(The Conversation) — Ali Khamenei was born in Mashhad, Iran, in 1939, as the second son of a local religious leader, Javad Khamenei, and he grew up in relative poverty.
He learned to read the Qur’an in early childhood before attending a theological seminary school in Mashhad. At 18, he travelled to Najaf in central Iraq to study Shia jurisprudence, but was later asked by his father to return. He was a student of Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
There is not much known about Khamenei’s family life, except that he is married and has six children. Khamenei’s interest in poetry is a well-known part of his public persona. He often cites poems in his speeches and hosts poetry gatherings where pro-government poets gather to read their poems to receive his comments. Khamenei’s interest in literature is quite rare among religious clerics. The same goes for his interest in gardening.
In the 1960s and 1970s Khamenei was involved in protests against the U.S.-backed monarchy (the shah), and was an ardent supporter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then living in exile, and against the “westernization” of Iran. This led to his arrest by the shah’s secret police and intelligence operation, the Organization of National Security and Information (Savak), which suppressed opposition to the shah.
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the monarch who ruled Iran until 1979, was backed by western powers including the U.S. and the U.K. After a decade of economic growth in Iran, mainly based on oil revenues, did not lead to an improvement in the standard of living for ordinary Iranians, a combination of students, intellectuals and clerics created combined s …