'a divorce has no specified limit, but inmabarat it is a condition that the sum be not more than the amount of the mehr.

The Book of Illegal Divorce (zahar)

In the “ignorance” of pre-Islamic Arabia, zahar was a kind of divorce consisting of the husband saying to the wife anti 'aliya kazohriammi, i.e., “You are like the rear of my mother to me.”And this was quite enough for the wife to be recognized as divorced. Islam changed this. In the view of Islam, zahar is not divorce.For a man to recite this contract to his wife is forbidden, and he must pay a fine (kafarah). Until he pays thefine it is forbidden for him to have sexual intercourse with the wife. The fine of zahar is the freeing of a slave, or, if not possible, fasting each day for two consecutive months, or, if this is not possible, the feeding of sixty poor people.

The Book of Vows of Abstention (Iyl'a)

Iyl'a is a generalword meaning oath, but in jurisprudence it has a special meaning, which is that in order to annoy his wife, a man recites a contract swearing that he will not have sexual intercourse with her ever again or for a fixed period (four months or more). If the wife protests to the Hakim Shari'ah, he will oblige the man to one of two things: break the vow or divorce his wife. If the man breaks his vow, hemust, of course, pay the fine. To break a vow is always forbidden but in thesecircumstances it is obligatory.

The Book ofCursing (l'aan)

L'aanis again related to the marital affairs of man and wife. It means their cursing of each other, and it applies to a situation wherein the husband accuses his wife of immorality, meaning here adultery or lesbianism.

If someone accuses a woman of the said immorality and cannot produce four just witnesses, the punishment of falsely accusing is tobe carried out upon that person himself, and the same applies if a man accuses his wife. Now, if the man accuses his wife and cannot produce four witnesses, then rather than punish him, something elsecan be done . Whatcan be done is called l'aan. If this takes place, however, although he is no longer subject to the other punishment, his wifebecomes forbidden to him forever.

L'aan takes place in front of the Hakim Shari'ah. As we said before, l'aan is a way in which the two parties curse each other. It takes place like this:first the man stands up in front of the Hakim and says four times, “God is my witness, I am truthful in my claim.” The fifth time he says, “God curse me if I lie in my claim.” The woman then stands up in the presence of the Hakim and says four times, “I call God as a Witness that in his claim he is a liar.”The fifth time she says, “The Anger of God be upon me if in his claim he is truthful.”

The Book ofFreeing (itq)

Freeing means the freeing of slaves. InIslam a series of legislatures has been introduced about slaves. Other than the making of slaves of captives taken in war, Islam considers no other form of slavery as legitimate. Furthermore, the aim of taking slaves in Islam is not to profit from them, rather it is for them to stay for a period in the homes of genuine Muslims and come to understand the Islamic teachings.

This, all by itself, would draw them to the appreciation and acceptance of Islam and its sublime teachings. In reality, this form of slavery is the passage between the slavery of disbelief (kufr) and the freedom of Islam. So the aim is not that slaves remain slaves forever, the aim is for them to fully discover the Islamic teachings and their liberating effect, and earn the real, spiritual freedom in the freedom of society. Therefore, freedom after slavery is the aim of Islam.

Islam has provided many systems of itq. Because the goal of Islam is freeing and not enslaving, the jurisprudents have titled the book dealing with slavery the Book of Freeing and not the Book of Enslaving.

The Book of Acquiring Freedom through Will, by Purchase and Through Relationship (Tadbir, mukatibeh and istilad)

Tadbir,mukatibeh and istilad are three of the ways in which slaves are freed. Tadbir is that the owner stipulates in his will that after his death his slave is free. Mukatibeh is that a slave settles an agreement with his owner that by paying a sum (or agreeing to pay a sum in the future) he will become free.In the Qur’an it has been stipulated that if such an application is made by a slave in whom good is discerned, meaning that belief is discerned in them, (or that it is discerned that they can manage themselves and not become helpless), not only is the application to be accepted but they are also to be given capital from their owners' wealth.

Istilad concerns a slave woman whois made pregnant by her owner. Such a woman, when the owner dies, definitely becomes part of the inheritance, a part of whichis inherited by her child, and since no one can be the slave of one's parents, grandparents and so on up, or children and grandchildren and so on down, she automatically becomes free.

Similarly, there are many other ways slaves become free, such as a slave being afflicted by blindness and so on; as the kafarah (fine) of various sins, one of the forms of which, as we have seen, is freeing a slave; being freed by someone simply to please God; and others, and these are generally discussed in the Book of Freeing.

The Book ofConfessing (iqrar)

Iqraris related to the Islamic laws of arbitration. One of the means by which a caseis proved against a person is the person's own confession. If, for example, a person claims thathe is owed something by a second person , he must produce evidence or testimony, and, if he does not, his claim is rejected. Should, however, the second person himself confess to the debt, this confession renders evidence and testimony unnecessary. Confessionis accepted only from sane adults.

The Book of Reward (ja'alah)

Reward in its essence is similar to the hiring of people. In hire, however, a specific personis hired to do a specific work in return for a specific sum, whereas in reward no certain person is hired. Instead, the hirer simply announces that whoever does a certain work for him (like finding his missing child, for example)will be paid a certain sum as a reward.

The Book of Vows (ayman)

If a person swears to do a certain thing, the doing of that which he has sworn to do becomes obligatory for him. One condition is that the vow is in the Name of God. Therefore, a vow made in the name of the Prophet or of an Imam or the Qur’an, is not binding on him according to the Divine Law.

Another condition is that what he vows to do is ruled as permissible in the Shari'ah, so a vow to do something that is ruled as forbidden (haram) or repulsive (makruh), is meaningless and not at all binding. A legitimate vow would be like one swearing to study a certain beneficial book from beginning to end, or swearing to brush one's teeth at least once a day. The breaking of such a vow necessitates a fine (kafarah).

The Book of Taking an Oath (nathr)

Nathr is a type of undertaking to do something that involves an oath but no special contract. If, for example, one makes an oath to pray all the daily nafilah prayers, i.e. the encouraged prayers that accompany the obligatory prayers of the day, all one has to do is declare that one will pray the nafilah prayers.

As we saw, one of thecondition of the ayman vows was that the object of the vow be not forbidden (haram) or repulsive (makruh), so that there is no obstacle to the vow being simply permissible. The condition of nathr, however is that the object of the vowbe useful in some way.So any nathr to do something or to refrain from something which is not beneficial, meaning that the doing and the refraining from the action in question, are both equal, is void. As in the ayman vows, the breaking of a nathr warrants a fine.

The inner meaning of ayman and nathr, and of the necessity of acting in accordance to them, lies in the fact that both are types of compact with God, and, in the same way that one must respect one's compacts with the creatures of God (“O you who believe, be loyal to your compacts”. 15:1]), so is one to respect one's compacts with God Himself. An ayman or a nathris normally made when one has little confidence in one's willpower. By means of the ayman ornathr one makes a thing obligatory for oneself until one is able to form the desired habit.6

Laws

The ninth section of the four sections of jurisprudence consists of the issues grouped under the heading of 'laws' (ahkam). This word used here has no special definition. The fact is that those issues of jurisprudence that do not fall into one of the other three groupings have been grouped together to form this one. This section contains twelve books:

The Book of Hunting and Slaughtering (sayd and thibh)

First it is necessary to state that the meat of permitted meat animals becomes permitted either when the animal is slaughtered in a special way (thibh or nahr), or, if the animal is a wild animal the meat of which is permitted, when it is properly hunted by specially trained dogs or my means of an iron missile (like a sharp arrowhead or a sharp bullet).

The meat of tame permitted-meat animals is not permissible to eat if theyare hunted , and they must be slaughtered in exact accordance to the Shari'ah. The way of slaughtering most tame animals, like hens, sheep and cows, etc.,is called thibh and the way of slaughtering camels is called nahr. There is a slight difference between the actual acts of nshr and thibh, but the conditions, such as the slaughterer being a Muslim, and killing the animal in the Name of God, are the same.

Hunting is related to permitted meat animals that are wild, like deer and mountain goats, etc If the means by which the animal is hunted is a dog, the dog must be so trained that it will do whatever it is commanded, and thus reflect its master's will, and the meat of permitted meat animals that are hunted and killed by dogs that are not trained in this way must not be eaten. In the same way, hunting with animals other than dogs, like hawks, is also not permissible.

In hunting by non-animals means, it is a condition that the weaponbe iron, or at least metal, and it must be so sharp that it kills the animal by its sharpness.So hunting with stones and blunt metal missiles is not permissible. In both forms of hunting, just like in both forms of slaughtering, the conditions that the man responsible for the animal's death, he the hunter, be a Muslim, and that he begins in the Name of God,must be met for the meat of that animal to be permissible. There are other conditions but they are detailed and here is not their place.

The Book of Eating and Drinking

Islam has a series of instructions concerning the gifts of nature as regarding eating and drinking. The laws of slaughtering and hunting are amongst these, and so are the laws of eating and drinking. In the view of Islam, all good things, i.e. things that are beneficent and useful,are permitted , while all foul things, things that are not beneficial and which are abominable for man, are forbidden. Furthermore, Islam has not contented itself with explaining these generalities but has made it clear thata whole group of things are foul and must be shunned, and that other things are good and there is no obstacle to the making use of them.

Eating means either the eating of meat or the eating of other things. Meat is either from the creatures of the sea or of the land or of the air. Of the creatures of the sea only fish are permissible, and then again only the fish that have scales.7 The creatures of the land are of two types: tame and wild.

The tame animals, the meat of which is permissible to eat are cows, sheep, camels, hens, horses, donkeys and mules which are all permissible, though the eating of the meat of horses, donkeys and mules is undesirable (makruh). The meat of dogs and cats and pigsis forbidden . Of the wild animals, the meat of carnivorous animals and insectsis forbidden . The meat of deer, however, and of wild cows and goats and other wild animals that are permissible when tame, is permissible. The meat of hares and rabbits, though they are not carnivorous, in accordance to the famous verdict of the 'ulema is forbidden.

Of birds, the meat of the different types of pigeon, partridge, ducks, domestic hens and so on are permissible. The meat of hunting birdsis forbidden .

In the cases where the Shari'ah has not made clear the status of the meat of birds, there are two signs of itsbeing forbidden . One is that when the bird flies it does not need to flapit's wings all the time and mostly glides. The other is that it has no crop, or no gizzard or no sign of a bump on the back of its leg.

Other than animals: to eat or drink any kind of intrinsic filth (najasat) like urine, feces, blood, sperm, alcohol, etc., is forbidden, and the same applies to any intrinsically clean thing that intrinsic filth has dirtied and which is called mutunajas. Similarly, to eat or drink anything that is harmful to the body, the harm of which is considered significant like poison, for example, is alsoforbidden . If medicine discerns that a certain thing, tobacco for example, is definitely harmful to the body, to the heart,let's say, or to the nerves, and shortens one's life expectation or produces cancer, then its use will be forbidden. If it is not consequential, however, and is simply like breathing the air of most cities, it is notforbidden .

For a pregnant woman to consumesomething which leads to the abortion of her child, or for a person to consume something that leads to disorder of the senses, or for a man to consume something that leads to his sterilization, or for a woman to consume something that leads to her permanent sterility, is forbidden.

To eat earthis absolutely forbidden , whether it is harmful or not. The drinking of intoxicating liquorsis also absolutely forbidden . Furthermore, to consume that which belongs to another without the consent of the owneris strictly forbidden , but this is an incidental prohibition, not intrinsic.

Some parts of permitted-meat animalsis forbidden, including the spleen, the testicles and generative parts. Likewise, the milk of forbidden-meat animals is alsoforbidden .

The Book of Mis-Appropriation (ghasb)

Mis-appropriation (ghasb) means the taking or using of the property of another by force, i.e. without the other's permission. Firstly, thisis forbidden . Secondly, it renders the mis-appropriator (ghasib) liable, so that if the property is damaged or destroyed while in the control of that mis-appropriator he is liable for it whether the loss or damage was his fault or not. Whatever use one makes of mis-appropriated propertyis forbidden . Wuzu taken with mis-appropriated water and prayer in mis-appropriated clothes or in a mis-appropriated place is void.

At this point, itmust be known that in the same way mis-appropriation results in liability, so destruction causes liability.Meaning, for example, that if a person smashes someone else's window, he is liable for it. Causing likewise, produces liability. Causing here means that if someone does not do any direct damage, like smashing a window, but does something that causes damage, he is liable. If a man, for example, leaves a thing like the skin of some fruits on a publicwalk-way and a person slips on it and as a consequence suffers dam age, that man is responsible for the damage suffered by the person who slipped.

The Book of Right of Preference (shaf'ih)

Shaf'ih means the right of precedence of one partner to buy the share of the other. If two people are legitimate partners according to the Shari'ah and one of them wants to sell his share, the other partner, if he wants to buy that share for the same terms and price for which others wish to purchase it, has the right of precedence.

The Book of Enlivening the Dead (ihiya al'muwt)

This book concerns wasteland, i.e. land that is dead or barren, that by the absence of buildings or farming and suchlike is lifeless. The Holy Prophet told us: “Whoever enlivens a dead land owns it.” This issue has many facets and these, in jurisprudence,are discussed at length.

The Book of Finds

In this book are discussed the laws of finding things the owners of which are not known. The find is either an animal or other than an animal. If it is an animal and such aswill not be harmed if left alone, the finder has no right to take it into his control. If the animalmight be harmed if left alone, however, like a sheep in the middle of the desert, the finder can take it into his control, but he must search for its owner. If the owneris found , the animal must be returned to him, and if the owner is not found, with the permission of the Hakim Shari'ah, the animal must be given to the poor.

If the find is not an animal, and its value is less than that of 2.32 grams8 of minted silver, the finder can keep it for himself, but if it is more he must search for the owner for one year (unless, like fruit, it cannot be kept for a year). If the owneris not found , and if the find was not made in the sacred area of Mecca, the finder has the option of doing any of three things. Either he can use it for himself with the intention that if the owner is discovered, he will repay the find itself or its value to the owner, or give it as charity with the same intention, or he can keep it in the hope that the owner will be found.

If the find has no specialsigns the search for the owner is not necessary and the finder has the same three options from the time of the find.

The Book of Inheritance

We know that in Islam there are laws of inheritance. Inheritance in Islam is not a matter of choice. In Islam, a person has no right to specify a certain sum for a certain heir, or, for example, to leave all his wealth to a certain heir. After a person's death, his wealth (apart from “his”third which he can stipulate in a will to be disposed of however he likes) is divided and shared amongst the heirs in accordance to the relevant laws.

The heirs in the view of Islam form different ranks. By the existence of one of the members of the first rank, the inheritance does not reach to the second, and the third rank only inherits if there is no one from the first and second ranks to inherit.

The first rank consists of the deceased'sparents and sons and daughters and, if the sons and daughters have died, the grandchildren.

The second rank is the deceased's fourgrandparents and brothers and sisters and, if the brothers and sisters have themselves passed away, their children.

The third rank is the deceased'suncles and aunts and their children.

Until here, of course, we have spoken only about inheritance of kin. There is other inheritance as well, the inheritance of husband and wife, and they inherit their share one from the other before the inheritance of any of the three ranks. About what is the share of each of the members of the ranks and of the husband and wife, however, is too detailed a subject to go into here.

The Book of Arbitration (qaza)

The issues of arbitration, i.e. the settling in court of differences and disputes, are so many that we cannot even summarize them. Briefly, we can say that the system of arbitration in Islam is a special system. The justice of the arbitrator (qazi) is subject to extraordinary attention in Islam. So much precisionhas been given to the knowledgeable personality of the arbitrator that he has to be a mujtahid and an expert on Islamic rights. About his moral and ethical competence, endless diligencehas been introduced . He must be free from all types of sin, even those that do not directly affect his work. In no way does he have any right to accept payment from either of the two parties, even after the arbitration. His expenses are tobe liberally reimbursed from the public treasury. The position of the judge is to be so respected that the parties of the case to be arbitrated, whoever they may be (even a caliph, as the history of Amir ul-Muminin, Ali, so clearly shows), must both present themselves before the judge with perfect respect for his position and in no way expect or demand partiality. Confession, testimonial and, in some cases, oaths play an important role in the Islamic arbitration system.

The Book of Testimony

This bookis connected to the Book of Arbitration in the same way that the Book of Confession is. If a person claims something, the other party either admits it or denies it. If he admits it, this is sufficient for the claim of the claimant tobe proved and for the arbitrator to reach his verdict. If he denies it, the claimant is bound to produce testimony, and if he produces the testimony and it meets the conditions stipulated in the Shari'ah, his claimis proved . The denier is not bound to producetestimony .

In certain circumstances, the denier is bound to swear an oath, and if he swears anoath his prosecution is to go no further. In jurisprudence, it is said, “Testimony upon the claimant, and an oath upon whoever denies it.” The issues of arbitration are so many that books have been written solely on this subject that are as voluminous as some of the great books written on all the subjects of jurisprudence.

The Book of Punishments (hudud and t'azirat)

This book is about Islamic punishments in the same way that the previous two books were about Islamic arbitration. Some of the systems of punishmenthave been precisely defined and determined in Islam, and these are to be performed in the same way regardless of the conditions and any other factors. These types of punishmentsare called hudud. There are a few punishments, however, that the Shari'ah considers to depend on the view of the Hakim9 , who, by taking into consideration the causes and conditions of the crime and any motivating factors or factors that make the crime more serious, enforces a punishment in accordance. These punishmentsare called ta'zirat.

The crimes for which hudud have been stipulated are adultery, homosexuality (including lesbianism), falsely accusing a person of committing one of these crimes- drinking alcohol, stealing and armed civil disturbance, which are all considered crimes against God. Although thesehave all been greatly misunderstood both inside and outside the Islamic world, they are detailed and here is not the place to discuss them more. Itmust be mentioned , however, that if a certain punishment has not been introduced in the Shari'ah amongst the hudud, the Islamic government must introduce punishments according to what it considers to be in the best interests. These punishments are amongst the t'azirat.

The Book of Retaliation (qisas)

Qisas is also a type of punishment, but for offences wherein one person criminally ends the life or harms the body of another person. In reality, qisas is the right Islam gives to the offended person or to his heirs if the offense leads to the offended person's death.

Such offenses are either murder or loss or impediment of a part of the body, and are either intentional (amd), similar to intentional (shabih amd) or purely a mistake (khata mehd).

An intentional offense is that the offense was committed with the intention to commit it, such as a person who intends to kill another person and attacks him and kills him, whether or not the attack was made with a special weapon of attack, like a sword or a gun, or whether made with something else, such as a stone. If the serious intention of the murderer was to kill the other, and this in fact he does, this is enough for it to be ruled as “intentional “.

An offense that is “similar to intentional” is that the intention is to do the act but not to do theharm which the act causes. An example of this is that a person with the intention of-hurting another person hits him with a club, which results in the victim's death. Another example is that someone hits a child intheir way of teaching a lesson and the child dies. Also in this status is the case of the doctor who treats his patient for a certain disease and the treatment causes the patient to die.

Purely a mistake, however, is that there was no intention at all, such as the killing of someone by a person who was only cleaning his rifle and it accidentally fired a shot, or by a person who was only driving his car quite normally in the street.

In the cases of intentional killing or similar to intentional killing the heirs of the deceased have the right of qisas, meaning that under the supervision of the Islamic government, and at the discretion of the nearest of kin, the killer can either be executed or forced to pay recompense but in the case of merely a mistake the killer is not to be executed and is only obliged to pay the heirs the diyah, the financial recompense.

The Book of Financial Recompense (diyah)

Diyah is like qisas in that it is a right of the offended person or the heirs of the offended person upon the offender, with the difference that qisas is a way of taking payment in kind while diyah is a financial penalty. The laws of diyah like the laws ofqisas, are very detailed.

Under the books of qisas and diyah, the jurisprudents have gone into the question of the liability of doctors and of teachers.

Aboutdoctors they say that if the doctor is not proficient and makes a mistake in his treatment of the patient that leads to the patient's death, he is liable.And , if he is proficient and he treats the patient without the patient's permission or the permission of the patient's nearest of kin, and the treatment leads to the patient's death, he is again liable.

