Rohani was born to Sayyid Mahmoud Rohani, a renowned teacher in the Islamic seminary of Qom. It is believed that his father, was the person who convinced Sheikh Abd al-Karim al-Haeri to move to the city of Qom and establish the seminary there. His mother was the daughter of Sayyid Ahmed Tabatabei Qomi, a Imam of the Fatima Masumeh Shrine. His brother, Muhammad Rohani, was also a grand Ayatollah.
Education
He started his religious education at the young age of four. He complete his muqadamat by ten, and moved to Najaf. He studied in Najaf for sixteen years and returned to Qom in 1950. When he entered Qom, he began teaching jurisprudence and principles of jurisprudence in the courtyard of the Masumeh shrine. Some of his prominent teachers include, Sheikh Kadhim al-Shirazi, Sheikh Muhammad-Husayn al-Isfahani, Sheikh Muhammad-Ali al-Kadhimi, Sayyid Abu al-Hasan al-Isfahani and Sayyid al-Khoei.
Relationship with al-Khoei
al-Milani has been reported to be very close with al-Khoei, and studied under him for fifteen years. Ayatollah Zadeh Milani has said “al-Khoei once said to my father Ayatollah al-Milani: I take pride in the Islamic Seminary in which an eleven year old studies alongside the elder students and learned scholars, and with reads makaseb and understands the contents better than them and further analyses it”. The eleven year old he refers to is Rohani. Rohani also claims to own a letter written by al-Khoei praising him whilst he was at the age of fifteen.
At first, Rohani, like most other conservative clerics, was with the Islamic Revolution. In fact, in 1975, Rohani stood by Khomeini and condemned the Rastakhiz party, by issuing a fatwa against the party. In 1980, he warned the ruler of Bahrain to govern in conformance with Islamic principles or face popular overthrow, and then later stood with the Iranian backed revolution in Bahrain, lead by Hadi al-Modarresi, stating "Iran may claim Bahrain again if Iraq continues claiming the three islands in the Gulf." Rohani was one of the first senior clerics to be placed under house arrest under a direct order from Ayatollah Khomeini just a few years after the Iranian revolution. In the year 1985, Hussein-Ali Montazeri was selected as the Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts, to which Rohani objected and said "the supreme religious leader of an Islamic state should not be selected by an assembly of other clerics, but rather chosen by divine powers." Rohani was so angry at the selection of Montazeri that he publicly declared Khomeini's government un-Islamic, armed security forces immediately attacked his house in the middle of the night and he was put under house arrest for 15 years. Rohani's Hajj Mollah Sadegh School in Qom was confiscated by the state after he was put under house arrest in 1995. His home was attacked again in 1995 after he had published a letter to President Rafsanjani in which he openly criticized certain governmental policies. His books and parts of his writing were confiscated and his youngest son, Javad, arrested and later sentenced to three years imprisonment. Furthermore, Rohani was pledged “not to continue as ‘Source of Emulation’ for his seven million followers and not to have any visitors.” After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Rohani attempted to relocate to Iraq but has been barred from leaving the country. His brother Muhammad was arrested in 1994 for insisting that the role of the clergy should be a social, not a political one and criticizing the regime for discrediting Islam. Muhammad died in 1997. A third brother, Mehdi Rohani, died in Paris in 2000. Rohani claims that Ali Khamenei has repeatedly tried to meet him but he has always refused.
Works
Rohani owns a large library of publications of his own. His most renowned work is Fiqh al-Sadiq which comes in 41 volumes. Other books include:
