Ahmad Khonsari, also Aḥmad Khvānsārī, or Khvunsārī (Persian: احمد خوانساری, 1887–1985) was an Iranian Grand Ayatollah and attained marja status after the death of marja Boroujerdi in 1961.[1] In contrast to the other maraji of his time, who lived in the holy cities of Qom or Najaf, he was based in Tehran,[2] where he ran his own hawza.[3] Khonsari was one of the teachers of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Grand Ayatollah Khonsari came to Qom in 1923 and became one of the leaders of the hawza after the death of Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi. Together with Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari and a number of other Iranian Grand Ayatollahs, he was a staunch opponent of the Shah's White Revolution in 1963.[4] But he felt Khomeini's direct challenge of the Shah, claiming to speak for the entirety of Iranian religious leadership, went too far. Khonsari openly criticized Khomeini's behaviour.[5]
Khonsari was a quietist, who believed the clergy should not exercise political power.[3] As such, he opposed Ayatollah Khomeini’s interpretation of the concept of velayat-e faqih.[6]
Biographies
Abdollah Motevalli: Ayatullah Seyyed Ahmad Khonsari be Revayat-e Asnad. Markaz-e Asnad-e Enqelab-e Islami – Tehran. 2004. 256 pages.
Characteristics
Ahmad Khansari needed surgery due to gastric ulcer disease, on the other hand, he was old and physically weak, and the surgery had to be performed under anesthesia. Before the surgery, Khansari did not allow the doctors to anesthetize him, because he believed that his consciousness would be endangered. He wanted to perform the surgery while reciting the Quran. Therefore, he said to his treating doctors: "Whenever I am busy reciting Al-An'amSurah, you should perform the surgery, I am paying attention to the Quran, and in this case, no problem will arise." His love for the Quran was so strong that he did not feel any pain by reciting Al-An'amSurah during the surgery and the surgery was completed successfully without the need for anesthesia.[7]
^Mohammad Gholi Majd. Resistance to the Shah: Landowners and Ulama in Iran, University of Florida Press, 2000, 216.
^Mohammad Borghei: Iran’s Religious Establishment the Dialectics of Politicization. Samih Farsoun. Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic. Routledge, 1992, p. 47.