If the doctor is proficient, however, and he treats the patient with the permission of that patient, or of the patient's nearest of kin, he must first make the condition to the patient or to the heirs that he will do his utmost, but that, should his efforts happen to lead to the patient's death, he is not responsible. In this case, supposing that the patient dies or suffers some physical loss, the doctor is not liable and not subject to qisas. If, however, he does not make this condition before beginning the treatment, some of the jurisprudents say that he is liable.

Likewise, if a teacher unnecessarily hitting a child leads to the child's death or damage to the child's body, the teacher is liable. If, however, it is really in the child's best interest tobe punished , and this should happen to lead to the child's death or damage to the child's body, the teacher must have taken permission to punish him from the child's guardians, otherwise he is liable.

Notes

1.faqihat is the feminine plural of faqih, meaning, therefore, female jurisprudents.

2. The other being Najaf, despite the way ithas been weakened and reduced by the Ba'ath regime of Iraq .

3. A thimmi kafir is a kafir (non-Muslim)who lives in peace in the Islamic state in accordance to the laws and subject to the benefits it accords him, and no other kafir is allowed to live in an Islamic state.

4.ihram is a state which one binds upon oneself wherein many things become forbidden for one. During the Hajj andumrah it accompanies the wearing of two plain white, un-sewn pieces of cloth.

5. Mehr is like a dowry in reverse, i.e. it is the agreed sum tobe paid by the man to the woman as a condition of their marriage.

6. A point aboutnathr which the author has not mentioned is that it is often made as a promise to do some good deed or deeds in return for a requested favor. In this case, the nathr only becomes obligatory when God has granted that favor.

7. Shrimps, however,are ruled as sea-locusts, and are permissible to eat, provided, like fish, they are taken from the water live.

8. i.e. half a mithqal-an eastern measurement.

9. The Hakim Shari'ah is, as we have seen, either a mujtahid meeting the conditions of being just, etc. or his representative, who, in cases needing what in Englishis called a magistrate, assumes this responsibility.

About The Author

By Hamid Algar1

It is in many ways remarkable that ten years after his death and twenty years after the triumph of the revolution that he led no serious, comprehensive biography of Imam Ruhullah al-Musawi al-Khumayni has yet been written, whether in Persian or any other language. He was, after all, the pre-eminent figure of recent Islamic history, for his impact, considerable enough in Iran itself, has also reverberated throughout much of the Muslim world and helped to transform the worldview and consciousness of many Muslims.

Indeed, it may be precisely this magnitude of the Imam’s achievement, together with the complexity of his spiritual, intellectual, and political personality that has so far discouraged potential biographers. The materials available for the task are, however, as abundant as his accomplishments were varied, and the present writer hopes to take up the challenge in the near future. What follows is therefore nothing more than a preliminary sketch, intended to acquaint the reader with the outlines of the Imam’s life and the main aspects of his person as an Islamic leader of exceptional stature.

Childhood and Early Education

Ruhullah Musawi Khumayni 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 Ahl al-Bayt, 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.2

Imam Khumayni’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.3 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 Khumayni used“Hindi” as penname in some of his ghazals.4

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 Khumayni.

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. This corresponded to a pattern of preliminary study in Iran followed by advanced study in the ‘atabat, the shrine cities of Iraq, which for long remained normative; Imam Khumayni was in fact the first religious leader of prominence whose formation took place entirely in Iran.

In Dhu’l-Hijja 1320/ March 1903, some five months after the Imam’s birth, Sayyid Mustafa was attacked and killed while traveling on the road between Khumayn and the neighboring city of Arak. The identity of the assassin immediately became known; it was Ja’far-quli Khan, the cousin of a certain Bahram Khan, one of the richest landowners of the region. The cause of the assassination is, however, difficult to establish with certainty. According to an account that became standard after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, Sayyid Mustafa had aroused the anger of the local landowners because of his defense of the impoverished peasantry.

However, Sayyid Mustafa himself, in addition to the religious functions he fulfilled, was also a farmer of moderate prosperity, and it is possible that he fell victim to one of the disputes over irrigation rights that were common at the time. A third explanation is that Sayyid Mustafa, in his capacity of shari’a judge of Khumayn, had punished someone for a public violation of the fast of Ramadan and that the family of the offender then exacted a deadly revenge.5

The attempts of Sahiba, Sayyid Mustafa’s sister, to have the killer punished in Khumayn proved fruitless, so his widow, Hajar, went to Tehran to appeal for justice, according to one account carrying the infant Ruhullah in her arms. She was followed there by her two elder sons, Murtaza and Nur al-Din, and finally, in Rabi’ al-Awwal 1323/ May 1925, Ja’far-quli Khan was publicly executed in Tehran on the orders of ‘Ayn al-Dawla, the prime minister of the day.

In 1918, the Imam lost both his aunt, Sahiba, who had played a great role in his early upbringing, and his mother, Hajar. Responsibility for the family then devolved on the eldest brother, Sayyid Murtaza (later to be known as Ayatullah Pasandida). The material welfare of the brothers seems to have been ensured by their father’s estate, but the insecurity and lawlessness that had cost him his life continued. In addition to the incessant feuds among landowners, Khumayn was plagued by the raids mounted on the town by the Bakhtiyari and Lurr tribesmen whenever they had the chance.

Once when a Bakhtiyari chieftain by the name of Rajab ‘Ali came raiding, the young Imam was obliged to take up a rifle together with his brothers and defend the family home. When recounting these events many years later, the Imam remarked,“I have been at war since my childhood.” 6 Among the scenes, he witnessed during his youth and that remained in his memory to help shape his later political activity mention may also be made of the arbitrary and oppressive deeds of landowners and provincial governors. Thus, he recalled in later years how a newly arrived governor had arrested and bastinadoed the chief of the merchants’ guild of Gulpaygan for no other purpose than the intimidation of its citizens.7

Imam Khumayni began his education by memorizing the Qur’an at a maktab operated near his home by a certain Mullah Abu ‘l-Qasim; he became a hafiz by the age of seven. He next embarked on the study of Arabic with Shaykh Ja’far, one of his mother’s cousins, and took lessons on other subjects first from Mirza Mahmud Iftikhar al-'Ulama’ and then from his maternal uncle, Hajji Mirza Muhammad Mahdi. His first teacher in logic was Mirza Riza Najafi, his brother-in-law. Finally, among his instructors in Khumayn mention may be made of the Imam’s elder brother, Murtaza, who taught him Najm al-Din Katib Qazvini’s al-Mutawwal on badi’ and ma’ani and one of the treatises of al-Suyuti on grammar and syntax.

(Although Sayyid Murtaza - who took the surname Pasandida after the law mandating the choice of a surname in 1928 - studied for a while in Isfahan, he never completed the higher levels of religious education; after working for a while in the registrar’s office in Khumayn, he moved to Qum where he was to spend the rest of his life).

In 1339/1920-21, Sayyid Murtaza sent the Imam to the city of Arak (or Sultanabad, as it was then known) in order for him to benefit from the more ample educational resources available there. Arak had become an important center of religious learning because of the presence of Ayatullah ‘Abd al-Karim Ha’iri (d.1936), one of the principal scholars of the day. He had arrived there in 1332/1914 at the invitation of the townspeople, and some three hundred students - a relatively large number - attended his lectures at the Mirza Yusuf Khan Madrasa.

It is probable that Imam Khumayni was not yet advanced enough to study directly under Ha’iri; instead, he worked on logic with Shaykh Muhammad Gulpayagani, read the Sharh al-Lum’a of Shaykh Zayn al-Din al-Amili (d. 996/1558), one of the principal texts of Ja’fari jurisprudence, with Aqa-yi ‘Abbas Araki, and continued his study of al-Mutawwal with Shaykh Muhammad ‘Ali Burujirdi. Roughly a year after the Imam’s arrival in Arak, Ha’iri accepted a summons from the Ulama of Qum to join them and preside over their activity.

One of the earliest strongholds of Shi’ism in Iran, Qum had traditionally been a major center of religious learning as well as pilgrimage to the shrine of Hazrat-I Ma’suma, a daughter of Imam Musa al-Kazim, but it had been overshadowed for many decades by the shrine cities of Iraq with their superior resources of erudition. The arrival of Ha’iri in Qum not only brought about a revival of its madrasas but also began a process whereby the city became in effect the spiritual capital of Iran, a process that was completed by the political struggle launched there by Imam Khumayni some forty years later.

The Imam followed Ha’iri to Qum after an interval of roughly four months. This move was the first important turning point in his life. It was in Qum that he received all his advanced spiritual and intellectual training, and he was to retain a deep sense of identification with the city throughout the rest of his life. It is possible, indeed, although not in a reductive sense, to describe him as a product of Qum. In 1980, when addressing a group of visitors from Qum, he declared,“Wherever I may be, I am a citizen of Qum, and take pride in the fact. My heart is always with Qum and its people.” 8

The Years of Spiritual and Intellectual Formation in Qum, 1923 To 1962

After his arrival in Qum in 1922 or 1923, the Imam first devoted himself to completing the preliminary stage of madrasa education known as sutuh; this he did by studying with teachers such as Shaykh Muhammad Riza Najafi Masjid-i Shahi, Mirza Muhammad Taqi Khwansari, and Sayyid ‘Ali Yasribi Kashani. However, from his early days in Qum, the Imam gave an indication that he was destined to become more than another great authority on Ja’fari jurisprudence. He showed an exceptional interest in subjects that not only were usually absent from the madrasa curriculum, but were often an object of hostility and suspicion: philosophy, in its various traditional schools, and Gnosticism (‘irfan).

He began cultivating this interest by studying the Tafsir-i Safi, a commentary on the Qur’an by the Sufistically-inclined Mullah Muhsin Fayz-i Kashani (d.1091/1680), together with the late Ayatullah ‘Ali Araki (d. 1994), then a young student like himself. His formal instruction in gnosticism and the related discipline of ethics began with classes taught by Hajji Mirza Javad Maliki-Tabrizi, but this scholar died in 1304/1925.

Similarly, the Imam was not able to benefit for long from his first teacher in philosophy, Mirza ‘Ali Akbar Hakim Yazdi, a pupil of the great master Mullah Hadi Sabzavari (d.1295/1878), for Yazdi passed away in 1305/1926. Another of the Imam’s early instructors in philosophy was Sayyid Abu ‘l-Hasan Qazvini (d. 1355/1976), a scholar of both peripatetic and illuminationist philosophy; the Imam attended his circle until Qazvini’s departure from Qum in 1310/1931.

The teacher who had the most profound influence on Imam Khumayni’s spiritual development was, however, Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali Shahabadi (d. 1328 Sh. /1950); to him the Imam refers in a number of his works as shaykhuna and ‘arif-I kamil, and his relationship with him was that of a murid with his murshid.

When Shahabadi first came to Qum in 1307 Sh. /1928, the young Imam asked him a question concerning the nature of revelation, and was captivated by the answer he received. At his insistent request, Shahabadi consented to teach him and a few other select students the Fusus al-Hikam of Ibn ‘Arabi. Although the basis of instruction was Da’ud Qaysari’s commentary on the Fusus, the Imam testified that Shahabadi also presented his own original insights on the text. Among the other texts that Imam Khumayni studied with Shahabadi were the Manazil al-Sa’irin of the Hanbali Sufi, Khwaja ‘Abdullah Ansari (d.482/1089), and the Misbah al-Uns of Muhammad b. Hamza Fanari (d. 834/1431), a commentary on the Mafatih al-Ghayb of Sadr al-Din Qunavi (d. 673/1274).

It is conceivable that the Imam derived from Shahabadi, at least in part, whether consciously or not, the fusion of gnostic and political concerns that came to characterize his life. For this spiritual master of the Imam was one of the relatively few ulama in the time of Riza Shah to preach publicly against the misdeeds of the regime, and in his Shadharat al-Ma’arif, a work primarily gnostic in character, described Islam as“most certainly a political religion.” 9

Gnosis and ethics were also the subject of the first classes taught by the Imam. The classes on ethics taught by Hajji Javad Aqa Maliki Tabrizi were resumed, three years after his death, by Shahabadi, and when Shahabadi left for Tehran in 1936, he assigned the class to Imam Khumayni. The class consisted in the first place of a careful reading of Ansari’s Manazil al-Sa’irin, but ranged beyond the text to touch on a wide variety of contemporary concerns.

It proved popular to the extent that the townsfolk of Qum as well as the students of the religious sciences attended, and people are related to have come from as far a field as Tehran and Isfahan simply to listen to the Imam. This popularity of the Imam’s lectures ran contrary to the policies of the Pahlavi regime, which wished to limit the influence of the ulama outside the religious teaching institution. The government therefore secured the transfer of the lectures from the prestigious location of the Fayziya madrasa to the Mullah Sadiq madrasa, which was unable to accommodate large crowds.

However, after the deposition of Riza Shah in 1941, the lectures returned to the Fayziya madrasa and instantly regained their former popularity. The ability to address the people at large, not simply his own colleagues within the religious institution, which the Imam displayed for the first time in these lectures on ethics, was to play an important role in the political struggles he led in later years.

While teaching ethics to a wide and diverse audience, Imam Khumayni began teaching important texts of gnosis, such as the section on the soul in al-Asfar al-Arba’a of Mullah Sadra (d. 1050/1640) and Sabzavari’s Sharh-I Manzuma, to a select group of young scholars that included Murtaza Mutahhari and Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri, who subsequently became two of his principal collaborators in the revolutionary movement he launched some three decades later.

As for the earliest writings of the Imam, they also indicate that his primary interest during his early years in Qum was gnosis. In 1928, for example, he completed the Sharh Du’a’ al-Sahar, a detailed commentary on the supplicatory prayers recited throughout Ramadan by Imam Muhammad al-Baqir; as with all Imam Khumayni’s works on gnosis, the terminology of Ibn ‘Arabi is frequently encountered in this book. Two years later, he completed Misbah al-Hidaya ila ‘l-Khilafa wa ‘l-Wilaya, a dense and systematic treatise on the main topics of gnosis. Another product of the same years of concentration on gnosis was a series of glosses on Qaysari’s commentary on the Fusus.

In a brief autobiography written for inclusion in a book published in 1934, the Imam wrote that he spent most of his time studying and teaching the works of Mullah Sadra; that he had for several years been studying gnosis with Shahabadi; and that at the same time he was attending the classes of Ayatullah Ha’iri on fiqh.10

The sequence of these statements suggests that fiqh was as yet secondary among his concerns. This situation was to change, but gnosis was for the Imam never simply a topic for study, teaching, and writing. It remained an integral part of his intellectual and spiritual personality, and as such infused many of his ostensibly political activities in later years with an unmistakably gnostic element.

The Imam did not engage in any overt political activities during the 1930’s. He always believed that the leadership of political activities should be in the hands of the foremost religious scholars, and he was therefore obliged to accept the decision of Ha’iri to remain relatively passive toward the measures taken by Riza Shah against the traditions and culture of Islam in Iran. In any event, as a still junior figure in the religious institution in Qum, he would have been in no position to mobilize popular opinion on a national scale.

He was nonetheless in contact with those few ulama who did openly challenge Riza Shah, not only Shahabadi, but also men such as Hajji Nurullah Isfahani, Mirza Sadiq Aqa Tabrizi, Aqazada Kifai, and Sayyid Hasan Mudarris. He expressed his own opinions of the Pahlavi regime, the leading characteristics of which he identified as oppression and hostility to religion, as yet only allusively, in privately circulated poems.11

He assumed a public political stance for the first time in a proclamation dated 15 Urdibihisht 1323/ 4 May 1944 that called for action to deliver the Muslims of Iran and the entire Islamic world from the tyranny of foreign powers and their domestic accomplices. The Imam begins by citing Qur’an, 34:46 (“Say: ‘I enjoin but one thing upon you, that you rise up for Allah, in pairs and singly, and then reflect’” ). This is the same verse that opens the chapter on awakening (bab al-yaqza) at the very beginning of Ansari’s Manazil al-Sa’irin, the handbook of spiritual wayfaring first taught to the Imam by Shahabadi. The Imam’s interpretation of“rising up” is, however, both spiritual and political, both individual and collective, a rebellion against lassitude in the self and corruption in society.

The same spirit of comprehensive revolt inspires the first work written by the Imam for publication, Kashf al-Asrar (Tehran, 1324 Sh. /1945). He is said to have completed the book in forty-eight days from a sense of urgency, and that it indeed met a need is proven by the fact that it went through two impressions in its first year.

The principal aim of the book, as reflected in its title, was to refute ‘Ali Akbar Hakamizada’s Asrar-i Hazarsala, a work calling for a“reform” of Shi’i Islam. Similar attacks on Shi’i tradition were being made in the same period by Shari’at Sanglaji (d.1944), an admirer of Wahhabism despite that sect’s marked hostility to Shi’ism, and Ahmad Kasravi (d. 1946), competent as a historian but mediocre as a thinker. The Imam’s vindication of such aspects of Shi’i practice as the mourning ceremonies of Muharram, pilgrimage (ziyara) to the tombs of the Imams, and the recitation of the supplicatory prayers composed by the Imams, was therefore a response to the criticisms made by all three.

Imam Khumayni connected their assaults on tradition with the anti-religious policies of Riza Shah and bitterly criticized the Pahlavi regime for destroying public morality. He stopped short, however, of demanding the abolition of the monarchy, proposing instead that an assembly of competent mujtahids should choose“a just monarch who will not violate God’s laws and will shun oppression and wrongdoing, which will not transgress against men’s property, lives, and honor.” 12

Even this conditional legitimacy of monarchy was to last“only so long as a better system could not be established.” 13 There can be no doubt that the“better system” already envisaged by Imam Khumayni in 1944 was Wilayat al-faqih, which became the constitutional cornerstone of the Islamic Republic of Iran established in 1979.

When Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim Ha’iri died in 1936, the supervision of the religious institution in Qum had been jointly assumed by Ayatullah Khwansari, Ayatullah Sadr, and Ayatullah Hujjat. A sense of lack was nonetheless felt. When Ayatullah Abu ‘l-Hasan Isfahani, the principal marja’-i taqlid of the age residing in Najaf, died in 1946, the need for a centralized leadership of Shi’i Muslims became more felt more acutely, and a search began for a single individual capable of fulfilling the duties and functions of both Ha’iri and Isfahani. Ayatullah Burujirdi, then resident in Hamadan, was seen to be the most suitable person available, and Imam Khumayni is said to have played an important role in persuading him to come to Qum.

In this he was no doubt motivated in part by the hope that Burujirdi would adopt a firm position vis-a-vis Muhammad Riza Shah, the second Pahlavi ruler. This hope was to remain largely unfulfilled. In April 1949, Imam Khumayni learned that Burujirdi was engaged in negotiations with the government concerning possible emendations to the constitution then in force, and he wrote him a letter expressing his anxieties about the possible consequences. In 1955, a nationwide campaign against the Baha’i sect was launched, for which the Imam sought to recruit Burujirdi’s support, but he had little success.

As for religious personalities who were militantly active in the political sphere at the time, notably Ayatullah Abu ‘l-Qasim Kashani and Navvab Safavi, the leader of the Fida’iyan-i Islam, the Imam’s contacts with them were sporadic and inconclusive. His reluctance for direct political involvement in this period was probably due to his belief that any movement for radical change ought to be led by the senior echelons of the religious establishment. In addition, the most influential personage on the crowded and confused political scene of the day was the secular nationalist, Dr. Muhammad Musaddiq.

Imam Khumayni therefore concentrated during the years of Burujirdi’s leadership in Qum on giving instruction in fiqh and gathering round him students who later became his associates in the movement that led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime, not only Mutahhari and Muntaziri, but younger men such as Muhammad Javad Bahonar and ‘Ali Akbar Hashimi-Rafsanjani.

In 1946, he began teaching usul al-fiqh at the kharij level, taking as his text the chapter on rational proofs from the second volume of the Kifayat al-Usul of Akhund Muhammad Kazim Khurasani (d. 1329/1911). Initially attended by no more than thirty students, the class became so popular in Qum that five hundred were in attendance the third time it was offered.

