Ayatollah Khomeini and India
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Briefly
Arvind Chauhan, June 23, 2025: The Times of India
Kintoor (Barabanki): A village by the Ghaghara, 70km from Lucknow, claims a legacy that altered the fate of Iran.
Only five Shia families remain in Kintoor, once a thriving centre of Shia scholarship under Oudh. Among them, the Kazmis speak of a bloodline that runs from the lanes of eastern UP’s Barabanki to the heart of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“My great-great-greatgrandfather Mufti Mohammad Quli Musavi and Syed Ahmad Musavi were cousins,” said septuagenarian Syed Nihal Kazmi, seated beneath a fading portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini — Iran’s first supreme leader until his death in 1989.
Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi — grandfather of Ayatollah Khomeini — was born in Kintoor in the early 1800s. In 1830, he left British India on a pilgrimage to Najaf in Iraq, where he befriended Yusef Khan Kamarchi, a landowner from Farahan in Iran. By 1839, Ahmad had settled in Khomeyn, purchased a big house with a garden, and married Yusef’s sister Sakineh.
A story that started in UP but became Iran’s
Sakineh was his third wife and the couple had three daughters and a son. The son Syed Mostafa fathered Khomeini, the future Ayatollah. The family name Khomeini comes from Khomeyn.
Journalist and author Baqer Moin writes in “Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah” that Ahmad died in 1869, buried in Karbala. His lineage — Musavi Syeds — claims descent from the Prophet through his daughter and Musa al-Kazim, seventh Imam of Twelver Shiism. Their origins trace back to Nishapur in Iran. They migrated to Kintoor, more than 2,500km away, in the early 1700s.
“Ahmad’s story began here, but he became Iran’s forever,” Nihal Kazmi said. His son and an LLB graduate added: “Our ancestors’ jour ney from Nishapur to Kintoor, and Ahmad’s return to Iran, tied two worlds together. Long before Khomeini or Khamenei, it was Ahmad whose choice reshaped West Asia’s discourse.”
The Kazmis still hold fast to the past, while war simmers across Shia heartlands. A photograph of Khomeini, stoic and fierce, gazes from Nihal Kazmi’s drawing room wall.
Kintoor’s legacy doesn’t end with Khomeini. Justice Syed Karamat Husain, a Musavi Syed, served at Allahabad high court and founded Karamat Husain Muslim Girls’ PG College in Lucknow — a rare voice for women’s education.
Once a hub of clerical learning, Kintoor now watches history play out from the margins — but echoes of Ahmad’s long journey still ring in its mosques and memories.
