Leader’s Speech Section 2

English translation of a selection of the words of the great leader of the revolution Ayatullah Haajj Sayyid Ali Khamenei          

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English translation of a selection of the words of the great leader of the revolution Ayatullah Haajj Sayyid Ali Khamenei

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ayatullah Haajj Sayyid Ali Khamenei is the son of the late Ayatullah Sayyid Jawad Husaini Khamenei. He was born in Mashhad on the 17th of July 1939, which coincides with the 28th of Safar 1358 Hijri Qamari (lunar year). He was the second son of his parents, born into the house of Sayyid Jawad who lived a very simple life, like many of the scholars of his time, and it was from him that the family learned to live in a humble manner.
Remembering his life in his father’s home Ayatullah Khamenei says:
“My father was a well known religious scholar who was very pious and a bit of a recluse. We had a difficult life. I remember that sometimes at night we didn’t have anything in the house for dinner. Nevertheless my mother would try to scrape something up and that dinner would be bread- and-raisins.”
“My father’s house – the one that I was born in and lived until about the age of four or five – was about a sixty to seventy square meter home located in the poor area of Mashhad. The house only had one room and a gloomy basement. Whenever a guest came to see my father – his idea was that a religious scholar’s home is a place where people come to seek help – we had to go to the basement until they left. Some years later a group of people who were very inclined to and friendly with my father bought a small empty lot beside our house so that he could build onto the house, and so we ended up with a three room house.”
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution grew up poor but religious, and as his father was a pious and sincere religious scholar he was trained accordingly. At the age of four, along with his older brother Sayyid Muhammad, he was sent to an old fashioned school (Maktab) to learn the alphabets and Qur’an. Hence the two brothers were enrolled into a newly established Islamic school named Dar al- Ta`leem Diyanat, where the completed their primary studies.
During his time in high school he studied the book Jam e` al- Muqaddamaat, whereupon he began his studies in Arabic grammar. Later, after high school, he transferred to seminary studies and was taught Arabic grammar and other primary seminary studies by his father and other religious scholars of the time.  .”