According to the reminiscences of some of those who took the class, it was distinguished from other classes taught in Qum on the same subject by the critical spirit the Imam instilled in his students, as well as his ability to connect fiqh with all the other dimensions of Islam - ethical, gnostic, philosophical, political, and social.

The Years of Struggle and Exile, 1962-1978

The emphases of the Imam’s activity began to change with the death of Burujirdi on March 31, 1961, for he now emerged as one of the successors to Burujirdi’s position of leadership. This emergence was signaled by the publication of some of his writings on fiqh, most importantly the basic handbook of religious practice entitled, like others of its genre, Tauzih al-Masa’il. He was soon accepted as marja’-i taqlid by a large number of Iranian Shi’is. His leadership role was, however, destined to go far beyond that traditional for a marja’-i taqlid and to attain a comprehensiveness unique in the history of the Shi’i ulama.

This became apparent soon after the death of Burujirdi when Muhammad Riza Shah, secure in his possession of power after the CIA-organized coup of August 1953, embarked on a series of measures designed to eliminate all sources of opposition, actual or potential, and to incorporate Iran firmly into American patterns of strategic and economic domination.

In the autumn of 1962, the government promulgated new laws governing elections to local and provincial councils, which deleted the former requirement that those elected be sworn into office on the Qur’an. Seeing in this a plan to permit the infiltration of public life by the Baha’is, Imam Khumayni telegraphed both the Shah and the prime minister of the day, warning them to desist from violating both the law of Islam and the Iranian Constitution of 1907, failing which the ulama would engage in a sustained campaign of protest. Rejecting all compromise measures, the Imam was able to force the repeal of the laws in question seven weeks after they had been promulgated. This achievement marked his emergence on the scene as the principal voice of opposition to the Shah.

A more serious confrontation was not long in coming. In January 1963, the Shah announced a six-point program of reform that he termed the White Revolution, an American-inspired package of measures designed to give his regime a liberal and progressive facade. Imam Khumayni summoned a meeting of his colleagues in Qum to press upon them the necessity of opposing the Shah’s plans, but they were initially hesitant. They sent one of their number, Ayatullah Kamalvand, to see the Shah and gauge his intentions.

Although the Shah showed no inclination to retreat or compromise, it took further pressure by Imam Khumayni on the other senior ulama of Qum to persuade them to decree a boycott of the referendum that the Shah had planned to obtain the appearance of popular approval for his White Revolution.

For his own part, Imam Khumayni issued on January 22, 1963 a strongly worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans. In imitation, perhaps, of his father, who had taken an armored column to Qum in 1928 in order to intimidate certain outspoken ulama, the Shah came to Qum two days later. Faced with a boycott by all the dignitaries of the city, he delivered a speech harshly attacking the ulama as a class.

On January 26, the referendum was held, with a low turnout that reflected the growing heed paid by the Iranian people to Imam Khumayni’s directives. He continued his denunciation of the Shah’s programs, issuing a manifesto that also bore the signatures of eight other senior scholars. In it he listed the various ways in which the Shah had violated the constituent, condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah of comprehensive submission to America and Israel:“I see the solution to lie in this tyrannical government being removed, for the crime of violating the ordinances of Islam and trampling the constitution, and in a government taking its place that adheres to Islam and has concern for the Iranian nation.” 14 He also decreed that the Nauruz celebrations for the Iranian year 1342 (which fell on March 21, 1963) be cancelled as a sign of protest against government policies.

The very next day, paratroopers were sent to the Fayziya madrasa in Qum, the site where the Imam delivered his public speeches. They killed a number of students, beat and arrested a number of others, and ransacked the building. Unintimidated, the Imam continued his attacks on the regime. On April 1, he denounced the persistent silence of certain apolitical ulama as“tantamount to collaboration with the tyrannical regime,” and one day later proclaimed political neutrality under the guise of taqiya to be haram.15

When the Shah sent his emissaries to the houses of the ulama in Qum to threaten them with the destruction of their homes, the Imam reacted contemptuously by referring to the Shah as“that little man (mardak).” Then, on April 3, 1963, the fortieth day after the attack on the Fayziya madrasa, he described the Iranian government as being determined to eradicate Islam at the behest of America, Israel, and himself as resolved to combat it.

Confrontation turned to insurrection some two months later. The beginning of Muharram, always a time of heightened religious awareness and sensitivity, saw demonstrators in Tehran carrying pictures of the Imam and denouncing the Shah in front of his own palace. On the afternoon of ‘Ashura (June 3, 1963), Imam Khumayni delivered a speech at the Fayziya madrasa in which he drew parallels between the Umayyad caliph Yazid and the Shah and warned the Shah that if he did not change his ways the day would come when the people would offer up thanks for his departure from the country.16

This warning was remarkably prescient, for on January 16, 1979, the Shah was indeed obliged to leave Iran amidst scenes of popular rejoicing. The immediate effect of the Imam’s speech was, however, his arrest two days later at 3 o’clock in the morning by a group of commandos who hastily transferred him to the Qasr prison in Tehran.

As dawn broke on June 3, the news of his arrest spread first through Qum and then to other cities. In Qum, Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad and Varamin, masses of angry demonstrators were confronted by tanks and ruthlessly slaughtered. It was not until six days later that order was fully restored. This uprising of 15 Khurdad 1342 (the day in the Iranian calendar on which it began) marked a turning point in Iranian history.

Henceforth the repressive and dictatorial nature of the Shah’s regime, reinforced by the unwavering support of the United States, was constantly intensified, and with it the prestige of Imam Khumayni as the only figure of note - whether religious or secular - willing to challenge him. The arrogance imbuing the Shah’s policies also caused a growing number of the ulama to abandon their quietism and align themselves with the radical goals set forth by the Imam. The movement of 15 Khurdad may therefore be characterized as the prelude to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79; the goals of that revolution and its leadership had already been determined.

After nineteen days in the Qasr prison, Imam Khumayni was moved first, to the ‘Ishratabad military base and then to a house in the Davudiya section of Tehran where he was kept under surveillance. Despite the killings that had taken place during the uprising, mass demonstrations were held in Tehran and elsewhere demanding his release and some of his colleagues came to the capital from Qum to lend their support to the demand. It was not, however, until April 7, 1964 that he was released, no doubt on the assumption that imprisonment had tempered his views and that the movement he had led would quietly subside.

Three days after his release and return to Qum, he dispelled such illusions by refuting officially inspired rumors that he had come to an understanding with the Shah’s regime and by declaring that the movement inaugurated on 15 Khurdad would continue. Aware of the persisting differences in approach between the Imam and some of the other senior religious scholars, the regime had also attempted to discredit him by creating dissension in Qum. These attempts, too, were unsuccessful, for early in June 1964 all the major ulama put their signatures to declarations commemorating the first anniversary of the uprising of 15 Khurdad.

Despite its failure to sideline or silence Imam Khumayni, the Shah’s regime continued its pro-American policies unwaveringly. In the autumn of 1964, it concluded a status of forces agreement with the United States that provided immunity from prosecution for all American personnel in Iran and their dependents. This occasioned the Imam to deliver what was perhaps the most vehement speech of the entire struggle against the Shah; certainly one of his close associates, Ayatullah Muhammad Mufattih, had never seen him so agitated.17

He denounced the agreement as a surrender of Iranian independence and sovereignty, made in exchange for a $200 million loan that would be of benefit only to the Shah and his associates, and described as traitors all those in the Majlis who voted in favor of it; the government lacked all legitimacy, he concluded.18

Shortly before dawn on November 4, 1964, again a detachment of commandos surrounded the Imam’s house in Qum, arrested him, and this time took him directly to Mehrabad airport in Tehran for immediate banishment to Turkey. The decision to deport rather than arrest Imam Khumayni and imprison him in Iran was based no doubt on the hope that in exile he would fade from popular memory. Physical elimination would have been fraught with the danger of an uncontrollable popular uprising. As for the choice of Turkey, this reflected the security cooperation existing between the Shah’s regime and Turkey.

The Imam was first lodged in room 514 of Bulvar Palas Oteli in Ankara, a moderately comfortable hotel in the Turkish capital, under the joint surveillance of Iranian and Turkish security officials. On November 12, he was moved from Ankara to Bursa, where he was to reside another eleven months. The stay in Turkey cannot have been congenial, for Turkish law forbade Imam Khumayni to wear the cloak and turban of the Muslim scholar, an identity which was integral to his being; the sole photographs in existence to show him bareheaded all belong to the period of exile in Turkey.19

However, on December 3, 1964, he was joined in Bursa by his eldest son, Hajj Mustafa Khumayni; he was also permitted to receive occasional visitors from Iran, and was supplied with a number of books on fiqh. He made use of his forced stay in Bursa to compile Tahrir al-Wasila, a two-volume compendium on questions of jurisprudence. Important and distinctive are the fatwas this volume contains, grouped under the headings of al-amr bi ‘l-ma’ruf wa ‘l-nahy ‘an al-munkar and difa’.

The Imam decrees, for example, that“if it is feared that the political and economic domination (by foreigners) over an Islamic land will lead to the enslavement and weakening of the Muslims, then such domination must be repelled by appropriate means, including passive resistance, the boycott of foreign goods, and the abandonment of all dealings and association with the foreigners in question.” Similarly,“if an attack by foreigners on one of the Islamic states is anticipated, it is incumbent on all Islamic states to repel the attack by all possible means; indeed, this is incumbent on the Muslims as a whole.” 20

On September 5, 1965, Imam Khumayni left Turkey for Najaf in Iraq, where he was destined to spend thirteen years. As a traditional center of Shi’i learning and pilgrimage, Najaf was clearly a preferable and more congenial place of exile. It had moreover already functioned as a stronghold of ulama opposition to the Iranian monarchy during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1909. But it was not in order to accommodate the Imam that the Shah arranged for his transfer to Najaf.

First, there was continuing disquiet among the Imam’s followers at his forced residence in Bursa, away from the traditional milieu of the Shi’i madrasa; such objections could be met by moving him to Najaf. Second, it was hoped that once in Najaf, the Imam would either be overshadowed by the prestigious ulama there, men such as Ayatullah Abu ‘l-Qasim Khu’i (d. 1995), or that he would challenge their distaste for political activism and squander his energies on confronting them.

He skirted this dual danger by proffering them his respect while continuing to pursue the goals he had set himself before leaving Iran. Another pitfall he avoided was association with the Iraqi government, which occasionally had its own differences with the Shah’s regime and was of a mind to use the Imam’s presence in Najaf for its own purposes. The Imam declined the opportunity to be interviewed on Iraqi television soon after his arrival, and resolutely kept his distance from succeeding Iraqi administrations.

Once settled in Najaf, Imam Khumayni began teaching fiqh at the Shaykh Murtaza Ansari madrasa. His lectures were well attended, by students not only from Iran but also from Iraq, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf states. In fact, a mass migration to Najaf from Qum and other centers of religious learning in Iran was proposed to the Imam, but he advised against it as a measure bound to depopulate Qum and weaken it as a center of religious guidance.

It was also at the Shaykh Murtaza Ansari madrasa that he delivered, between January 21 and February 8, 1970, his celebrated lectures on Wilayat al-faqih, the theory of governance that was to be implemented after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution. (The text of these lectures was published in Najaf, not long after their delivery, under the title Wilayat al-faqih ya Hukumat-i Islami; a slightly abbreviated Arabic translation soon followed). This theory, which may be summarized as the assumption by suitably qualified ulama of the political and juridical functions of the Twelfth Imam during his occultation, had already been put forward, somewhat tentatively, in his first published work, Kashf al-Asrar.

Now he presented it as the self-evident and incontestable consequence of the Shi’i doctrine of the Imamate, citing and analyzing in support of it all relevant texts from the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet (S)21 and the Twelve Imams (A)22 He emphasized also the harm that had come to Iran (as well as other Muslim countries) from abandoning Islamic law and government and relinquishing the political realm to the enemies of Islam. Finally, he delineated a program for the establishment of an Islamic government, laying particular stress on the responsibilities of the ulama to transcend their petty concerns and to address the people fearlessly:“It is the duty of all of us to overthrow the taghut, the illegitimate political powers that now rule the entire Islamic world.” 23

The text of the lectures on Wilayat al-faqih was smuggled back to Iran by visitors who came to see the Imam in Najaf, as well as by ordinary Iranians who came on pilgrimage to the shrine of Hazrat ‘Ali (A) The same channels were used to convey to Iran the numerous letters and proclamations in which the Imam commented on the events that took place in his homeland during the long years of exile. The first such document, a letter to the Iranian ulama assuring them of the ultimate downfall of the Shah’s regime, is dated April 16, 1967. On the same day he also wrote to prime minister Amir ‘Abbas Huvayda accusing him of running“a regime of terror and thievery.” 24

On the occasion of the Six Day War in June 1967, the Imam issued a declaration forbidding any type of dealing with Israel as well as the consumption of Israeli goods. This declaration was widely and openly publicized in Iran, which led to the ransacking of Imam Khumayni’s house in Qum and the arrest of Hajj Sayyid Ahmad Khumayni, his second son, who had been living there. (Some of the unpublished works of the Imam were lost or destroyed on this occasion).

It was also at this time that the Shah’s regime contemplated moving the Imam from Iraq to India; a location from which communications with Iran would have been far more difficult, but the plan was thwarted. Other developments on which the Imam commented from Najaf were the extravagant celebrations of 2500 years of Iranian monarchy in October 1971 (“it is the duty of the Iranian people to refrain from participation in this illegitimate festival” ); the formal establishment of a one-party system in Iran in February 1975 (the Imam prohibited membership in the party, the Hizb-i Rastakhiz, in a fatwa issued the following month); and the substitution, in the same month, of the imperial (shahanshahi) calendar for the solar Hijri calendar that had been official in Iran until that time. Some developments were met with fatwas rather than proclamations: for example, the Imam rejected as incompatible with Islam the Family Protection Law of 1967 and classified as adulteresses women who remarried after obtaining a divorce under its provisions.25

Imam Khumayni had also to deal with changing circumstances in Iraq. The Ba’th Party, fundamentally hostile to religion, had come to power in July 1967 and soon began exerting pressure on the scholars of Najaf, both Iraqi and Iranian. In 1971, as Iraq and Iran entered a state of sporadic and undeclared war with each other, the Iraqi regime began expelling from its territory Iranians whose forebears had in some cases been residing there for generations. The Imam, who until that point had scrupulously kept his distance from Iraqi officialdom, now addressed himself directly to the Iraqi leadership condemning its actions.

Imam Khumayni was, in fact, constantly, and acutely aware of the connections between Iranian affairs and those of the Muslim world in general and the Arab lands in particular. This awareness led him to issue from Najaf a proclamation to the Muslims of the world on the occasion of the hajj in 1971, and to comment, with special frequency and emphasis, on the problems posed by Israel for the Muslim world. The Imam’s strong concern for the Palestine question led him to issue a fatwa on August 27, 1968 authorizing the use of religious monies (vujuh-i shar’i) to support the nascent activities of al-Asifa, the armed wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization; this was confirmed by a similar and more detailed ruling issued after a meeting with the Baghdad representative of the PLO.26

The distribution in Iran, on however limited a scale, of the proclamations and fatwas of Imam Khumayni was in itself enough to ensure that his name not be forgotten during the years of exile. Equally important, the movement of Islamic opposition to the Shah’s regime that had been inaugurated by the uprising of 15 Khurdad continued to develop despite the brutality unhesitatingly dispensed by the Shah.

Numerous groups and individuals explicitly owed their allegiance to the Imam. Soon after his exiling there came into being an organization called Hay’atha-yi Mu’talifa-yi Islami (the Allied Islamic Associations), headquartered in Tehran but with branches throughout Iran. Active in it were many who had been students of the Imam in Qum and who came to assume important responsibilities after the revolution, men such as Hashimi-Rafsanjani and Javad Bahunar. In January 1965, four members of the organization assassinated Hasan ‘Ali Mansur, the prime minister who had been responsible for the exiling of the Imam.

There were no individuals designated, even clandestinely, as Imam Khumayni’s authorized representatives in Iran while he was in exile.

However, senior ulama such as Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari, Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Bihishti (d. 1981), and Ayatullah Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri, were in contact with him, directly and indirectly, and were known to speak on his behalf in important matters. Like their younger counterparts in the Hay’atha-yi Mu’talafa-yi Islami, all three went on to perform important functions during and after the revolution.

The continued growth of the Islamic movement during Imam Khumayni’s exile should not be attributed exclusively to his abiding influence or to the activity of ulama associated with him. Important, too, were the lectures and books of ‘Ali Shari’ati (d. 1977), a university-educated intellectual whose understanding and presentation of Islam were influenced by Western ideologies, including Marxism, to a degree that many ulama regarded as dangerously syncretistic. When the Imam was asked to comment on the theories of Shari’ati, both by those who supported them and by those who opposed them, he discreetly refrained from doing so, in order not to create a division within the Islamic movement that would have benefited the Shah’s regime.

The most visible sign of the persisting popularity of Imam Khumayni in the pre-revolutionary years, above all at the heart of the religious institution in Qum, came in June 1975 on the anniversary of the uprising of 15 Khurdad. Students at the Fayziya madrasa began holding a demonstration within the confines of the building, and a sympathetic crowd assembled outside. Both gatherings continued for three days until they were attacked on the ground by commandos and from the air by a military helicopter, with numerous deaths resulting.

The Imam reacted with a message in which he declared the events in Qum and similar disturbances elsewhere to be a sign of hope that“freedom and liberation from the bonds of imperialism” were at hand.27 The beginning of the revolution came indeed some two and a half years later.

The Islamic Revolution, 1978-79

The chain of events that ended in February 1979 with the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the foundation of the Islamic Republic began with the death in Najaf on October 23, 1977 of Hajj Sayyid Mustafa Khumayni, unexpectedly and under mysterious circumstances. This death was widely attributed to the Iranian security police, SAVAK, and protest meetings took place in Qum, Tehran, Yazd, Mashhad, Shiraz, and Tabriz. Imam Khumayni himself, with the equanimity he customarily displayed in the face of personal loss, described the death of his son as one of the“hidden favors” (altaf-i khafiya) of God, and advised the Muslims of Iran to show fortitude and hope.28

The esteem in which Imam Khumayni was held and the reckless determination of the Shah’s regime to undermine that esteem were demonstrated once again on January 7, 1978 when an article appeared in the semi-official newspaper Ittila’at attacking him in scurrilous terms as a traitor working together with foreign enemies of the country. The next day a furious mass protest took place in Qum; it was suppressed by the security forces with heavy loss of life. This was the first in a series of popular confrontations that, gathering momentum throughout 1978, soon turned into a vast revolutionary movement, demanding the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the installation of an Islamic government.

The martyrs of Qum were commemorated forty days later with demonstrations and shop closures in every major city of Iran. Particularly grave were the disturbances in Tabriz, which ended only after more than 100 people had been killed by the Shah’s troops. On March 29, the fortieth day after the killings in Tabriz was marked by a further round of demonstrations, in some fifty-five Iranian cities; this time the heaviest casualties occurred in Yazd, where security forces opened fire on a gathering in the main mosque. In early May, it was Tehran itself that saw the principal violence; armored columns appeared on the streets for the first time since June 1963 in order to contain the trend to revolution.

In June, the Shah found it politic to make a number of superficial concessions - such as the repeal of the“imperial calendar” -to the forces opposing him, but repression also continued. When the government lost control of Isfahan on August 17, the army assaulted the city and killed hundreds of unarmed demonstrators. Two days later, 410 people were burned to death behind the locked doors of a cinema in Abadan, and the government was plausibly held responsible.

On ‘Id al-fitr, which that year fell on September 4, marches took place in all major cities, with an estimated total of four million participants. The demand was loudly voiced for the abolition of monarchy and the foundation of an Islamic government under the leadership of Imam Khumayni. Faced with the mounting tide of revolution, the Shah decreed martial law and forbade further demonstrations.

