Word: qum
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Some observers distinguish two stages in the entire upheaval: the first a popular revolt that overthrew the Shah, then a "Khomeini coup" that concentrated all power in the clergy. The Ayatullah's main instrument was a stream of elamiehs (directives) from Qum, many issued without consulting Bazargan's nominal government. Banks and heavy industry were nationalized and turned over to government managers. Many of the elamiehs were concerned with imposing a strict Islamic...
Khomeini withdrew to the holy city of Qum, appointed a government headed by Mehdi Bazargan, an engineer by training and veteran of Mossadegh's Cabinet, and announced that he would confine his own role during "the one or two years left to me" to making sure that Iran followed "in the image of Muhammad." It quickly became apparent that real power resided in the revolutionary komitehs that sprang up all over the country, and the komitehs took orders only from the 15-man Revolutionary Council headed by Khomeini (the names of its other members were long kept secret). Bazargan...
...usually happens in revolutions, the forces of dissolution, once let loose, are not so easily tamed. Iran's economy suffered deeply, and unrest in at least three ethnic areas?those of the Kurds, the Azerbaijanis and the Baluchis?presented continuing threats to Tehran's, or Qum's, control. Many Western experts believe Khomeini shrewdly seized upon the students' attack on the U.S. embassy, which he applauded but claims he did not order, as a way of directing popular attention away from the country's increasing problems. It gave him once again a means of presenting all difficulties as having been...
Khomeini in speech at Qum...
...Qum, Khomeini lives as an unassuming man of God. In his sparsely furnished house, he is surrounded by the cheerful noise and confusion of a typical Middle Eastern home. He evidently enjoys the company of his 14 grandchildren. He is said to have a weak heart, has suffered from a form of undulant fever and can work for only a few hours a day. Still he performs the devout Muslim's daily ritual of prayer without visible effort. He subsists on a sparse diet of rice, bean curd, yogurt and raw onions, supplemented now and then by a slice...