Ruhollah Khomeini
Leader of the 1979 Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic (1902–1989), theorist of velayat-e faqih and its first Supreme Leader.
Read in context →Biography
Ruhollah Khomeini (c. 1902–1989) was a Twelver Shia cleric, marjaʿ (source of emulation), and theorist who became the leader of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. He developed and institutionalized the doctrine of velayat-e faqih ('guardianship of the jurist'), elaborated in his 1970 work Islamic Government, which placed ultimate authority in a qualified religious jurist and became the constitutional foundation of the new state. Exiled from 1964 (in Iraq and later France) for opposing the Shah, he returned in February 1979 to lead the post-revolutionary order and served as its first Supreme Leader until his death. His decade in power encompassed the consolidation of clerical rule, the 1979–81 U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War, and the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners — events that remain central to debates over his legacy. His birth year is itself a contested point, with sources giving 1900 or 1902.
Quotes & narrations
«Nothing. (his reply, on returning to Iran after years of exile, asked how he felt)»
«The criterion is the vote of the nation.»
Related entities
Also appears in
Sources
- Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (University of California Press)
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Khomeini, Ruhollah"
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ruhollah Khomeini"