On September 9, a crowd gathered at the Maydan-i Zhala (subsequently renamed Maydan-i Shuhada’) in Tehran was attacked by troops that had blocked all exits from the square, and some 2000 people were killed at this location alone. Another 2000 were killed elsewhere in Tehran by American-supplied military helicopters hovering overhead. This day of massacre, which came to be known as Black Friday, marked the point of no return. Too much blood had been spilt for the Shah to have any hope of survival, and the army itself began to tire of the task of slaughter.

As these events were unfolding in Iran, Imam Khumayni delivered a whole series of messages and speeches, which reached his homeland not only in printed form but also increasingly on tape cassettes. His voice could be heard congratulating the people for their sacrifices, denouncing the Shah in categorical fashion as a criminal, and underlining the responsibility of the United States for the killings and the repression. (Ironically, US President Carter had visited Tehran on New Year’s Eve 1977 and lauded the Shah for creating“an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” 29

As the façade of stability dissolved, the United States continued its military and political support of the Shah uninterrupted by anything but the most superficial hesitation). Most importantly, the Imam recognized that a unique juncture had been reached in Iranian history, that a genuinely revolutionary momentum had come into being which if dissipated would be impossible to rebuild. He therefore warned against any tendency to compromise or to be deceived by the sporadic conciliatory gestures of the Shah.

Thus on the occasion of ‘Id al-Fitr, when mass demonstrations had passed off with deceptive peacefulness in Tehran, he issued the following declaration:“Noble people of Iran! Press forward with your movement and do not slacken for a minute, as I know full well you will not! Let no one imagine that after the blessed month of Ramadan his God-given duties have changed. These demonstrations that break down tyranny and advance the goals of Islam are a form of worship that is not confined to certain months or days, for the aim is to save the nation, to enact Islamic justice, and to establish a form of divine government based on justice.” 30

In one of the numerous miscalculations that marked his attempts to destroy the revolution, the Shah decided to seek the deportation of Imam Khumayni from Iraq, on the assumption, no doubt, that once removed from the prestigious location of Najaf and its proximity to Iran, his voice would somehow be silenced. The agreement of the Iraqi government was obtained at a meeting between the Iraqi and Iranian foreign ministers in New York, and on September 24, 1978, the Imam’s house in Najaf was surrounded by troops. He was informed that his continued residence in Iraq was contingent on his abandoning political activity, a condition he was sure to reject.

On October 3, he left Iraq for Kuwait, but was refused entry at the border. After a period of hesitation in which Algeria, Lebanon and Syria were considered as possible destinations, Imam Khumayni embarked for Paris, on the advice of his second son, Hajj Sayyid Ahmad Khumayni, who by now had joined him. Once arrived in Paris, the Imam took up residence in the suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau in a house that had been rented for him by Iranian exiles in France.

Residence in a non-Muslim land was no doubt experienced by Imam Khumayni as irksome, and in the declaration he issued from Neauphle-le-Chateau on October 11, 1978, the fortieth day after the massacres of Black Friday, he announced his intention of moving to any Muslim country that assured him freedom of speech.31 No such assurance ever materialized.

In addition, his forced removal from Najaf increased popular anger in Iran still further. It was, however, the Shah’s regime that turned out to be the ultimate loser from this move. Telephonic communications with Tehran were far easier from Paris than they had been from Najaf, thanks to the Shah’s determination to link Iran with the West in every possible way, and the messages and instructions the Imam issued flowed forth uninterrupted from the modest command center he established in a small house opposite his residence. Moreover, a host of journalists from across the world now made their way to France, and the image and the words of the Imam soon became a daily feature in the world’s media.

In Iran meanwhile, the Shah was continuously reshaping his government. First he brought in as prime minister Sharif-Imami, an individual supposedly close to conservative elements among the ‘ulama. Then, on November 6, he formed a military government under General Ghulam-Riza Azhari, a move explicitly recommended by the United States. These political maneuverings had essentially no effect on the progress of the revolution.

On November 23, one week before the beginning of Muharram, the Imam issued a declaration in which he likened the month to“a divine sword in the hands of the soldiers of Islam, our great religious leaders, and respected preachers, and all the followers of Imam Husayn, Sayyid al-shuhada’.” They must, he continued,“make maximum use of it; trusting in the power of God, they must tear out the remaining roots of this tree of oppression and treachery.” As for the military government, it was contrary to the Shari’ah and opposition to it a religious duty.32

Vast demonstrations unfurled across Iran as soon as Muharram began. Thousands of people donned white shrouds as a token of readiness for martyrdom and were cut down as they defied the nightly curfew. On Muharram 9, a million people marched in Tehran demanding the overthrow of the monarchy, and the following day, ‘Ashura, more than two million demonstrators approved by acclamation a seventeen-point declaration of which the most important demand was the formation of an Islamic government headed by the Imam. Killings by the army continued, but military discipline began to crumble, and the revolution acquired an economic dimension with the proclamation of a national strike on December 18. With his regime crumbling, the Shah now attempted to co-opt secular, liberal-nationalist politicians in order to forestall the foundation of an Islamic government.

On January 3, 1979, Shahpur Bakhtiyar of the National Front (Jabha-yi Milli) was appointed prime minister to replace General Azhari, and plans were drawn up for the Shah to leave the country for what was advertised as a temporary absence. On January 12, the formation of a nine-member regency council was announced; headed by Jalal al-Din Tihrani, an individual proclaimed to have religious credentials, it was to represent the Shah’s authority in his absence. None of these maneuvers distracted the Imam from the goal now increasingly within reach. The very next day after the formation of the regency council, he proclaimed from Neauphle-le-Chateau the formation of the Council of the Islamic Revolution (Shaura-yi Inqilab-i Islami), a body entrusted with establishing a transitional government to replace the Bakhtiyar administration. On January 16, amid scenes of feverish popular rejoicing, the Shah left Iran for exile and death.

What remained now was to remove Bakhtiyar and prevent a military coup d’état enabling the Shah to return. The first of these aims came closer to realization when Sayyid Jalal al-Din Tihrani came to Paris in order to seek a compromise with Imam Khumayni. He refused to see him until he resigned from the regency council and pronounced it illegal. As for the military, the gap between senior generals, unconditionally loyal to the Shah, and the growing number of officers and recruits sympathetic to the revolution, was constantly growing. When the United States dispatched General Huyser, commander of NATO land forces in Europe, to investigate the possibility of a military coup, he was obliged to report that it was pointless even to consider such a step.

Conditions now seemed appropriate for Imam Khumayni to return to Iran and preside over the final stages of the revolution. After a series of delays, including the military occupation of Mehrabad airport from January 24 to 30, the Imam embarked on a chartered airliner of Air France on the evening of January 31 and arrived in Tehran the following morning. Amid unparalleled scenes of popular joy - it has been estimated that more than ten million people gathered in Tehran to welcome the Imam back to his homeland - he proceeded to the cemetery of Bihisht-i Zahra to the south of Tehran where the martyrs of the revolution lay buried.

There he decried the Bakhtiyar administration as the“last feeble gasp of the Shah’s regime” and declared his intention of appointing a government that would“punch Bakhtiyar’s government in the mouth.” 33 The appointment of the provisional Islamic government the Imam had promised came on February 5. Its leadership was entrusted to Mahdi Bazargan, an individual who had been active for many years in various Islamic organizations, most notably the Freedom Movement (Nahzat-i Azadi).

The decisive confrontation came less than a week later. Faced with the progressive disintegration of the armed forces and the desertion of many officers and men, together with their weapons, to the Revolutionary Committees that were springing up everywhere, Bakhtiyar decreed a curfew in Tehran to take effect at 4 p.m. on February 10. Imam Khumayni ordered that the curfew should be defied and warned that if elements in the army loyal to the Shah did not desist from killing the people, he would issue a formal fatwa for jihad.34 The following day the Supreme Military Council withdrew its support from Bakhtiyar, and on February 12, 1979, all organs of the regime, political, administrative, and military, finally collapsed. The revolution had triumphed.

Clearly no revolution can be regarded as the work of a single man, nor can its causes be interpreted in purely ideological terms; economic and social developments had helped to prepare the ground for the revolutionary movement of 1978-79. There was also marginal involvement in the revolution, particularly during its final stages when its triumph seemed assured, by secular, liberal-nationalist, and leftist elements. But there can be no doubting the centrality of Imam Khumayni’s role and the integrally Islamic nature of the revolution he led.

Physically removed from his countrymen for fourteen years, he had an unfailing sense of the revolutionary potential that had surfaced and was able to mobilize the broad masses of the Iranian people for the attainment of what seemed to many inside the country (including his chosen premier, Bazargan) a distant and excessively ambitious goal. His role pertained, moreover, not merely to moral inspiration and symbolic leadership; he was also the operational leader of the revolution. Occasionally he accepted advice on details of strategy from persons in Iran, but he took all key decisions himself, silencing early on all advocates of compromise with the Shah. It was the mosques that were the organizational units of the revolution and mass prayers, demonstrations and martyrdom that were - until the very last stage - its principal weapons.

1979-89: First Decade of the Islamic Republic, Last Decade of the Imam’s Life

Imam Khumayni’s role was also central in shaping the new political order that emerged from the revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran. At first it appeared that he might exercise his directive role from Qum, for he moved there from Tehran on February 29, causing Qum to become in effect a second capital of Iran. On March 30 and 31, a nationwide referendum resulted in a massive vote in favor of the establishment of an Islamic Republic.

The Imam proclaimed the next day, April 1, 1979, as the“first day of God’s government.” 35 The institutionalization of the new order continued with the election, on August 3, of an Assembly of Experts (Majlis-i Khubragan), entrusted with the task of reviewing a draft constitution that had been put forward on June 18; fifty-five of the seventy-three persons elected were religious scholars.

It was not however to be expected that a smooth transition from the old regime would prove possible. The powers and duties of the Council of the Islamic Revolutionary, which was intended to serve as an interim legislature, were not clearly delineated from those of the provisional government headed by Bazargan.

More importantly, significant differences of outlook and approach separated the two bodies from each other. The council, composed predominantly of ulama, favored immediate and radical change and sought to strengthen the revolutionary organs that had come into being - the revolutionary committees, the revolutionary courts charged with punishing members of the former regime charged with serious crimes, and the Corps of Guards of the Islamic Revolution (Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami), established on May 5, 1979. The government, headed by Bazargan and comprising mainly liberal technocrats of Islamic orientation, sought as swift a normalization of the situation as possible and the gradual phasing out of the revolutionary institutions.

Although Imam Khumayni encouraged members of the two bodies to cooperate and refrained, on most occasions, from arbitrating their differences, his sympathies were clearly with the Council of the Islamic Revolution. On July 1, Bazargan offered the Imam his resignation. It was refused, and four members of the council l- Rafsanjani, Bahunar, Mahdavi-Kani, and Ayatullah Sayyid ‘Ali Khamna’i - joined Bazargan’s cabinet in an effort to improve the coordination of the two bodies. In addition to these frictions at the governmental level, a further element of instability was provided by the terrorist activities of shadowy groups that were determined to rob the nascent Islamic republic of some of its most capable personalities.

Thus on May 1, 1979, Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari, a leading member of the Council of the Islamic Revolution and a former pupil close to the Imam’s heart, was assassinated in Tehran. For once, the Imam wept in an open display of grief.

The final break between Bazargan and the revolution came as a consequence of the occupation of the United States embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 by a coalition of students from the universities of Tehran. Despite declarations of willingness to“honor the will of the Iranian people” and its recognition of the Islamic Republic, the American government had admitted the Shah to the United States on October 22, 1979.

The pretext was his need for medical treatment, but it was widely feared in Iran that his arrival in America, where large numbers of high-ranking officials of the previous regime had gathered, might be the prelude to an American-sponsored attempt to restore him to power, on the lines of the successful CIA coup of August 1953. The Shah’s extradition to Iran was therefore demanded by the students occupying the embassy as a condition for their liberating the hostages they were holding there.

It is probable that the students had cleared their action in advance with close associates of Imam Khumayni, for he swiftly extended his protection to them, proclaiming their action“a greater revolution than the first.” 36 Two days later, he predicted that confronted by this“second revolution,” America would be“unable to do a damned thing (Amrika hich ghalati namitavanad bukunad).” 37

This prediction seemed extravagant to many in Iran, but a military expedition mounted by the United States on April 22, 1980 to rescue the American hostages and possibly, too, to attack sensitive sites in Tehran, came to an abrupt and humiliating end when the American gunship crashed into each other in a sandstorm near Tabas in southeastern Iran. On April 7, the United States had formally broken diplomatic ties with Iran, a move welcomed by Imam Khumayni as an occasion of rejoicing for the Iranian nation.38 It was not until January 21, 1981 that the American hostages were finally released.

Two days after the occupation of the US embassy, Bazargan once again offered his resignation, and this time it was accepted. In addition, the provisional government was dissolved, and the Council of the Islamic Revolution temporarily assumed the task of running the country. This marked the definitive departure of Bazargan and like-minded individuals from the scene; henceforth the term“liberal” became a pejorative designation for those who questioned the fundamental tendencies of the revolution.

In addition, the students occupying the embassy had access to extensive files the Americans had kept on various Iranian personalities who had frequented the embassy over the years; these documents were now published and discredited the personalities involved. Most importantly, the occupation of the embassy constituted a“second revolution” in that Iran now offered a unique example of defiance of the American superpower and became established for American policymakers as their principal adversary in the Middle East.

The enthusiasm aroused by the occupation of the embassy also helped to ensure a large turnout for the referendum that was held on December 2 and 3, 1979 to ratify the constitution that had been approved by the Assembly of Experts on November 15. The constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved, differed greatly from the original draft, above all through its inclusion of the principle of Wilayat al-faqih as its basic and determining principle. Mentioned briefly in the preamble, it was spelled out in full in Article Five:

“During the Occultation of the Lord of the Age (Sahib al-Zaman; i.e., the Twelfth Imam)… the governance and leadership of the nation devolve upon the just and pious faqih who is acquainted with the circumstances of his age; courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability; and recognized and accepted as leader (rahbar) by the majority of the people. In the event that no faqih should be so recognized by the majority, the leader, or leadership council, composed of fuqaha’ possessing the aforementioned qualifications, will assume these responsibilities.”

Article 109 specified the qualifications and attributes of the leader as“suitability with respect to learning and piety, as required for the functions of mufti and marja’.” Article 110 listed his powers, which include supreme command of the armed forces, appointment of the head of the judiciary, signing the decree formalizing the election of the president of the republic, and - under certain conditions - dismissing him.39

These articles formed the constitutional basis for Imam Khumayni’s leadership role. In addition, from July 1979 onwards, he had been appointing Imam Jum’a’s for every major city, who not only delivered the Friday sermon but also acted as his personal representatives. Most government institutions also had a representative of the Imam assigned to them. However, the ultimate source of his influence was his vast moral and spiritual prestige, which led to him being designated primarily as Imam, in the sense of one dispensing comprehensive leadership to the community.40

On January 23, 1980, Imam Khumayni was brought from Qum to Tehran to receive treatment for a heart ailment. After thirty-nine days in hospital, he took up residence in the north Tehran suburb of Darband, and on April 22 he moved into a modest house in Jamaran, another suburb to the north of the capital. A closely guarded compound grew up around the house, and it was there that he was destined to spend the rest of his life.

On January 25, during the Imam’s hospitalization, Abu’l-Hasan Bani Sadr, a French-educated economist, was elected first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His success had been made possible in part by the Imam’s decision that it was not opportune to have a religious scholar stand for election. This event, followed on March 14 by the first elections to the Majlis, might have counted as a further step to the institutionalization and stabilization of the political system.

However, Bani Sadr’s tenure, together with the tensions that soon arose between him and a majority of the deputies in the Majlis, occasioned a severe crisis that led ultimately to Bani Sadr’s dismissal. For the president, his inherent megalomania aggravated by his victory at the polls, was reluctant to concede supremacy to Imam Khumayni, and he therefore attempted to build up a personal following, consisting largely of former leftists who owed their positions exclusively to him.

In this enterprise, he inevitably clashed with the newly formed Islamic Republic Party (Hizb-i Jumhuri-yi Islami), headed by Ayatullah Bihishti, which dominated the Majlis and was loyal to what was referred to as“the line of the Imam” (khatt-i Imam). As he had earlier done with the disputes between the provisional government and the Council of the Islamic Revolution, the Imam sought to reconcile the parties, and on September 11 1980 appealed to all branches of government and their members to set aside their differences.

While this new governmental crisis was brewing, on September 22, 1980, Iraq sent its forces across the Iranian border and launched a war of aggression that was to last for almost eight years. Iraq enjoyed financial support in this venture from the Arab states lining the Persian Gulf, above all from Saudi Arabia. Imam Khumayni, however, correctly regarded the United States as the principal instigator of the war from the outset, and American involvement became increasingly visible as the war wore on.

Although Iraq advanced territorial claims against Iran, the barely disguised purpose of the aggression was to take advantage of the dislocations caused in Iran by the revolution, particularly the weakening of the army through purges of disloyal officers, and to destroy the Islamic Republic. As he had done during the revolution, Imam Khumayni insisted on an uncompromising stance and inspired a steadfast resistance, which prevented the easy Iraqi victory many foreign observers had confidently foretold. Initially, however, Iraq enjoyed some success, capturing the port city of Khurramshahr and encircling Abadan.

The conduct of the war became one more issue at dispute between Bani Sadr and his opponents. Continuing his efforts at reconciling the factions, Imam Khumayni established a three-man commission to investigate the complaints each had against the other. The commission reported on June 1, 1981 that Bani Sadr was guilty of violating the constitution and contravening the Imam’s instructions. He was accordingly declared incompetent by the Majlis to function as president, and the next day, in accordance with Article 110 section (e) of the constitution, Imam Khumayni dismissed him. He went into hiding, and on July 28 fled to Paris, disguised as a woman.

Toward the end of his presidency, Bani Sadr had allied himself with the Sazman-i Mujahidin-i Khalq (Organization of People’s Strugglers; however, the group is commonly known in Iran as munafiqin,“hypocrites,” not mujahidin, because of its members’ hostility to the Islamic Republic). An organization with a tortuous ideological and political history, it had hoped, like Bani Sadr, to displace Imam Khumayni and capture power for itself. After Bani Sadr went into exile, members of the organization embarked on a campaign of assassinating government leaders in the hope that the Islamic Republic would collapse.

Even before Bani Sadr fled, a massive explosion had destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, killing more than seventy people including Ayatullah Bihishti. On August 30, 1981, Muhammad ‘Ali Raja’i, Bani Sadr’s successor as president, was killed in another explosion. Other assassinations followed over the next two years, including five Imam Jum’a’s as well as a host of lesser figures.

Throughout these disasters, Imam Khumayni maintained his customary composure, declaring, for example, after the assassination of Raja’i that the killings would change nothing and in fact showed Iran to be“the most stable country in the world,” given the ability of the government to continue functioning in an orderly manner.41 The fact that Iran was able to withstand such blows internally while continuing the war of defense against Iraq was indeed testimony to the roots the new order had struck and to the undiminished prestige of Imam Khumayni as the leader of the nation.

Ayatullah Khamna’i, a longtime associate and devotee of the Imam, was elected president on October 2, 1981, and he remained in this position until he succeeded him as leader of the Islamic Republic on his death in 1989. No governmental crises comparable to those of the first years of the Islamic Republic occurred during his tenure. Nonetheless, structural problems persisted. The constitution provided that legislation passed by the Majlis should be reviewed by a body of senior fuqaha’ known as the Council of Guardians (Shaura-yi Nagahban) to ensure its conformity with the provisions of Ja’fari fiqh.

This frequently led to a stalemate on a variety of important legislative issues. On at least two occasions, in October 1981 and January 1983, Hashimi- Rafsanjani, then chairman of the Majlis, requested the Imam to arbitrate decisively, drawing on the prerogatives inherent in the doctrine of Wilayat al-faqih, in order to break the deadlock. He was reluctant to do so, always preferring that a consensus should emerge.

