Source: The Islamic Revolution in Iran, P. 48, by Prof. Hamid Algar.
The life of Ayatullah Khomeini before his emergence for the first time to the wider public eye in 1963 deserves some attention. As the final element in his name indicates, he was born in the little town of Khomein in 1902, of a family that for many generations had cultivated religious knowledge and learning. His grandfather was a certain Sayid Ahmad, who was also known as Sayid Ahmad Hindi, because he had spent a number of years in India.

As far as is known to me, the family is of Iranian origin for many generations, although ultimately, since he is a Sayid - a descendant of the Prophet - the ultimate origins of the family go beyond Iran. But throughout recent generations the family is Iranian. It is simply that the grandfather spent a certain time in India. There are, apparently, even now, a number of relatives of the family who are still resident in India, somewhere near Lucknow.

His father was a Sayid Mustafa Khomeini, who was killed by a mayor of Khomein in the last days of the Qajar dynasty, because of his protests against the exactions and the unjust taxes and other oppressive practices carried out by the mayor against the local population.

The learned and religious career of Ayatullah Khomeini began when he was 17, in the year 1919, when he went to study in the city of Arak. After a brief stay, he left this relatively small and unimportant city to go to the main center of religious learning in Iran, namely, Qum. His arrival shortly preceded the establishment there of the Hauze-ye Ilmiye by Shaykh Abd Al Karim Hairi. Ayatullah Khomeini swiftly emerged as one of his most prominent and important pupils. Under, his guidance, Ayatullah Khomeini studied the disciplines of Fiqh and Usul al-Fiqh, and at the same time he learnt philosophy and mysticism under the guidance of another of the prominent teachers of the day, Mirza Muhammad Ali Shahabadi.

I would like to make a brief diversion to speak of the place of philosophy and mysticism in the learned and eventhe political career of Ayatullah Khomeini. It is one of the remarkable facts about him that his political role in leading a revolution, unparalleled in recent history, has come totally to overshadow his achievements as a scholar, philosopher and mystic. All too frequently in the modernist Moslem mentality philosophy and mysticism are held to represent a retreat from reality, a total abdication of any kind of political and social role, as if they were merely abstract matters that had no real connection with the existing problems of Moslems and the Islamic world. Ayatullah Khomeini is living proof that these two subjects, correctly conceived and pursued, are on the contrary the mainspring for a form of activity that is profoundly correct, guided by a clear insight that is not merely political and strategic but is also at the same time an insight that is metaphysically correct and well-guided.

As for mysticism, it may be said that it is precisely the moral and spiritual qualities that Ayatullah Khomeini has cultivated that have made him what he most obviously is - a complete embodiment of the human ideal of Islam. This is the revolutionary leader who lives not in comfortable apartments, who spends his nights in prayer and supplication, whose daily sustenance consists of the simplest and most elementary foods. It seems to me that his very thorough ground in philosophy and mysticism has been even of political relevance and effectiveness.