In UP village, forgotten Indian roots of Ayatollah Khomeini | India News
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-great-grandfather 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.