However, on January 6, 1988, in a letter addressed to Khamna’i, the Imam put forward a far-reaching definition of Wilayat al-faqih, now termed“absolute” (mutlaqa), which made it theoretically possible for the leadership to override all conceivable objections to the policies it supported. Governance, Imam Khumayni proclaimed, is the most important of all divine ordinances (ahkam-i ilahi) and it takes precedence over secondary divine ordinances (ahkam-i far’iya-yi ilahiya).

Not only does the Islamic state permissibly enforce a large number of laws not mentioned specifically in the sources of the shari’a, such as the prohibition of narcotics and the levying of customs dues; it can also suspend the performance of a fundamental religious duty, the hajj, when this is necessitated by the higher interest of the Muslims.42

At first sight, the theory of wilayat -i mutlaqa-yi faqih might appear to be a justification for unlimited individual rule by the leader (rahbar). One month later, however, Imam Khumayni delegated these broadly defined prerogatives to a commission named the Assembly for the Determination of the Interest of the Islamic Order (Majma’-i Tashkhis-i Maslahat-i Nizam-i Islami.) This standing body has the power to settle decisively all differences on legislation between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians.

The war against Iraq continued to preoccupy Iran until July 1988. Iran had come to define its war aims as not simply the liberation of all parts of its territory occupied by Iraq, but also the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Husayn. A number of military victories made this goal appear attainable. On November 29, 1981, Imam Khumayni congratulated his military commanders on successes achieved in Khuzestan, remarking that the Iraqis had been obliged to retreat before the faith of the Iranian troops and their eagerness for martyrdom.43

The following year, on May 24, Khurramshahr, which had been held by the Iraqis since shortly after the outbreak of war, was liberated, and only small pockets of Iranian territory remained in Iraqi hands. The Imam marked the occasion by condemning anew the Persian Gulf states that supported Saddam Husayn and describing the victory as a divine gift.44 Iran failed, however, to follow up swiftly on its surprise victory and the momentum, which might have made possible the destruction of Saddam Husayn’s regime, was lost as the tide of war flowed back and forth. The United States was, in any event, determined to deny Iran a decisive victory and stepped up its intervention in the conflict in a variety of ways.

Finally, on July 2, 1988, the US navy stationed in the Persian Gulf shot down a civilian Iranian airliner, with the loss of 290 passengers. With the utmost reluctance, Imam Khumayni agreed to end the war on the terms specified in Resolution 598 of the United Nations Security Council, comparing his decision in a lengthy statement issued on July 20 to the drinking of poison.45

Any notion that the acceptance of a ceasefire with Iraq signaled a diminution in the Imam’s readiness to confront the enemies of Islam was dispelled when, on February 14, 1989, he issued a fatwa calling for the execution of Selman Rushdie, author of the obscene and blasphemous novel, The Satanic Verses, as well as those responsible for the publication and dissemination of the work.

The fatwa received a great deal of support in the Muslim world as the most authoritative articulation of popular outrage at Rushdie’s gross insult to Islam. Although its demand remained unfulfilled, it demonstrated plainly the consequences that would have to be faced by any aspiring imitator of Rushdie, and thus had an important deterrent effect. Generally overlooked at the time was the firm grounding of the Imam’s fatwa in the existing provisions of both Shi’i and Sunni jurisprudence; it was not therefore innovative. What lent the fatwa particular significance was rather its issuance by the Imam as a figure of great moral authority.

The Imam had also gained the attention of the outside world, albeit in a less spectacular way, on January 4, 1989, when he sent Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a letter in which he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of communism:“Henceforth it will be necessary to look for communism in the museums of political history of the world.” He also warned Gorbachev and the Russian people against replacing communism with Western-style materialism:“The basic problem of your country has nothing to do with ownership, the economy, or freedom; it is the lack of a true belief in God, the same problem that has drawn the West into a blind alley of triviality and purposelessness.” 46

Internally, however, the most important development in the last year of Imam Khumayni’s life was, without doubt, his dismissal of Ayatullah Muntaziri from the position of successor to the leadership of the Islamic Republic. Once a student and close associate of the Imam, who had gone so far as to call him“the fruit of my life,” Muntaziri had had among his associates over the years persons executed for counterrevolutionary activity, including a son-in-law, Mahdi Hashimi, and made far-reaching criticisms of the Islamic Republic, particularly with regard to judicial matters.

On July 31, 1988, he wrote a letter to the Imam questioning what he regarded as unjustified executions of members of the Sazman-i Mujahidin-I Khalq held in Iranian prisons after the organization, from its base in Iraq, had made a large-scale incursion into Iranian territory in the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq war. Matters came to a head the following year, and on March 28, 1989, the Imam wrote to Muntaziri accepting his resignation from the succession, a resignation that under the circumstances he was compelled to offer.47

On June 3, 1989, after eleven days in hospital for an operation to stop internal bleeding, Imam Khumayni lapsed into a critical condition and died. The outpouring of grief was massive and spontaneous, the exact counterpoint to the vast demonstrations of joy that had greeted his return to Iran a little over ten years earlier. Such was the press of mourners, estimated at some nine million that the body ultimately had to be transported by helicopter to its place of burial to the south of Tehran on the road leading to Qum. A still expanding complex of structures has grown up around the shrine of the Imam, making it likely that it will become the center of an entire new city devoted to ziyara and religious learning.

The testament of Imam Khumayni was published soon after his death. A lengthy document, it addresses itself principally to the various classes of Iranian society, urging them to do whatever is necessary for the preservation and strengthening of the Islamic Republic. Significantly, however, it begins with an extended meditation on the hadith-i thaqalayn:“I leave among you two great and precious things: the Book of God and my progeny; they will never be separated from each other until they meet me at the pool.” The Imam interprets the misfortunes that have befallen Muslims throughout history and more particularly in the present age as the result of efforts precisely to disengage the Qur’an from the progeny of the Prophet (S).

The legacy of Imam Khumayni was considerable. He had bequeathed to Iran not only a political system enshrining the principles both of religious leadership and of an elected legislature and head of the executive branch, but also a whole new ethos and self-image, a dignified stance of independence vis-à-vis the West are in the Muslim world. He was deeply imbued with the traditions and worldview of Shi’i Islam, but he viewed the revolution he had led and the republic he had founded as the nucleus for a worldwide awakening of all Muslims.

He had sought to attain this goal by, among other things, issuing proclamations to the hujjaj on a number of occasions, and alerting them to the dangers arising from American dominance of the Middle East, the tireless activity of Israel for subverting the Muslim world, and the subservience to America and Israel of numerous Middle Eastern governments. Unity between Shi’is and Sunnis was one of his lasting concerns; he was, indeed, the first Shi’i authority to declare unconditionally valid prayers performed by Shi’is behind a Sunni imam.48

It must finally be stressed that despite the amplitude of his political achievements, Imam Khumayni’s personality was essentially that of a gnostic for whom political activity was but the natural outgrowth of an intense inner life of devotion. The comprehensive vision of Islam that he both articulated and exemplified is, indeed, his most significant legacy.

Notes

1. English-born Hamid Algar received his Ph.D. in oriental studies from Cambridge. Since 1965, he has served on the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches Persian and Islamic history and philosophy. Dr. Algar has written extensively on the subject of Iran and Islam, including the books Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906 and Mirza Malkum Khan: A Biographical Study in Iranian Modernism.

He has been following the Islamic movement in Iran with interest for many years. In an article published in 1972, he assessed the situation there and forecast the Revolution“more accurately than all the U.S. government’s political officers and intelligence analysts,” in the words of Nicholas Wade, Science magazine. Dr. Algar has translated numerous books from Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, including the book Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini.

2. See Muhammad Riza Hakimi, Mir Hamid Husayn, Qum, 1362 Sh./1983.

3. However, according to a statement by the Imam’s elder brother, Sayyid Murtaza Pasandida, his point of departure was Kashmir, not Lucknow; see ‘Ali Davani, Nahzat-i Ruhaniyun-I Iran, Tehran, n.d., VI, p. 760).

4. See Divan-I Imam, Tehran, 1372 Sh./1993, p. 50.

5. Interview of the present writer with Hajj Sayyid Ahmad Khomeini, son of the Imam, Tehran, 12 September, 1982.

6. Imam Khomeini, Sahifa-yi Nur, Tehran, 1361 Sh., /1982, X p. 63.

7. Sahifa-yi Nur, XVI, p. 121.

8. Sahifa-yi Nur, XII, p. 51.

9. Shadharat al-Ma’arif, Tehran, 1360 Sh./1982, pp. 6-7.

10. Sayyid ‘Ali Riza Yazdi Husayni, Aina-yi Danishvaran, Tehran, 1353/1934, pp. 65-7.

11. Sayyid Hamid Ruhani, Barrasi va Tahlili az Nahzat-I Imam Khumayni, I, Najaf, n.d., pp. 55-9.

12. Kashf al-Asrar, p. 185.

13. Kashf al-Asrar, p. 186.

14. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 27.

15. Kauthar, I, p. 67; Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 39.

16. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 46.

17. Interview with the present writer, Tehran, December 1979.

18. Kauthar, I, pp. 169-178.

19. See Ansari, Hadis-I Bidari, p. 67.

20. Tahrir al-Wasila, I, p. 486.

21. For maintaining readability, (S) which is an acronym for “Salla (a)llahu alayhi wa aalihi wa sallam” is used throughout the book to denote “May peace and benedictions of God be upon him and his family.” It is used for Prophet Muhammad.

22. For maintaining readability, (A) which is an acronym for “Alayhi (alayhim) al-salaam” is used throughout the book to denote “May peace of God be upon him/her/them.” It is used for the Prophets, Imams, and saints.

23. Wilayat al-faqih, Najaf, n.d., p. 204.

24. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, pp. 129, 132.

25. Imam Khomeini, Risala-yi Ahkam, p. 328.

26. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, pp. 144-5.

27. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 215.

28. Shahidi digar az ruhaniyat, Najaf, n.d., p. 27.

29. New York Times, January 2, 1978.

30. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 97.

31. Sahifa-yi Nur, II, p. 143.

32. Sahifa-yi Nur, III, p. 225.

33. Sahifa-yi Nur, IV, pp. 281-6.

34. Sahifa-yi Nur, V, p. 75.

35. Sahifa-yi Nur, V, p. 233.

36. Sahifa-yi Nur, X, p. 141.

37. Sahifa-yi Nur, X, p. 149.

38. Sahifa-yi Nur, XII, p. 40.

39. Qanun-i Asasi-yi Jumhuri-yi Islami-yi Iran, Tehran, 1370 Sh./1991, pp. 23-24, 53-58.

40. Suggestions that the use of this title assimilated him to the Twelve Imams of Shi’i belief and hence attributed infallibility to him are groundless.

41. Sahifa-yi Nur, XV, p. 130.

42. Sahifa-yi Nur, XX, pp. 170-71.

43. Sahifa-yi Nur, XV, p. 234.

44. Sahifa-yi Nur, XVI, pp. 154-5.

45. Sahifa-yi Nur, XXI, pp. 227-44.

46. Ava-yi Tauhid, Tehran, 1367 Sh./1989, pp. 3-5.

47. Sahifa-yi Nur, XXI, p. 112.

48. Istifta’at, I, p. 279.

About The Author

By Hamid Algar1

It is in many ways remarkable that ten years after his death and twenty years after the triumph of the revolution that he led no serious, comprehensive biography of Imam Ruhullah al-Musawi al-Khumayni has yet been written, whether in Persian or any other language. He was, after all, the pre-eminent figure of recent Islamic history, for his impact, considerable enough in Iran itself, has also reverberated throughout much of the Muslim world and helped to transform the worldview and consciousness of many Muslims.

Indeed, it may be precisely this magnitude of the Imam’s achievement, together with the complexity of his spiritual, intellectual, and political personality that has so far discouraged potential biographers. The materials available for the task are, however, as abundant as his accomplishments were varied, and the present writer hopes to take up the challenge in the near future. What follows is therefore nothing more than a preliminary sketch, intended to acquaint the reader with the outlines of the Imam’s life and the main aspects of his person as an Islamic leader of exceptional stature.

Childhood and Early Education

Ruhullah Musawi Khumayni 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 Ahl al-Bayt, 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.2

Imam Khumayni’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.3 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 Khumayni used“Hindi” as penname in some of his ghazals.4

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 Khumayni.

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. This corresponded to a pattern of preliminary study in Iran followed by advanced study in the ‘atabat, the shrine cities of Iraq, which for long remained normative; Imam Khumayni was in fact the first religious leader of prominence whose formation took place entirely in Iran.

In Dhu’l-Hijja 1320/ March 1903, some five months after the Imam’s birth, Sayyid Mustafa was attacked and killed while traveling on the road between Khumayn and the neighboring city of Arak. The identity of the assassin immediately became known; it was Ja’far-quli Khan, the cousin of a certain Bahram Khan, one of the richest landowners of the region. The cause of the assassination is, however, difficult to establish with certainty. According to an account that became standard after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, Sayyid Mustafa had aroused the anger of the local landowners because of his defense of the impoverished peasantry.

However, Sayyid Mustafa himself, in addition to the religious functions he fulfilled, was also a farmer of moderate prosperity, and it is possible that he fell victim to one of the disputes over irrigation rights that were common at the time. A third explanation is that Sayyid Mustafa, in his capacity of shari’a judge of Khumayn, had punished someone for a public violation of the fast of Ramadan and that the family of the offender then exacted a deadly revenge.5

The attempts of Sahiba, Sayyid Mustafa’s sister, to have the killer punished in Khumayn proved fruitless, so his widow, Hajar, went to Tehran to appeal for justice, according to one account carrying the infant Ruhullah in her arms. She was followed there by her two elder sons, Murtaza and Nur al-Din, and finally, in Rabi’ al-Awwal 1323/ May 1925, Ja’far-quli Khan was publicly executed in Tehran on the orders of ‘Ayn al-Dawla, the prime minister of the day.

In 1918, the Imam lost both his aunt, Sahiba, who had played a great role in his early upbringing, and his mother, Hajar. Responsibility for the family then devolved on the eldest brother, Sayyid Murtaza (later to be known as Ayatullah Pasandida). The material welfare of the brothers seems to have been ensured by their father’s estate, but the insecurity and lawlessness that had cost him his life continued. In addition to the incessant feuds among landowners, Khumayn was plagued by the raids mounted on the town by the Bakhtiyari and Lurr tribesmen whenever they had the chance.

Once when a Bakhtiyari chieftain by the name of Rajab ‘Ali came raiding, the young Imam was obliged to take up a rifle together with his brothers and defend the family home. When recounting these events many years later, the Imam remarked,“I have been at war since my childhood.” 6 Among the scenes, he witnessed during his youth and that remained in his memory to help shape his later political activity mention may also be made of the arbitrary and oppressive deeds of landowners and provincial governors. Thus, he recalled in later years how a newly arrived governor had arrested and bastinadoed the chief of the merchants’ guild of Gulpaygan for no other purpose than the intimidation of its citizens.7

Imam Khumayni began his education by memorizing the Qur’an at a maktab operated near his home by a certain Mullah Abu ‘l-Qasim; he became a hafiz by the age of seven. He next embarked on the study of Arabic with Shaykh Ja’far, one of his mother’s cousins, and took lessons on other subjects first from Mirza Mahmud Iftikhar al-'Ulama’ and then from his maternal uncle, Hajji Mirza Muhammad Mahdi. His first teacher in logic was Mirza Riza Najafi, his brother-in-law. Finally, among his instructors in Khumayn mention may be made of the Imam’s elder brother, Murtaza, who taught him Najm al-Din Katib Qazvini’s al-Mutawwal on badi’ and ma’ani and one of the treatises of al-Suyuti on grammar and syntax.

(Although Sayyid Murtaza - who took the surname Pasandida after the law mandating the choice of a surname in 1928 - studied for a while in Isfahan, he never completed the higher levels of religious education; after working for a while in the registrar’s office in Khumayn, he moved to Qum where he was to spend the rest of his life).

In 1339/1920-21, Sayyid Murtaza sent the Imam to the city of Arak (or Sultanabad, as it was then known) in order for him to benefit from the more ample educational resources available there. Arak had become an important center of religious learning because of the presence of Ayatullah ‘Abd al-Karim Ha’iri (d.1936), one of the principal scholars of the day. He had arrived there in 1332/1914 at the invitation of the townspeople, and some three hundred students - a relatively large number - attended his lectures at the Mirza Yusuf Khan Madrasa.

It is probable that Imam Khumayni was not yet advanced enough to study directly under Ha’iri; instead, he worked on logic with Shaykh Muhammad Gulpayagani, read the Sharh al-Lum’a of Shaykh Zayn al-Din al-Amili (d. 996/1558), one of the principal texts of Ja’fari jurisprudence, with Aqa-yi ‘Abbas Araki, and continued his study of al-Mutawwal with Shaykh Muhammad ‘Ali Burujirdi. Roughly a year after the Imam’s arrival in Arak, Ha’iri accepted a summons from the Ulama of Qum to join them and preside over their activity.

One of the earliest strongholds of Shi’ism in Iran, Qum had traditionally been a major center of religious learning as well as pilgrimage to the shrine of Hazrat-I Ma’suma, a daughter of Imam Musa al-Kazim, but it had been overshadowed for many decades by the shrine cities of Iraq with their superior resources of erudition. The arrival of Ha’iri in Qum not only brought about a revival of its madrasas but also began a process whereby the city became in effect the spiritual capital of Iran, a process that was completed by the political struggle launched there by Imam Khumayni some forty years later.

The Imam followed Ha’iri to Qum after an interval of roughly four months. This move was the first important turning point in his life. It was in Qum that he received all his advanced spiritual and intellectual training, and he was to retain a deep sense of identification with the city throughout the rest of his life. It is possible, indeed, although not in a reductive sense, to describe him as a product of Qum. In 1980, when addressing a group of visitors from Qum, he declared,“Wherever I may be, I am a citizen of Qum, and take pride in the fact. My heart is always with Qum and its people.” 8

The Years of Spiritual and Intellectual Formation in Qum, 1923 To 1962

After his arrival in Qum in 1922 or 1923, the Imam first devoted himself to completing the preliminary stage of madrasa education known as sutuh; this he did by studying with teachers such as Shaykh Muhammad Riza Najafi Masjid-i Shahi, Mirza Muhammad Taqi Khwansari, and Sayyid ‘Ali Yasribi Kashani. However, from his early days in Qum, the Imam gave an indication that he was destined to become more than another great authority on Ja’fari jurisprudence. He showed an exceptional interest in subjects that not only were usually absent from the madrasa curriculum, but were often an object of hostility and suspicion: philosophy, in its various traditional schools, and Gnosticism (‘irfan).

He began cultivating this interest by studying the Tafsir-i Safi, a commentary on the Qur’an by the Sufistically-inclined Mullah Muhsin Fayz-i Kashani (d.1091/1680), together with the late Ayatullah ‘Ali Araki (d. 1994), then a young student like himself. His formal instruction in gnosticism and the related discipline of ethics began with classes taught by Hajji Mirza Javad Maliki-Tabrizi, but this scholar died in 1304/1925.

Similarly, the Imam was not able to benefit for long from his first teacher in philosophy, Mirza ‘Ali Akbar Hakim Yazdi, a pupil of the great master Mullah Hadi Sabzavari (d.1295/1878), for Yazdi passed away in 1305/1926. Another of the Imam’s early instructors in philosophy was Sayyid Abu ‘l-Hasan Qazvini (d. 1355/1976), a scholar of both peripatetic and illuminationist philosophy; the Imam attended his circle until Qazvini’s departure from Qum in 1310/1931.

The teacher who had the most profound influence on Imam Khumayni’s spiritual development was, however, Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali Shahabadi (d. 1328 Sh. /1950); to him the Imam refers in a number of his works as shaykhuna and ‘arif-I kamil, and his relationship with him was that of a murid with his murshid.

When Shahabadi first came to Qum in 1307 Sh. /1928, the young Imam asked him a question concerning the nature of revelation, and was captivated by the answer he received. At his insistent request, Shahabadi consented to teach him and a few other select students the Fusus al-Hikam of Ibn ‘Arabi. Although the basis of instruction was Da’ud Qaysari’s commentary on the Fusus, the Imam testified that Shahabadi also presented his own original insights on the text. Among the other texts that Imam Khumayni studied with Shahabadi were the Manazil al-Sa’irin of the Hanbali Sufi, Khwaja ‘Abdullah Ansari (d.482/1089), and the Misbah al-Uns of Muhammad b. Hamza Fanari (d. 834/1431), a commentary on the Mafatih al-Ghayb of Sadr al-Din Qunavi (d. 673/1274).

It is conceivable that the Imam derived from Shahabadi, at least in part, whether consciously or not, the fusion of gnostic and political concerns that came to characterize his life. For this spiritual master of the Imam was one of the relatively few ulama in the time of Riza Shah to preach publicly against the misdeeds of the regime, and in his Shadharat al-Ma’arif, a work primarily gnostic in character, described Islam as“most certainly a political religion.” 9

Gnosis and ethics were also the subject of the first classes taught by the Imam. The classes on ethics taught by Hajji Javad Aqa Maliki Tabrizi were resumed, three years after his death, by Shahabadi, and when Shahabadi left for Tehran in 1936, he assigned the class to Imam Khumayni. The class consisted in the first place of a careful reading of Ansari’s Manazil al-Sa’irin, but ranged beyond the text to touch on a wide variety of contemporary concerns.

It proved popular to the extent that the townsfolk of Qum as well as the students of the religious sciences attended, and people are related to have come from as far a field as Tehran and Isfahan simply to listen to the Imam. This popularity of the Imam’s lectures ran contrary to the policies of the Pahlavi regime, which wished to limit the influence of the ulama outside the religious teaching institution. The government therefore secured the transfer of the lectures from the prestigious location of the Fayziya madrasa to the Mullah Sadiq madrasa, which was unable to accommodate large crowds.

However, after the deposition of Riza Shah in 1941, the lectures returned to the Fayziya madrasa and instantly regained their former popularity. The ability to address the people at large, not simply his own colleagues within the religious institution, which the Imam displayed for the first time in these lectures on ethics, was to play an important role in the political struggles he led in later years.

While teaching ethics to a wide and diverse audience, Imam Khumayni began teaching important texts of gnosis, such as the section on the soul in al-Asfar al-Arba’a of Mullah Sadra (d. 1050/1640) and Sabzavari’s Sharh-I Manzuma, to a select group of young scholars that included Murtaza Mutahhari and Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri, who subsequently became two of his principal collaborators in the revolutionary movement he launched some three decades later.

As for the earliest writings of the Imam, they also indicate that his primary interest during his early years in Qum was gnosis. In 1928, for example, he completed the Sharh Du’a’ al-Sahar, a detailed commentary on the supplicatory prayers recited throughout Ramadan by Imam Muhammad al-Baqir; as with all Imam Khumayni’s works on gnosis, the terminology of Ibn ‘Arabi is frequently encountered in this book. Two years later, he completed Misbah al-Hidaya ila ‘l-Khilafa wa ‘l-Wilaya, a dense and systematic treatise on the main topics of gnosis. Another product of the same years of concentration on gnosis was a series of glosses on Qaysari’s commentary on the Fusus.

In a brief autobiography written for inclusion in a book published in 1934, the Imam wrote that he spent most of his time studying and teaching the works of Mullah Sadra; that he had for several years been studying gnosis with Shahabadi; and that at the same time he was attending the classes of Ayatullah Ha’iri on fiqh.10

The sequence of these statements suggests that fiqh was as yet secondary among his concerns. This situation was to change, but gnosis was for the Imam never simply a topic for study, teaching, and writing. It remained an integral part of his intellectual and spiritual personality, and as such infused many of his ostensibly political activities in later years with an unmistakably gnostic element.

The Imam did not engage in any overt political activities during the 1930’s. He always believed that the leadership of political activities should be in the hands of the foremost religious scholars, and he was therefore obliged to accept the decision of Ha’iri to remain relatively passive toward the measures taken by Riza Shah against the traditions and culture of Islam in Iran. In any event, as a still junior figure in the religious institution in Qum, he would have been in no position to mobilize popular opinion on a national scale.

He was nonetheless in contact with those few ulama who did openly challenge Riza Shah, not only Shahabadi, but also men such as Hajji Nurullah Isfahani, Mirza Sadiq Aqa Tabrizi, Aqazada Kifai, and Sayyid Hasan Mudarris. He expressed his own opinions of the Pahlavi regime, the leading characteristics of which he identified as oppression and hostility to religion, as yet only allusively, in privately circulated poems.11

He assumed a public political stance for the first time in a proclamation dated 15 Urdibihisht 1323/ 4 May 1944 that called for action to deliver the Muslims of Iran and the entire Islamic world from the tyranny of foreign powers and their domestic accomplices. The Imam begins by citing Qur’an, 34:46 (“Say: ‘I enjoin but one thing upon you, that you rise up for Allah, in pairs and singly, and then reflect’” ). This is the same verse that opens the chapter on awakening (bab al-yaqza) at the very beginning of Ansari’s Manazil al-Sa’irin, the handbook of spiritual wayfaring first taught to the Imam by Shahabadi. The Imam’s interpretation of“rising up” is, however, both spiritual and political, both individual and collective, a rebellion against lassitude in the self and corruption in society.

The same spirit of comprehensive revolt inspires the first work written by the Imam for publication, Kashf al-Asrar (Tehran, 1324 Sh. /1945). He is said to have completed the book in forty-eight days from a sense of urgency, and that it indeed met a need is proven by the fact that it went through two impressions in its first year.

The principal aim of the book, as reflected in its title, was to refute ‘Ali Akbar Hakamizada’s Asrar-i Hazarsala, a work calling for a“reform” of Shi’i Islam. Similar attacks on Shi’i tradition were being made in the same period by Shari’at Sanglaji (d.1944), an admirer of Wahhabism despite that sect’s marked hostility to Shi’ism, and Ahmad Kasravi (d. 1946), competent as a historian but mediocre as a thinker. The Imam’s vindication of such aspects of Shi’i practice as the mourning ceremonies of Muharram, pilgrimage (ziyara) to the tombs of the Imams, and the recitation of the supplicatory prayers composed by the Imams, was therefore a response to the criticisms made by all three.

Imam Khumayni connected their assaults on tradition with the anti-religious policies of Riza Shah and bitterly criticized the Pahlavi regime for destroying public morality. He stopped short, however, of demanding the abolition of the monarchy, proposing instead that an assembly of competent mujtahids should choose“a just monarch who will not violate God’s laws and will shun oppression and wrongdoing, which will not transgress against men’s property, lives, and honor.” 12

Even this conditional legitimacy of monarchy was to last“only so long as a better system could not be established.” 13 There can be no doubt that the“better system” already envisaged by Imam Khumayni in 1944 was Wilayat al-faqih, which became the constitutional cornerstone of the Islamic Republic of Iran established in 1979.

When Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim Ha’iri died in 1936, the supervision of the religious institution in Qum had been jointly assumed by Ayatullah Khwansari, Ayatullah Sadr, and Ayatullah Hujjat. A sense of lack was nonetheless felt. When Ayatullah Abu ‘l-Hasan Isfahani, the principal marja’-i taqlid of the age residing in Najaf, died in 1946, the need for a centralized leadership of Shi’i Muslims became more felt more acutely, and a search began for a single individual capable of fulfilling the duties and functions of both Ha’iri and Isfahani. Ayatullah Burujirdi, then resident in Hamadan, was seen to be the most suitable person available, and Imam Khumayni is said to have played an important role in persuading him to come to Qum.

In this he was no doubt motivated in part by the hope that Burujirdi would adopt a firm position vis-a-vis Muhammad Riza Shah, the second Pahlavi ruler. This hope was to remain largely unfulfilled. In April 1949, Imam Khumayni learned that Burujirdi was engaged in negotiations with the government concerning possible emendations to the constitution then in force, and he wrote him a letter expressing his anxieties about the possible consequences. In 1955, a nationwide campaign against the Baha’i sect was launched, for which the Imam sought to recruit Burujirdi’s support, but he had little success.

As for religious personalities who were militantly active in the political sphere at the time, notably Ayatullah Abu ‘l-Qasim Kashani and Navvab Safavi, the leader of the Fida’iyan-i Islam, the Imam’s contacts with them were sporadic and inconclusive. His reluctance for direct political involvement in this period was probably due to his belief that any movement for radical change ought to be led by the senior echelons of the religious establishment. In addition, the most influential personage on the crowded and confused political scene of the day was the secular nationalist, Dr. Muhammad Musaddiq.

Imam Khumayni therefore concentrated during the years of Burujirdi’s leadership in Qum on giving instruction in fiqh and gathering round him students who later became his associates in the movement that led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime, not only Mutahhari and Muntaziri, but younger men such as Muhammad Javad Bahonar and ‘Ali Akbar Hashimi-Rafsanjani.

In 1946, he began teaching usul al-fiqh at the kharij level, taking as his text the chapter on rational proofs from the second volume of the Kifayat al-Usul of Akhund Muhammad Kazim Khurasani (d. 1329/1911). Initially attended by no more than thirty students, the class became so popular in Qum that five hundred were in attendance the third time it was offered.

According to the reminiscences of some of those who took the class, it was distinguished from other classes taught in Qum on the same subject by the critical spirit the Imam instilled in his students, as well as his ability to connect fiqh with all the other dimensions of Islam - ethical, gnostic, philosophical, political, and social.

The Years of Struggle and Exile, 1962-1978

The emphases of the Imam’s activity began to change with the death of Burujirdi on March 31, 1961, for he now emerged as one of the successors to Burujirdi’s position of leadership. This emergence was signaled by the publication of some of his writings on fiqh, most importantly the basic handbook of religious practice entitled, like others of its genre, Tauzih al-Masa’il. He was soon accepted as marja’-i taqlid by a large number of Iranian Shi’is. His leadership role was, however, destined to go far beyond that traditional for a marja’-i taqlid and to attain a comprehensiveness unique in the history of the Shi’i ulama.

This became apparent soon after the death of Burujirdi when Muhammad Riza Shah, secure in his possession of power after the CIA-organized coup of August 1953, embarked on a series of measures designed to eliminate all sources of opposition, actual or potential, and to incorporate Iran firmly into American patterns of strategic and economic domination.

In the autumn of 1962, the government promulgated new laws governing elections to local and provincial councils, which deleted the former requirement that those elected be sworn into office on the Qur’an. Seeing in this a plan to permit the infiltration of public life by the Baha’is, Imam Khumayni telegraphed both the Shah and the prime minister of the day, warning them to desist from violating both the law of Islam and the Iranian Constitution of 1907, failing which the ulama would engage in a sustained campaign of protest. Rejecting all compromise measures, the Imam was able to force the repeal of the laws in question seven weeks after they had been promulgated. This achievement marked his emergence on the scene as the principal voice of opposition to the Shah.

A more serious confrontation was not long in coming. In January 1963, the Shah announced a six-point program of reform that he termed the White Revolution, an American-inspired package of measures designed to give his regime a liberal and progressive facade. Imam Khumayni summoned a meeting of his colleagues in Qum to press upon them the necessity of opposing the Shah’s plans, but they were initially hesitant. They sent one of their number, Ayatullah Kamalvand, to see the Shah and gauge his intentions.

Although the Shah showed no inclination to retreat or compromise, it took further pressure by Imam Khumayni on the other senior ulama of Qum to persuade them to decree a boycott of the referendum that the Shah had planned to obtain the appearance of popular approval for his White Revolution.

For his own part, Imam Khumayni issued on January 22, 1963 a strongly worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans. In imitation, perhaps, of his father, who had taken an armored column to Qum in 1928 in order to intimidate certain outspoken ulama, the Shah came to Qum two days later. Faced with a boycott by all the dignitaries of the city, he delivered a speech harshly attacking the ulama as a class.

On January 26, the referendum was held, with a low turnout that reflected the growing heed paid by the Iranian people to Imam Khumayni’s directives. He continued his denunciation of the Shah’s programs, issuing a manifesto that also bore the signatures of eight other senior scholars. In it he listed the various ways in which the Shah had violated the constituent, condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah of comprehensive submission to America and Israel:“I see the solution to lie in this tyrannical government being removed, for the crime of violating the ordinances of Islam and trampling the constitution, and in a government taking its place that adheres to Islam and has concern for the Iranian nation.” 14 He also decreed that the Nauruz celebrations for the Iranian year 1342 (which fell on March 21, 1963) be cancelled as a sign of protest against government policies.

The very next day, paratroopers were sent to the Fayziya madrasa in Qum, the site where the Imam delivered his public speeches. They killed a number of students, beat and arrested a number of others, and ransacked the building. Unintimidated, the Imam continued his attacks on the regime. On April 1, he denounced the persistent silence of certain apolitical ulama as“tantamount to collaboration with the tyrannical regime,” and one day later proclaimed political neutrality under the guise of taqiya to be haram.15

When the Shah sent his emissaries to the houses of the ulama in Qum to threaten them with the destruction of their homes, the Imam reacted contemptuously by referring to the Shah as“that little man (mardak).” Then, on April 3, 1963, the fortieth day after the attack on the Fayziya madrasa, he described the Iranian government as being determined to eradicate Islam at the behest of America, Israel, and himself as resolved to combat it.

Confrontation turned to insurrection some two months later. The beginning of Muharram, always a time of heightened religious awareness and sensitivity, saw demonstrators in Tehran carrying pictures of the Imam and denouncing the Shah in front of his own palace. On the afternoon of ‘Ashura (June 3, 1963), Imam Khumayni delivered a speech at the Fayziya madrasa in which he drew parallels between the Umayyad caliph Yazid and the Shah and warned the Shah that if he did not change his ways the day would come when the people would offer up thanks for his departure from the country.16

This warning was remarkably prescient, for on January 16, 1979, the Shah was indeed obliged to leave Iran amidst scenes of popular rejoicing. The immediate effect of the Imam’s speech was, however, his arrest two days later at 3 o’clock in the morning by a group of commandos who hastily transferred him to the Qasr prison in Tehran.

As dawn broke on June 3, the news of his arrest spread first through Qum and then to other cities. In Qum, Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad and Varamin, masses of angry demonstrators were confronted by tanks and ruthlessly slaughtered. It was not until six days later that order was fully restored. This uprising of 15 Khurdad 1342 (the day in the Iranian calendar on which it began) marked a turning point in Iranian history.

Henceforth the repressive and dictatorial nature of the Shah’s regime, reinforced by the unwavering support of the United States, was constantly intensified, and with it the prestige of Imam Khumayni as the only figure of note - whether religious or secular - willing to challenge him. The arrogance imbuing the Shah’s policies also caused a growing number of the ulama to abandon their quietism and align themselves with the radical goals set forth by the Imam. The movement of 15 Khurdad may therefore be characterized as the prelude to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79; the goals of that revolution and its leadership had already been determined.

After nineteen days in the Qasr prison, Imam Khumayni was moved first, to the ‘Ishratabad military base and then to a house in the Davudiya section of Tehran where he was kept under surveillance. Despite the killings that had taken place during the uprising, mass demonstrations were held in Tehran and elsewhere demanding his release and some of his colleagues came to the capital from Qum to lend their support to the demand. It was not, however, until April 7, 1964 that he was released, no doubt on the assumption that imprisonment had tempered his views and that the movement he had led would quietly subside.

Three days after his release and return to Qum, he dispelled such illusions by refuting officially inspired rumors that he had come to an understanding with the Shah’s regime and by declaring that the movement inaugurated on 15 Khurdad would continue. Aware of the persisting differences in approach between the Imam and some of the other senior religious scholars, the regime had also attempted to discredit him by creating dissension in Qum. These attempts, too, were unsuccessful, for early in June 1964 all the major ulama put their signatures to declarations commemorating the first anniversary of the uprising of 15 Khurdad.

Despite its failure to sideline or silence Imam Khumayni, the Shah’s regime continued its pro-American policies unwaveringly. In the autumn of 1964, it concluded a status of forces agreement with the United States that provided immunity from prosecution for all American personnel in Iran and their dependents. This occasioned the Imam to deliver what was perhaps the most vehement speech of the entire struggle against the Shah; certainly one of his close associates, Ayatullah Muhammad Mufattih, had never seen him so agitated.17

He denounced the agreement as a surrender of Iranian independence and sovereignty, made in exchange for a $200 million loan that would be of benefit only to the Shah and his associates, and described as traitors all those in the Majlis who voted in favor of it; the government lacked all legitimacy, he concluded.18

Shortly before dawn on November 4, 1964, again a detachment of commandos surrounded the Imam’s house in Qum, arrested him, and this time took him directly to Mehrabad airport in Tehran for immediate banishment to Turkey. The decision to deport rather than arrest Imam Khumayni and imprison him in Iran was based no doubt on the hope that in exile he would fade from popular memory. Physical elimination would have been fraught with the danger of an uncontrollable popular uprising. As for the choice of Turkey, this reflected the security cooperation existing between the Shah’s regime and Turkey.

The Imam was first lodged in room 514 of Bulvar Palas Oteli in Ankara, a moderately comfortable hotel in the Turkish capital, under the joint surveillance of Iranian and Turkish security officials. On November 12, he was moved from Ankara to Bursa, where he was to reside another eleven months. The stay in Turkey cannot have been congenial, for Turkish law forbade Imam Khumayni to wear the cloak and turban of the Muslim scholar, an identity which was integral to his being; the sole photographs in existence to show him bareheaded all belong to the period of exile in Turkey.19

However, on December 3, 1964, he was joined in Bursa by his eldest son, Hajj Mustafa Khumayni; he was also permitted to receive occasional visitors from Iran, and was supplied with a number of books on fiqh. He made use of his forced stay in Bursa to compile Tahrir al-Wasila, a two-volume compendium on questions of jurisprudence. Important and distinctive are the fatwas this volume contains, grouped under the headings of al-amr bi ‘l-ma’ruf wa ‘l-nahy ‘an al-munkar and difa’.

The Imam decrees, for example, that“if it is feared that the political and economic domination (by foreigners) over an Islamic land will lead to the enslavement and weakening of the Muslims, then such domination must be repelled by appropriate means, including passive resistance, the boycott of foreign goods, and the abandonment of all dealings and association with the foreigners in question.” Similarly,“if an attack by foreigners on one of the Islamic states is anticipated, it is incumbent on all Islamic states to repel the attack by all possible means; indeed, this is incumbent on the Muslims as a whole.” 20

On September 5, 1965, Imam Khumayni left Turkey for Najaf in Iraq, where he was destined to spend thirteen years. As a traditional center of Shi’i learning and pilgrimage, Najaf was clearly a preferable and more congenial place of exile. It had moreover already functioned as a stronghold of ulama opposition to the Iranian monarchy during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1909. But it was not in order to accommodate the Imam that the Shah arranged for his transfer to Najaf.

First, there was continuing disquiet among the Imam’s followers at his forced residence in Bursa, away from the traditional milieu of the Shi’i madrasa; such objections could be met by moving him to Najaf. Second, it was hoped that once in Najaf, the Imam would either be overshadowed by the prestigious ulama there, men such as Ayatullah Abu ‘l-Qasim Khu’i (d. 1995), or that he would challenge their distaste for political activism and squander his energies on confronting them.

He skirted this dual danger by proffering them his respect while continuing to pursue the goals he had set himself before leaving Iran. Another pitfall he avoided was association with the Iraqi government, which occasionally had its own differences with the Shah’s regime and was of a mind to use the Imam’s presence in Najaf for its own purposes. The Imam declined the opportunity to be interviewed on Iraqi television soon after his arrival, and resolutely kept his distance from succeeding Iraqi administrations.

Once settled in Najaf, Imam Khumayni began teaching fiqh at the Shaykh Murtaza Ansari madrasa. His lectures were well attended, by students not only from Iran but also from Iraq, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf states. In fact, a mass migration to Najaf from Qum and other centers of religious learning in Iran was proposed to the Imam, but he advised against it as a measure bound to depopulate Qum and weaken it as a center of religious guidance.

