Word: qum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Cabinet's pilgrimage was further proof, if any were needed, that the real seat of power in Iran is not in Tehran but at an Islamic academy called the Madresseh Faizieh in the holy city of Qum. There the berobed Ayatullah Khomeini, now 79, receives a steady stream of visitors, ranging from government officials to impoverished peasants seeking his blessing and aid. But Khomeini did not really create the Iranian revolution, the revolution created him. That is the conclusion of Senior Correspondent James Bell, who first reported on Iranian politics for TIME in 1951. Traveling widely in Europe...
When asked to define the essential character of the Ayatullah Khomeini, a family friend recalls the scene at the drowning of Khomeini's infant daughter in Qum some 35 years ago. Khomeini's wife was tearing her hair in despair. When the friend arrived, the bearded savant was praying quietly over the body of the youngest of his six children. "I looked into his face and could see no trace of disturbance," says the friend today. "I knew he loved this child very deeply. Yet he showed no emotion, no sorrow, no excitement." After a while Khomeini said...
...watched soccer matches on TV during his four-month exile in Neauphlele-Château, outside Paris, in 1978-79. He attended Koranic school in Khomein, and was later sent to Arak to study under a well-known Islamic scholar, Abdul Karim Haeri. In 1920, when Haeri moved to Qum and established the famed Madresseh Faizieh, a center of Islamic learning, Ruhollah went with him. Except for his years in exile, Khomeini has lived and taught there ever since...
...Back in Qum, Khomeini remained something of a theological maverick. At the Madresseh Faizieh, he lectured on the need for Islamic mullahs to involve themselves in politics, as the prophet had done. Khomeini also taught a course in ethics that was, in reality, a discussion of political science from an Islamic viewpoint. Despite his unorthodox ways, or perhaps because of them, he became increasingly popular with students...
During the late 1930s, the religious community in Qum came under heavy pressure from the Reza Shah, who had undertaken a campaign to modernize his country, in the manner of Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. By 1941, as a result, the number of students at the Faizieh had dropped from several thousand to 500. Khomeini urged the new director of the school, the Ayatullah Boroujerdi, to oppose the Shah more openly. When Boroujerdi refused, Khomeini was bitterly disappointed. Thereafter he called on his superior only once a year, as required. Shortly after Reza Shah was deposed...