Early Childhood

Mashhad, 1939

Sayyid Ali Khamenei was born on 19 April 1939 in the holy city of Mashhad, the second son of Sayyid Javad Khamenei, a poor religious scholar.

Mashhad is the city of Imam Reza, peace be upon him, and one of the great shrine cities of the Shia world. The family lived near the shrine in a small home sustained by his father's modest work as a scholar and teacher.

The official biography describes Sayyid Javad as an ascetic man who kept his household on a simple life. The children grew up with little money and a strong attachment to religious learning.

This early environment, love of the Ahlulbayt and daily closeness to scholarship, formed the foundation of his character long before public life began.

First Education

At four years old he was sent with his older brother to a maktab, a traditional Qur'an school, to learn the alphabet and the Holy Qur'an.

The Qur'an was the first subject of his formal education. He learned recitation and memorization before anything else.

He then continued at an Islamic school in Mashhad and entered seminary studies while still young. The official biography records that his parents, especially his father, encouraged him toward the path of religious scholarship.

Everything he later taught and preached rested on this foundation: the Qur'an first, then jurisprudence, then public struggle.