It was also at the Shaykh Murtaza Ansari madrasa that he delivered, between January 21 and February 8, 1970, his celebrated lectures on Wilayat al-faqih, the theory of governance that was to be implemented after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution. (The text of these lectures was published in Najaf, not long after their delivery, under the title Wilayat al-faqih ya Hukumat-i Islami; a slightly abbreviated Arabic translation soon followed). This theory, which may be summarized as the assumption by suitably qualified ulama of the political and juridical functions of the Twelfth Imam during his occultation, had already been put forward, somewhat tentatively, in his first published work, Kashf al-Asrar.

Now he presented it as the self-evident and incontestable consequence of the Shi’i doctrine of the Imamate, citing and analyzing in support of it all relevant texts from the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet (S)21 and the Twelve Imams (A)22 He emphasized also the harm that had come to Iran (as well as other Muslim countries) from abandoning Islamic law and government and relinquishing the political realm to the enemies of Islam. Finally, he delineated a program for the establishment of an Islamic government, laying particular stress on the responsibilities of the ulama to transcend their petty concerns and to address the people fearlessly:“It is the duty of all of us to overthrow the taghut, the illegitimate political powers that now rule the entire Islamic world.” 23

The text of the lectures on Wilayat al-faqih was smuggled back to Iran by visitors who came to see the Imam in Najaf, as well as by ordinary Iranians who came on pilgrimage to the shrine of Hazrat ‘Ali (A) The same channels were used to convey to Iran the numerous letters and proclamations in which the Imam commented on the events that took place in his homeland during the long years of exile. The first such document, a letter to the Iranian ulama assuring them of the ultimate downfall of the Shah’s regime, is dated April 16, 1967. On the same day he also wrote to prime minister Amir ‘Abbas Huvayda accusing him of running“a regime of terror and thievery.” 24

On the occasion of the Six Day War in June 1967, the Imam issued a declaration forbidding any type of dealing with Israel as well as the consumption of Israeli goods. This declaration was widely and openly publicized in Iran, which led to the ransacking of Imam Khumayni’s house in Qum and the arrest of Hajj Sayyid Ahmad Khumayni, his second son, who had been living there. (Some of the unpublished works of the Imam were lost or destroyed on this occasion).

It was also at this time that the Shah’s regime contemplated moving the Imam from Iraq to India; a location from which communications with Iran would have been far more difficult, but the plan was thwarted. Other developments on which the Imam commented from Najaf were the extravagant celebrations of 2500 years of Iranian monarchy in October 1971 (“it is the duty of the Iranian people to refrain from participation in this illegitimate festival” ); the formal establishment of a one-party system in Iran in February 1975 (the Imam prohibited membership in the party, the Hizb-i Rastakhiz, in a fatwa issued the following month); and the substitution, in the same month, of the imperial (shahanshahi) calendar for the solar Hijri calendar that had been official in Iran until that time. Some developments were met with fatwas rather than proclamations: for example, the Imam rejected as incompatible with Islam the Family Protection Law of 1967 and classified as adulteresses women who remarried after obtaining a divorce under its provisions.25

Imam Khumayni had also to deal with changing circumstances in Iraq. The Ba’th Party, fundamentally hostile to religion, had come to power in July 1967 and soon began exerting pressure on the scholars of Najaf, both Iraqi and Iranian. In 1971, as Iraq and Iran entered a state of sporadic and undeclared war with each other, the Iraqi regime began expelling from its territory Iranians whose forebears had in some cases been residing there for generations. The Imam, who until that point had scrupulously kept his distance from Iraqi officialdom, now addressed himself directly to the Iraqi leadership condemning its actions.

Imam Khumayni was, in fact, constantly, and acutely aware of the connections between Iranian affairs and those of the Muslim world in general and the Arab lands in particular. This awareness led him to issue from Najaf a proclamation to the Muslims of the world on the occasion of the hajj in 1971, and to comment, with special frequency and emphasis, on the problems posed by Israel for the Muslim world. The Imam’s strong concern for the Palestine question led him to issue a fatwa on August 27, 1968 authorizing the use of religious monies (vujuh-i shar’i) to support the nascent activities of al-Asifa, the armed wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization; this was confirmed by a similar and more detailed ruling issued after a meeting with the Baghdad representative of the PLO.26

The distribution in Iran, on however limited a scale, of the proclamations and fatwas of Imam Khumayni was in itself enough to ensure that his name not be forgotten during the years of exile. Equally important, the movement of Islamic opposition to the Shah’s regime that had been inaugurated by the uprising of 15 Khurdad continued to develop despite the brutality unhesitatingly dispensed by the Shah.

Numerous groups and individuals explicitly owed their allegiance to the Imam. Soon after his exiling there came into being an organization called Hay’atha-yi Mu’talifa-yi Islami (the Allied Islamic Associations), headquartered in Tehran but with branches throughout Iran. Active in it were many who had been students of the Imam in Qum and who came to assume important responsibilities after the revolution, men such as Hashimi-Rafsanjani and Javad Bahunar. In January 1965, four members of the organization assassinated Hasan ‘Ali Mansur, the prime minister who had been responsible for the exiling of the Imam.

There were no individuals designated, even clandestinely, as Imam Khumayni’s authorized representatives in Iran while he was in exile.

However, senior ulama such as Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari, Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Bihishti (d. 1981), and Ayatullah Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri, were in contact with him, directly and indirectly, and were known to speak on his behalf in important matters. Like their younger counterparts in the Hay’atha-yi Mu’talafa-yi Islami, all three went on to perform important functions during and after the revolution.

The continued growth of the Islamic movement during Imam Khumayni’s exile should not be attributed exclusively to his abiding influence or to the activity of ulama associated with him. Important, too, were the lectures and books of ‘Ali Shari’ati (d. 1977), a university-educated intellectual whose understanding and presentation of Islam were influenced by Western ideologies, including Marxism, to a degree that many ulama regarded as dangerously syncretistic. When the Imam was asked to comment on the theories of Shari’ati, both by those who supported them and by those who opposed them, he discreetly refrained from doing so, in order not to create a division within the Islamic movement that would have benefited the Shah’s regime.

The most visible sign of the persisting popularity of Imam Khumayni in the pre-revolutionary years, above all at the heart of the religious institution in Qum, came in June 1975 on the anniversary of the uprising of 15 Khurdad. Students at the Fayziya madrasa began holding a demonstration within the confines of the building, and a sympathetic crowd assembled outside. Both gatherings continued for three days until they were attacked on the ground by commandos and from the air by a military helicopter, with numerous deaths resulting.

The Imam reacted with a message in which he declared the events in Qum and similar disturbances elsewhere to be a sign of hope that“freedom and liberation from the bonds of imperialism” were at hand.27 The beginning of the revolution came indeed some two and a half years later.

The Islamic Revolution, 1978-79

The chain of events that ended in February 1979 with the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the foundation of the Islamic Republic began with the death in Najaf on October 23, 1977 of Hajj Sayyid Mustafa Khumayni, unexpectedly and under mysterious circumstances. This death was widely attributed to the Iranian security police, SAVAK, and protest meetings took place in Qum, Tehran, Yazd, Mashhad, Shiraz, and Tabriz. Imam Khumayni himself, with the equanimity he customarily displayed in the face of personal loss, described the death of his son as one of the“hidden favors” (altaf-i khafiya) of God, and advised the Muslims of Iran to show fortitude and hope.28

The esteem in which Imam Khumayni was held and the reckless determination of the Shah’s regime to undermine that esteem were demonstrated once again on January 7, 1978 when an article appeared in the semi-official newspaper Ittila’at attacking him in scurrilous terms as a traitor working together with foreign enemies of the country. The next day a furious mass protest took place in Qum; it was suppressed by the security forces with heavy loss of life. This was the first in a series of popular confrontations that, gathering momentum throughout 1978, soon turned into a vast revolutionary movement, demanding the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the installation of an Islamic government.

The martyrs of Qum were commemorated forty days later with demonstrations and shop closures in every major city of Iran. Particularly grave were the disturbances in Tabriz, which ended only after more than 100 people had been killed by the Shah’s troops. On March 29, the fortieth day after the killings in Tabriz was marked by a further round of demonstrations, in some fifty-five Iranian cities; this time the heaviest casualties occurred in Yazd, where security forces opened fire on a gathering in the main mosque. In early May, it was Tehran itself that saw the principal violence; armored columns appeared on the streets for the first time since June 1963 in order to contain the trend to revolution.

In June, the Shah found it politic to make a number of superficial concessions - such as the repeal of the“imperial calendar” -to the forces opposing him, but repression also continued. When the government lost control of Isfahan on August 17, the army assaulted the city and killed hundreds of unarmed demonstrators. Two days later, 410 people were burned to death behind the locked doors of a cinema in Abadan, and the government was plausibly held responsible.

On ‘Id al-fitr, which that year fell on September 4, marches took place in all major cities, with an estimated total of four million participants. The demand was loudly voiced for the abolition of monarchy and the foundation of an Islamic government under the leadership of Imam Khumayni. Faced with the mounting tide of revolution, the Shah decreed martial law and forbade further demonstrations.

On September 9, a crowd gathered at the Maydan-i Zhala (subsequently renamed Maydan-i Shuhada’) in Tehran was attacked by troops that had blocked all exits from the square, and some 2000 people were killed at this location alone. Another 2000 were killed elsewhere in Tehran by American-supplied military helicopters hovering overhead. This day of massacre, which came to be known as Black Friday, marked the point of no return. Too much blood had been spilt for the Shah to have any hope of survival, and the army itself began to tire of the task of slaughter.

As these events were unfolding in Iran, Imam Khumayni delivered a whole series of messages and speeches, which reached his homeland not only in printed form but also increasingly on tape cassettes. His voice could be heard congratulating the people for their sacrifices, denouncing the Shah in categorical fashion as a criminal, and underlining the responsibility of the United States for the killings and the repression. (Ironically, US President Carter had visited Tehran on New Year’s Eve 1977 and lauded the Shah for creating“an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” 29

As the façade of stability dissolved, the United States continued its military and political support of the Shah uninterrupted by anything but the most superficial hesitation). Most importantly, the Imam recognized that a unique juncture had been reached in Iranian history, that a genuinely revolutionary momentum had come into being which if dissipated would be impossible to rebuild. He therefore warned against any tendency to compromise or to be deceived by the sporadic conciliatory gestures of the Shah.

Thus on the occasion of ‘Id al-Fitr, when mass demonstrations had passed off with deceptive peacefulness in Tehran, he issued the following declaration:“Noble people of Iran! Press forward with your movement and do not slacken for a minute, as I know full well you will not! Let no one imagine that after the blessed month of Ramadan his God-given duties have changed. These demonstrations that break down tyranny and advance the goals of Islam are a form of worship that is not confined to certain months or days, for the aim is to save the nation, to enact Islamic justice, and to establish a form of divine government based on justice.” 30

In one of the numerous miscalculations that marked his attempts to destroy the revolution, the Shah decided to seek the deportation of Imam Khumayni from Iraq, on the assumption, no doubt, that once removed from the prestigious location of Najaf and its proximity to Iran, his voice would somehow be silenced. The agreement of the Iraqi government was obtained at a meeting between the Iraqi and Iranian foreign ministers in New York, and on September 24, 1978, the Imam’s house in Najaf was surrounded by troops. He was informed that his continued residence in Iraq was contingent on his abandoning political activity, a condition he was sure to reject.

On October 3, he left Iraq for Kuwait, but was refused entry at the border. After a period of hesitation in which Algeria, Lebanon and Syria were considered as possible destinations, Imam Khumayni embarked for Paris, on the advice of his second son, Hajj Sayyid Ahmad Khumayni, who by now had joined him. Once arrived in Paris, the Imam took up residence in the suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau in a house that had been rented for him by Iranian exiles in France.

Residence in a non-Muslim land was no doubt experienced by Imam Khumayni as irksome, and in the declaration he issued from Neauphle-le-Chateau on October 11, 1978, the fortieth day after the massacres of Black Friday, he announced his intention of moving to any Muslim country that assured him freedom of speech.31 No such assurance ever materialized.

In addition, his forced removal from Najaf increased popular anger in Iran still further. It was, however, the Shah’s regime that turned out to be the ultimate loser from this move. Telephonic communications with Tehran were far easier from Paris than they had been from Najaf, thanks to the Shah’s determination to link Iran with the West in every possible way, and the messages and instructions the Imam issued flowed forth uninterrupted from the modest command center he established in a small house opposite his residence. Moreover, a host of journalists from across the world now made their way to France, and the image and the words of the Imam soon became a daily feature in the world’s media.

In Iran meanwhile, the Shah was continuously reshaping his government. First he brought in as prime minister Sharif-Imami, an individual supposedly close to conservative elements among the ‘ulama. Then, on November 6, he formed a military government under General Ghulam-Riza Azhari, a move explicitly recommended by the United States. These political maneuverings had essentially no effect on the progress of the revolution.

On November 23, one week before the beginning of Muharram, the Imam issued a declaration in which he likened the month to“a divine sword in the hands of the soldiers of Islam, our great religious leaders, and respected preachers, and all the followers of Imam Husayn, Sayyid al-shuhada’.” They must, he continued,“make maximum use of it; trusting in the power of God, they must tear out the remaining roots of this tree of oppression and treachery.” As for the military government, it was contrary to the Shari’ah and opposition to it a religious duty.32

Vast demonstrations unfurled across Iran as soon as Muharram began. Thousands of people donned white shrouds as a token of readiness for martyrdom and were cut down as they defied the nightly curfew. On Muharram 9, a million people marched in Tehran demanding the overthrow of the monarchy, and the following day, ‘Ashura, more than two million demonstrators approved by acclamation a seventeen-point declaration of which the most important demand was the formation of an Islamic government headed by the Imam. Killings by the army continued, but military discipline began to crumble, and the revolution acquired an economic dimension with the proclamation of a national strike on December 18. With his regime crumbling, the Shah now attempted to co-opt secular, liberal-nationalist politicians in order to forestall the foundation of an Islamic government.

On January 3, 1979, Shahpur Bakhtiyar of the National Front (Jabha-yi Milli) was appointed prime minister to replace General Azhari, and plans were drawn up for the Shah to leave the country for what was advertised as a temporary absence. On January 12, the formation of a nine-member regency council was announced; headed by Jalal al-Din Tihrani, an individual proclaimed to have religious credentials, it was to represent the Shah’s authority in his absence. None of these maneuvers distracted the Imam from the goal now increasingly within reach. The very next day after the formation of the regency council, he proclaimed from Neauphle-le-Chateau the formation of the Council of the Islamic Revolution (Shaura-yi Inqilab-i Islami), a body entrusted with establishing a transitional government to replace the Bakhtiyar administration. On January 16, amid scenes of feverish popular rejoicing, the Shah left Iran for exile and death.

What remained now was to remove Bakhtiyar and prevent a military coup d’état enabling the Shah to return. The first of these aims came closer to realization when Sayyid Jalal al-Din Tihrani came to Paris in order to seek a compromise with Imam Khumayni. He refused to see him until he resigned from the regency council and pronounced it illegal. As for the military, the gap between senior generals, unconditionally loyal to the Shah, and the growing number of officers and recruits sympathetic to the revolution, was constantly growing. When the United States dispatched General Huyser, commander of NATO land forces in Europe, to investigate the possibility of a military coup, he was obliged to report that it was pointless even to consider such a step.

Conditions now seemed appropriate for Imam Khumayni to return to Iran and preside over the final stages of the revolution. After a series of delays, including the military occupation of Mehrabad airport from January 24 to 30, the Imam embarked on a chartered airliner of Air France on the evening of January 31 and arrived in Tehran the following morning. Amid unparalleled scenes of popular joy - it has been estimated that more than ten million people gathered in Tehran to welcome the Imam back to his homeland - he proceeded to the cemetery of Bihisht-i Zahra to the south of Tehran where the martyrs of the revolution lay buried.

There he decried the Bakhtiyar administration as the“last feeble gasp of the Shah’s regime” and declared his intention of appointing a government that would“punch Bakhtiyar’s government in the mouth.” 33 The appointment of the provisional Islamic government the Imam had promised came on February 5. Its leadership was entrusted to Mahdi Bazargan, an individual who had been active for many years in various Islamic organizations, most notably the Freedom Movement (Nahzat-i Azadi).

The decisive confrontation came less than a week later. Faced with the progressive disintegration of the armed forces and the desertion of many officers and men, together with their weapons, to the Revolutionary Committees that were springing up everywhere, Bakhtiyar decreed a curfew in Tehran to take effect at 4 p.m. on February 10. Imam Khumayni ordered that the curfew should be defied and warned that if elements in the army loyal to the Shah did not desist from killing the people, he would issue a formal fatwa for jihad.34 The following day the Supreme Military Council withdrew its support from Bakhtiyar, and on February 12, 1979, all organs of the regime, political, administrative, and military, finally collapsed. The revolution had triumphed.

Clearly no revolution can be regarded as the work of a single man, nor can its causes be interpreted in purely ideological terms; economic and social developments had helped to prepare the ground for the revolutionary movement of 1978-79. There was also marginal involvement in the revolution, particularly during its final stages when its triumph seemed assured, by secular, liberal-nationalist, and leftist elements. But there can be no doubting the centrality of Imam Khumayni’s role and the integrally Islamic nature of the revolution he led.

Physically removed from his countrymen for fourteen years, he had an unfailing sense of the revolutionary potential that had surfaced and was able to mobilize the broad masses of the Iranian people for the attainment of what seemed to many inside the country (including his chosen premier, Bazargan) a distant and excessively ambitious goal. His role pertained, moreover, not merely to moral inspiration and symbolic leadership; he was also the operational leader of the revolution. Occasionally he accepted advice on details of strategy from persons in Iran, but he took all key decisions himself, silencing early on all advocates of compromise with the Shah. It was the mosques that were the organizational units of the revolution and mass prayers, demonstrations and martyrdom that were - until the very last stage - its principal weapons.

1979-89: First Decade of the Islamic Republic, Last Decade of the Imam’s Life

Imam Khumayni’s role was also central in shaping the new political order that emerged from the revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran. At first it appeared that he might exercise his directive role from Qum, for he moved there from Tehran on February 29, causing Qum to become in effect a second capital of Iran. On March 30 and 31, a nationwide referendum resulted in a massive vote in favor of the establishment of an Islamic Republic.

The Imam proclaimed the next day, April 1, 1979, as the“first day of God’s government.” 35 The institutionalization of the new order continued with the election, on August 3, of an Assembly of Experts (Majlis-i Khubragan), entrusted with the task of reviewing a draft constitution that had been put forward on June 18; fifty-five of the seventy-three persons elected were religious scholars.

It was not however to be expected that a smooth transition from the old regime would prove possible. The powers and duties of the Council of the Islamic Revolutionary, which was intended to serve as an interim legislature, were not clearly delineated from those of the provisional government headed by Bazargan.

More importantly, significant differences of outlook and approach separated the two bodies from each other. The council, composed predominantly of ulama, favored immediate and radical change and sought to strengthen the revolutionary organs that had come into being - the revolutionary committees, the revolutionary courts charged with punishing members of the former regime charged with serious crimes, and the Corps of Guards of the Islamic Revolution (Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami), established on May 5, 1979. The government, headed by Bazargan and comprising mainly liberal technocrats of Islamic orientation, sought as swift a normalization of the situation as possible and the gradual phasing out of the revolutionary institutions.

Although Imam Khumayni encouraged members of the two bodies to cooperate and refrained, on most occasions, from arbitrating their differences, his sympathies were clearly with the Council of the Islamic Revolution. On July 1, Bazargan offered the Imam his resignation. It was refused, and four members of the council l- Rafsanjani, Bahunar, Mahdavi-Kani, and Ayatullah Sayyid ‘Ali Khamna’i - joined Bazargan’s cabinet in an effort to improve the coordination of the two bodies. In addition to these frictions at the governmental level, a further element of instability was provided by the terrorist activities of shadowy groups that were determined to rob the nascent Islamic republic of some of its most capable personalities.

Thus on May 1, 1979, Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari, a leading member of the Council of the Islamic Revolution and a former pupil close to the Imam’s heart, was assassinated in Tehran. For once, the Imam wept in an open display of grief.

