Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Born at Bahreman near Rafsanjan, he went to Qom at fourteen and studied at the seminary under teachers who included Hossein Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini; under Khomeini's influence he turned to politics and opposition to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and after Khomeini's exile he acted as his representative inside Iran. ¹

Across forty years Rafsanjani amassed power as speaker of parliament (1980–1989), acting commander-in-chief during the Iran–Iraq War, and the man who, in the English article's words, chose Ali Khamenei as supreme leader in 1989 — the Arabic and Urdu infoboxes likewise record that he succeeded Khamenei as president that year. He won the 1989 and 1993 presidential elections, lost the 2005 runoff to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, chaired the Expediency Discernment Council from 1989 until his death and the Assembly of Experts from 2007 to 2011, and faced political isolation after supporting the opposition in 2009. He died of a heart attack at Tajrish in Tehran on 8 January 2017. ^{2 3 4}

His faith is recorded as shia-twelver, documented, under the museum's Shia-mapping rule: the English and Persian leads both call him a Shia cleric — two independent texts attesting "Shia" — and the branch is supplied by the stated context of his Qom formation under Borujerdi and Khomeini, his appointment by Khomeini as Tehran's Friday-prayer imam, and his chairmanship of the Assembly of Experts, the Twelver clerical body that elects the supreme leader. Wikidata carries only Shia Islam in general. ^{2 1 5}

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