Over the years, they would have eight children. Five survived
infancy. As we will see later, his oldest surviving son, Mustafa, died
mysteriously in 1977—an event that contributed to a growing
frenzy for revolution in Iran. His son Ahmed would play a role
in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in October 1979
and would serve as his father’s primary aide after the revolution.
One of his daughters, Zahra Mustafavi, would become the leader
of the Women’s Organization of the Islamic Republic.
It should not be assumed the young scholar at Qom immersed
himself in Islamic theology and nothing else. The writings of
Aristotle and Plato, the famous ancient Greek philosophers,
influenced him. He became a teacher of philosophy. He also
became a poet and began to write books—twenty-one, eventually.
Meanwhile, he was deeply interested not only in the practical
and legal aspects of the Qur’an but in the mystical aspects of
the religion. Mysticism combined the study of Qur’anic law with
“an emotional experience achieved by spiritual contact with
God’s cosmic presence,” explained Daniel Brumberg, author of
Reinventing Khomeini. Self-denial is part of this experience.
“By denying all but the most basic needs—sometimes to the point
of physical suffering—and by engaging in simple but passionate
forms of prayer that can produce trancelike effects, the mystic, or
Sufi... loses his ‘self ’ in the ‘Essence’ of God, the most pure form
of which is light itself.”^7
His teachers and colleagues were very impressed by Ruhollah at
Qom. “Over the years,” wrote historian Dilip Hiro, “he established
himself as a learned teacher of ethics and philosophy as well
as an extraordinarily disciplined and orderly person. He was
particularly noted for interrelating ethical and spiritual problems
with contemporary social issues, and urging his students to
regard it as part of their religious duty to work for the solution
of current social problems.”^8
Ruhollah was twenty-eight when he journeyed to Mecca,
Islam’s holy city in what is today Saudi Arabia. All Muslims are
required to make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca in their life-
times. It was about this time that he took for himself a surname,22 AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
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