The final break between Bazargan and the revolution came as a consequence of the occupation of the United States embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 by a coalition of students from the universities of Tehran. Despite declarations of willingness to“honor the will of the Iranian people” and its recognition of the Islamic Republic, the American government had admitted the Shah to the United States on October 22, 1979.

The pretext was his need for medical treatment, but it was widely feared in Iran that his arrival in America, where large numbers of high-ranking officials of the previous regime had gathered, might be the prelude to an American-sponsored attempt to restore him to power, on the lines of the successful CIA coup of August 1953. The Shah’s extradition to Iran was therefore demanded by the students occupying the embassy as a condition for their liberating the hostages they were holding there.

It is probable that the students had cleared their action in advance with close associates of Imam Khumayni, for he swiftly extended his protection to them, proclaiming their action“a greater revolution than the first.” 36 Two days later, he predicted that confronted by this“second revolution,” America would be“unable to do a damned thing (Amrika hich ghalati namitavanad bukunad).” 37

This prediction seemed extravagant to many in Iran, but a military expedition mounted by the United States on April 22, 1980 to rescue the American hostages and possibly, too, to attack sensitive sites in Tehran, came to an abrupt and humiliating end when the American gunship crashed into each other in a sandstorm near Tabas in southeastern Iran. On April 7, the United States had formally broken diplomatic ties with Iran, a move welcomed by Imam Khumayni as an occasion of rejoicing for the Iranian nation.38 It was not until January 21, 1981 that the American hostages were finally released.

Two days after the occupation of the US embassy, Bazargan once again offered his resignation, and this time it was accepted. In addition, the provisional government was dissolved, and the Council of the Islamic Revolution temporarily assumed the task of running the country. This marked the definitive departure of Bazargan and like-minded individuals from the scene; henceforth the term“liberal” became a pejorative designation for those who questioned the fundamental tendencies of the revolution.

In addition, the students occupying the embassy had access to extensive files the Americans had kept on various Iranian personalities who had frequented the embassy over the years; these documents were now published and discredited the personalities involved. Most importantly, the occupation of the embassy constituted a“second revolution” in that Iran now offered a unique example of defiance of the American superpower and became established for American policymakers as their principal adversary in the Middle East.

The enthusiasm aroused by the occupation of the embassy also helped to ensure a large turnout for the referendum that was held on December 2 and 3, 1979 to ratify the constitution that had been approved by the Assembly of Experts on November 15. The constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved, differed greatly from the original draft, above all through its inclusion of the principle of Wilayat al-faqih as its basic and determining principle. Mentioned briefly in the preamble, it was spelled out in full in Article Five:

“During the Occultation of the Lord of the Age (Sahib al-Zaman; i.e., the Twelfth Imam)… the governance and leadership of the nation devolve upon the just and pious faqih who is acquainted with the circumstances of his age; courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability; and recognized and accepted as leader (rahbar) by the majority of the people. In the event that no faqih should be so recognized by the majority, the leader, or leadership council, composed of fuqaha’ possessing the aforementioned qualifications, will assume these responsibilities.”

Article 109 specified the qualifications and attributes of the leader as“suitability with respect to learning and piety, as required for the functions of mufti and marja’.” Article 110 listed his powers, which include supreme command of the armed forces, appointment of the head of the judiciary, signing the decree formalizing the election of the president of the republic, and - under certain conditions - dismissing him.39

These articles formed the constitutional basis for Imam Khumayni’s leadership role. In addition, from July 1979 onwards, he had been appointing Imam Jum’a’s for every major city, who not only delivered the Friday sermon but also acted as his personal representatives. Most government institutions also had a representative of the Imam assigned to them. However, the ultimate source of his influence was his vast moral and spiritual prestige, which led to him being designated primarily as Imam, in the sense of one dispensing comprehensive leadership to the community.40

On January 23, 1980, Imam Khumayni was brought from Qum to Tehran to receive treatment for a heart ailment. After thirty-nine days in hospital, he took up residence in the north Tehran suburb of Darband, and on April 22 he moved into a modest house in Jamaran, another suburb to the north of the capital. A closely guarded compound grew up around the house, and it was there that he was destined to spend the rest of his life.

On January 25, during the Imam’s hospitalization, Abu’l-Hasan Bani Sadr, a French-educated economist, was elected first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His success had been made possible in part by the Imam’s decision that it was not opportune to have a religious scholar stand for election. This event, followed on March 14 by the first elections to the Majlis, might have counted as a further step to the institutionalization and stabilization of the political system.

However, Bani Sadr’s tenure, together with the tensions that soon arose between him and a majority of the deputies in the Majlis, occasioned a severe crisis that led ultimately to Bani Sadr’s dismissal. For the president, his inherent megalomania aggravated by his victory at the polls, was reluctant to concede supremacy to Imam Khumayni, and he therefore attempted to build up a personal following, consisting largely of former leftists who owed their positions exclusively to him.

In this enterprise, he inevitably clashed with the newly formed Islamic Republic Party (Hizb-i Jumhuri-yi Islami), headed by Ayatullah Bihishti, which dominated the Majlis and was loyal to what was referred to as“the line of the Imam” (khatt-i Imam). As he had earlier done with the disputes between the provisional government and the Council of the Islamic Revolution, the Imam sought to reconcile the parties, and on September 11 1980 appealed to all branches of government and their members to set aside their differences.

While this new governmental crisis was brewing, on September 22, 1980, Iraq sent its forces across the Iranian border and launched a war of aggression that was to last for almost eight years. Iraq enjoyed financial support in this venture from the Arab states lining the Persian Gulf, above all from Saudi Arabia. Imam Khumayni, however, correctly regarded the United States as the principal instigator of the war from the outset, and American involvement became increasingly visible as the war wore on.

Although Iraq advanced territorial claims against Iran, the barely disguised purpose of the aggression was to take advantage of the dislocations caused in Iran by the revolution, particularly the weakening of the army through purges of disloyal officers, and to destroy the Islamic Republic. As he had done during the revolution, Imam Khumayni insisted on an uncompromising stance and inspired a steadfast resistance, which prevented the easy Iraqi victory many foreign observers had confidently foretold. Initially, however, Iraq enjoyed some success, capturing the port city of Khurramshahr and encircling Abadan.

The conduct of the war became one more issue at dispute between Bani Sadr and his opponents. Continuing his efforts at reconciling the factions, Imam Khumayni established a three-man commission to investigate the complaints each had against the other. The commission reported on June 1, 1981 that Bani Sadr was guilty of violating the constitution and contravening the Imam’s instructions. He was accordingly declared incompetent by the Majlis to function as president, and the next day, in accordance with Article 110 section (e) of the constitution, Imam Khumayni dismissed him. He went into hiding, and on July 28 fled to Paris, disguised as a woman.

Toward the end of his presidency, Bani Sadr had allied himself with the Sazman-i Mujahidin-i Khalq (Organization of People’s Strugglers; however, the group is commonly known in Iran as munafiqin,“hypocrites,” not mujahidin, because of its members’ hostility to the Islamic Republic). An organization with a tortuous ideological and political history, it had hoped, like Bani Sadr, to displace Imam Khumayni and capture power for itself. After Bani Sadr went into exile, members of the organization embarked on a campaign of assassinating government leaders in the hope that the Islamic Republic would collapse.

Even before Bani Sadr fled, a massive explosion had destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, killing more than seventy people including Ayatullah Bihishti. On August 30, 1981, Muhammad ‘Ali Raja’i, Bani Sadr’s successor as president, was killed in another explosion. Other assassinations followed over the next two years, including five Imam Jum’a’s as well as a host of lesser figures.

Throughout these disasters, Imam Khumayni maintained his customary composure, declaring, for example, after the assassination of Raja’i that the killings would change nothing and in fact showed Iran to be“the most stable country in the world,” given the ability of the government to continue functioning in an orderly manner.41 The fact that Iran was able to withstand such blows internally while continuing the war of defense against Iraq was indeed testimony to the roots the new order had struck and to the undiminished prestige of Imam Khumayni as the leader of the nation.

Ayatullah Khamna’i, a longtime associate and devotee of the Imam, was elected president on October 2, 1981, and he remained in this position until he succeeded him as leader of the Islamic Republic on his death in 1989. No governmental crises comparable to those of the first years of the Islamic Republic occurred during his tenure. Nonetheless, structural problems persisted. The constitution provided that legislation passed by the Majlis should be reviewed by a body of senior fuqaha’ known as the Council of Guardians (Shaura-yi Nagahban) to ensure its conformity with the provisions of Ja’fari fiqh.

This frequently led to a stalemate on a variety of important legislative issues. On at least two occasions, in October 1981 and January 1983, Hashimi- Rafsanjani, then chairman of the Majlis, requested the Imam to arbitrate decisively, drawing on the prerogatives inherent in the doctrine of Wilayat al-faqih, in order to break the deadlock. He was reluctant to do so, always preferring that a consensus should emerge.

However, on January 6, 1988, in a letter addressed to Khamna’i, the Imam put forward a far-reaching definition of Wilayat al-faqih, now termed“absolute” (mutlaqa), which made it theoretically possible for the leadership to override all conceivable objections to the policies it supported. Governance, Imam Khumayni proclaimed, is the most important of all divine ordinances (ahkam-i ilahi) and it takes precedence over secondary divine ordinances (ahkam-i far’iya-yi ilahiya).

Not only does the Islamic state permissibly enforce a large number of laws not mentioned specifically in the sources of the shari’a, such as the prohibition of narcotics and the levying of customs dues; it can also suspend the performance of a fundamental religious duty, the hajj, when this is necessitated by the higher interest of the Muslims.42

At first sight, the theory of wilayat -i mutlaqa-yi faqih might appear to be a justification for unlimited individual rule by the leader (rahbar). One month later, however, Imam Khumayni delegated these broadly defined prerogatives to a commission named the Assembly for the Determination of the Interest of the Islamic Order (Majma’-i Tashkhis-i Maslahat-i Nizam-i Islami.) This standing body has the power to settle decisively all differences on legislation between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians.

The war against Iraq continued to preoccupy Iran until July 1988. Iran had come to define its war aims as not simply the liberation of all parts of its territory occupied by Iraq, but also the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Husayn. A number of military victories made this goal appear attainable. On November 29, 1981, Imam Khumayni congratulated his military commanders on successes achieved in Khuzestan, remarking that the Iraqis had been obliged to retreat before the faith of the Iranian troops and their eagerness for martyrdom.43

The following year, on May 24, Khurramshahr, which had been held by the Iraqis since shortly after the outbreak of war, was liberated, and only small pockets of Iranian territory remained in Iraqi hands. The Imam marked the occasion by condemning anew the Persian Gulf states that supported Saddam Husayn and describing the victory as a divine gift.44 Iran failed, however, to follow up swiftly on its surprise victory and the momentum, which might have made possible the destruction of Saddam Husayn’s regime, was lost as the tide of war flowed back and forth. The United States was, in any event, determined to deny Iran a decisive victory and stepped up its intervention in the conflict in a variety of ways.

Finally, on July 2, 1988, the US navy stationed in the Persian Gulf shot down a civilian Iranian airliner, with the loss of 290 passengers. With the utmost reluctance, Imam Khumayni agreed to end the war on the terms specified in Resolution 598 of the United Nations Security Council, comparing his decision in a lengthy statement issued on July 20 to the drinking of poison.45

Any notion that the acceptance of a ceasefire with Iraq signaled a diminution in the Imam’s readiness to confront the enemies of Islam was dispelled when, on February 14, 1989, he issued a fatwa calling for the execution of Selman Rushdie, author of the obscene and blasphemous novel, The Satanic Verses, as well as those responsible for the publication and dissemination of the work.

The fatwa received a great deal of support in the Muslim world as the most authoritative articulation of popular outrage at Rushdie’s gross insult to Islam. Although its demand remained unfulfilled, it demonstrated plainly the consequences that would have to be faced by any aspiring imitator of Rushdie, and thus had an important deterrent effect. Generally overlooked at the time was the firm grounding of the Imam’s fatwa in the existing provisions of both Shi’i and Sunni jurisprudence; it was not therefore innovative. What lent the fatwa particular significance was rather its issuance by the Imam as a figure of great moral authority.

The Imam had also gained the attention of the outside world, albeit in a less spectacular way, on January 4, 1989, when he sent Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a letter in which he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of communism:“Henceforth it will be necessary to look for communism in the museums of political history of the world.” He also warned Gorbachev and the Russian people against replacing communism with Western-style materialism:“The basic problem of your country has nothing to do with ownership, the economy, or freedom; it is the lack of a true belief in God, the same problem that has drawn the West into a blind alley of triviality and purposelessness.” 46

Internally, however, the most important development in the last year of Imam Khumayni’s life was, without doubt, his dismissal of Ayatullah Muntaziri from the position of successor to the leadership of the Islamic Republic. Once a student and close associate of the Imam, who had gone so far as to call him“the fruit of my life,” Muntaziri had had among his associates over the years persons executed for counterrevolutionary activity, including a son-in-law, Mahdi Hashimi, and made far-reaching criticisms of the Islamic Republic, particularly with regard to judicial matters.

On July 31, 1988, he wrote a letter to the Imam questioning what he regarded as unjustified executions of members of the Sazman-i Mujahidin-I Khalq held in Iranian prisons after the organization, from its base in Iraq, had made a large-scale incursion into Iranian territory in the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq war. Matters came to a head the following year, and on March 28, 1989, the Imam wrote to Muntaziri accepting his resignation from the succession, a resignation that under the circumstances he was compelled to offer.47

On June 3, 1989, after eleven days in hospital for an operation to stop internal bleeding, Imam Khumayni lapsed into a critical condition and died. The outpouring of grief was massive and spontaneous, the exact counterpoint to the vast demonstrations of joy that had greeted his return to Iran a little over ten years earlier. Such was the press of mourners, estimated at some nine million that the body ultimately had to be transported by helicopter to its place of burial to the south of Tehran on the road leading to Qum. A still expanding complex of structures has grown up around the shrine of the Imam, making it likely that it will become the center of an entire new city devoted to ziyara and religious learning.

The testament of Imam Khumayni was published soon after his death. A lengthy document, it addresses itself principally to the various classes of Iranian society, urging them to do whatever is necessary for the preservation and strengthening of the Islamic Republic. Significantly, however, it begins with an extended meditation on the hadith-i thaqalayn:“I leave among you two great and precious things: the Book of God and my progeny; they will never be separated from each other until they meet me at the pool.” The Imam interprets the misfortunes that have befallen Muslims throughout history and more particularly in the present age as the result of efforts precisely to disengage the Qur’an from the progeny of the Prophet (S).

The legacy of Imam Khumayni was considerable. He had bequeathed to Iran not only a political system enshrining the principles both of religious leadership and of an elected legislature and head of the executive branch, but also a whole new ethos and self-image, a dignified stance of independence vis-à-vis the West are in the Muslim world. He was deeply imbued with the traditions and worldview of Shi’i Islam, but he viewed the revolution he had led and the republic he had founded as the nucleus for a worldwide awakening of all Muslims.

He had sought to attain this goal by, among other things, issuing proclamations to the hujjaj on a number of occasions, and alerting them to the dangers arising from American dominance of the Middle East, the tireless activity of Israel for subverting the Muslim world, and the subservience to America and Israel of numerous Middle Eastern governments. Unity between Shi’is and Sunnis was one of his lasting concerns; he was, indeed, the first Shi’i authority to declare unconditionally valid prayers performed by Shi’is behind a Sunni imam.48

It must finally be stressed that despite the amplitude of his political achievements, Imam Khumayni’s personality was essentially that of a gnostic for whom political activity was but the natural outgrowth of an intense inner life of devotion. The comprehensive vision of Islam that he both articulated and exemplified is, indeed, his most significant legacy.

Notes

1. English-born Hamid Algar received his Ph.D. in oriental studies from Cambridge. Since 1965, he has served on the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches Persian and Islamic history and philosophy. Dr. Algar has written extensively on the subject of Iran and Islam, including the books Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906 and Mirza Malkum Khan: A Biographical Study in Iranian Modernism.

He has been following the Islamic movement in Iran with interest for many years. In an article published in 1972, he assessed the situation there and forecast the Revolution“more accurately than all the U.S. government’s political officers and intelligence analysts,” in the words of Nicholas Wade, Science magazine. Dr. Algar has translated numerous books from Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, including the book Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini.

2. See Muhammad Riza Hakimi, Mir Hamid Husayn, Qum, 1362 Sh./1983.

3. However, according to a statement by the Imam’s elder brother, Sayyid Murtaza Pasandida, his point of departure was Kashmir, not Lucknow; see ‘Ali Davani, Nahzat-i Ruhaniyun-I Iran, Tehran, n.d., VI, p. 760).

4. See Divan-I Imam, Tehran, 1372 Sh./1993, p. 50.

5. Interview of the present writer with Hajj Sayyid Ahmad Khomeini, son of the Imam, Tehran, 12 September, 1982.

6. Imam Khomeini, Sahifa-yi Nur, Tehran, 1361 Sh., /1982, X p. 63.

7. Sahifa-yi Nur, XVI, p. 121.

8. Sahifa-yi Nur, XII, p. 51.

9. Shadharat al-Ma’arif, Tehran, 1360 Sh./1982, pp. 6-7.

10. Sayyid ‘Ali Riza Yazdi Husayni, Aina-yi Danishvaran, Tehran, 1353/1934, pp. 65-7.

11. Sayyid Hamid Ruhani, Barrasi va Tahlili az Nahzat-I Imam Khumayni, I, Najaf, n.d., pp. 55-9.

12. Kashf al-Asrar, p. 185.

13. Kashf al-Asrar, p. 186.

14. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 27.

15. Kauthar, I, p. 67; Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 39.

16. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 46.

17. Interview with the present writer, Tehran, December 1979.

18. Kauthar, I, pp. 169-178.

19. See Ansari, Hadis-I Bidari, p. 67.

20. Tahrir al-Wasila, I, p. 486.

21. For maintaining readability, (S) which is an acronym for “Salla (a)llahu alayhi wa aalihi wa sallam” is used throughout the book to denote “May peace and benedictions of God be upon him and his family.” It is used for Prophet Muhammad.

22. For maintaining readability, (A) which is an acronym for “Alayhi (alayhim) al-salaam” is used throughout the book to denote “May peace of God be upon him/her/them.” It is used for the Prophets, Imams, and saints.

23. Wilayat al-faqih, Najaf, n.d., p. 204.

24. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, pp. 129, 132.

25. Imam Khomeini, Risala-yi Ahkam, p. 328.

26. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, pp. 144-5.

27. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 215.

28. Shahidi digar az ruhaniyat, Najaf, n.d., p. 27.

29. New York Times, January 2, 1978.

30. Sahifa-yi Nur, I, p. 97.

31. Sahifa-yi Nur, II, p. 143.

32. Sahifa-yi Nur, III, p. 225.

33. Sahifa-yi Nur, IV, pp. 281-6.

34. Sahifa-yi Nur, V, p. 75.

35. Sahifa-yi Nur, V, p. 233.

36. Sahifa-yi Nur, X, p. 141.

37. Sahifa-yi Nur, X, p. 149.

38. Sahifa-yi Nur, XII, p. 40.

39. Qanun-i Asasi-yi Jumhuri-yi Islami-yi Iran, Tehran, 1370 Sh./1991, pp. 23-24, 53-58.

40. Suggestions that the use of this title assimilated him to the Twelve Imams of Shi’i belief and hence attributed infallibility to him are groundless.

41. Sahifa-yi Nur, XV, p. 130.

42. Sahifa-yi Nur, XX, pp. 170-71.

43. Sahifa-yi Nur, XV, p. 234.

44. Sahifa-yi Nur, XVI, pp. 154-5.

45. Sahifa-yi Nur, XXI, pp. 227-44.

46. Ava-yi Tauhid, Tehran, 1367 Sh./1989, pp. 3-5.

47. Sahifa-yi Nur, XXI, p. 112.

48. Istifta’at, I, p. 279.