In UP village, forgotten Indian roots of Ayatollah Khomeini

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.