Entitled “Spring of Knowledge: A Survey of Life Story and Thoughts of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei”, the book is authored by Ali-Akbar Velayati, the top adviser to the Leader.

Containing 208 pages, the book has been written in three chapters, the first of which gives a biography of the Leader and provides an introduction to his ancestors.

The Leader’s scientific and cultural background and his early political and social life are also examined in this chapter.

The second chapter covers Ayatollah Khamenei’s activities during the first decade after the victory of the Islamic Revolution. His works in the Revolution Council and Islamic Republican Party, and his role as a Friday prayer leader are also discussed in this section.

The Leader’s positions on various issues as an MP in the Iranian Parliament, his role as a commander during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, his struggles against the liberals and former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, and his life as a president are illustrated in this chapter.

The third chapter provides a deep insight into the life of Ayatollah Khamenei after he was declared the Leader of the Islamic Revolution following the demise of the founder of the revolution, Imam Khomeini.

The Leader’s role in formulating the country’s foreign and domestic policy, as well as in military, defense and legal affairs is studied in this part.

In a preface to the book, Velayati said that writing the entry on Ayatollah Khamenei was proposed by Seyyed Kazem Musavi Bojnurdi, director of the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia.

Velayati agreed to make the contribution to the encyclopedia after getting the Leader’s approval.

He went on saying that the entry, which was published in the 21st book of the encyclopedia, was warmly welcomed by the general public.

Subsequently, Musavi Bojnurdi announced the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia’s plan to publish the entry in a separate book and asked Velayati to write a preface to the publication.

On his colleague’s advice, Velayati put his spotlight in the introduction on the necessity of the velayat-e faqih system of governance in Shiism during the absence of Imam Mahdi (AS).

Velayati is the author of the 15-volume collection “The Ancient and Contemporary History of Iran”.

The last book of the collection was published in 2017 under the subtitle “Iran during the Leadership of Hazrat Ayatollah Khamenei”.

Photo: Copies of the book “Spring of Knowledge: A Survey of Life Story and Thoughts of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei” by Ali-Akbar Velayati.

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He was also a professor and the founder of the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University in New York.

Born in Hamedan in 1920 he got a Ph.D. in Persian language and literature at the University of Tehran in 1947. He then moved to England to pursue his studies at London University, where he received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Old and Middle Iranian in 1960.

In 1961, he was appointed to the Kevorkian Chair of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. He was the first full-time professor of Persian at an American university since World War II. In 1968, he established the Center for Iranian Studies.

He founded Encyclopedia Iranica in 1973 and was the editor-in-chief of the encyclopedia until his death. Yarshater looked for a successor several times, but failed in his attempts to find one.

“He has worked to create the most comprehensive account of several millenniums of Iranian history, language and culture in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia” the New York Times wrote about Iranica in a report published on August 12, 2011.

“There is nothing like it” in scope or quality, said Ali Banuazizi, a professor at Boston College and a former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

He was the general editor of a 40-volume translation of al-Tabari’s 10th-century history of the world and editor of some of the Cambridge History of Iran.

He married Latifeh Alvieh, a cultural advisor at the Cultural Bureau of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. She died in 1999, and the couple had no children.

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Indian Ambassador Saurabh Kumar and Iranian scholars, including Dariush Shayegan and Mostafa Mohaqqeq-Damad, will deliver speeches on Gandhi’s genuine belief in pacifism at the session that will begin at 5 p.m.

A number of Gandhi’s books will also be exhibited on the sidelines of the meeting, which has been organized with support from the Persian literary monthly Bokhara and the Embassy of India.

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