Word: qum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...after day the two sides launched aerial and missile attacks on each other's cities. In a gesture that some observers interpreted as a sign of President Saddam Hussein's rising desperation, Iraqi warplanes repeatedly raided the Iranian holy city of Qum, a campaign calculated to infuriate the aging and increasingly frail ruler of the Islamic Republic. Reports continued to circulate in the West last week that Khomeini, 86, has been confined to bed for the past month and is extremely ill, perhaps near death...
...moment, neither Montazeri nor Rafsanjani appears to have been irreparably damaged by the recent brush with the U.S. Some Western diplomats believe that if Khomeini were to die tomorrow, Montazeri would become the country's religious leader and rule from the holy city of Qum, while Rafsanjani would run the government. But given the range of problems that Iran faces right now, such assessments could quickly change...
Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 64. One of Iran's most revered holy men, Montazeri has ties to Khomeini that go back more than 40 years, to the time when Montazeri was a student of the revolutionary cleric in the holy city of Qum. A year ago, Montazeri was designated Khomeini's successor as spiritual leader of Iran. His clout is already substantial. He appoints members of the Supreme Judicial Council, Iran's highest court, and is the "supreme guide" for the country's universities and seminaries. Other leaders, though, have recently been intriguing to curb his growing influence...
...found plenty of them, thanks in part to his physiognomy. Naipaul's Indian heritage made him appear sympathetic to some who might otherwise have mistrusted him. Ayatullahs in Qum found his looks puzzling but nonthreatening; in Pakistan he was taken for a Pakistani; a teacher in Indonesia remarked admiringly: "You look like our Prophet." Such appearances were deceiving. Naipaul is a man of the West, through and through. He may have grown up as an alien in Trinidad, then a British colony, but his escape from that subjugation came not through mysticism or political revolution but through secular education...
After the failed rescue mission, Metrinko was driven to the holy city of Qum and held for a week with two other hostages in a filthy, rat-infested prison cell whose windows were covered with blankets. He often heard the crack of a whip followed by screams; once when a blanket fell, he caught a glimpse of some Iranians being flogged...