On 18^th April 1939, a few months before the outbreak of World War II, the future leader of Islamic Iran was born in the holy city of Mashhad, Khorasan. Sayyed Ali was the second son of the clerical family of Sayyed Javad Khamenei, a humble, poor theological scholar who taught all members of his family how to lead a simple, humble way of life. "My father, though a well-known religious figure, was a bit of an ascetic. We had a hard life. Sometimes for supper we had nothing but bread with some raisins, which our mother had somehow improvised.... our house, some sixty-five square meters, consisted of a single room and a gloomy basement. When visitors came to see my father as the local cleric to consult about their problems, the family had to move into the basement while the visit went on.... Years later some charitable persons bought the small, empty lot adjacent to our house, so we were able to build two more rooms! "

At the age of four Sayyed Ali, accompanied by his elder brother Mohammad, was sent to maktab ,  an old-fashioned primary-school, to learn the alphabet and the Quran. Later, he was transferred to a newly established, Islamic school to continue his learning.

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After this primary schooling, he pursued his studies at the theological seminary in Mashhad. " The main encouraging factors for this enlightened decision were my parents, especially my father ", says Ayatollah Khamenei today. At Soleiman Khan and Nawwab Religious schools and under the supervision of his father and the tutorships of some great religious scholars, he took up all the "intermediate level " curricula including logic, Philosophy and Islamic Jurisprudence in the surprisingly short course of about 5 years and started his " advanced studies " called darsi kharij with such eminent scholars and tutors as Grand Ayatollah Milani...