Mohammad Khatami

محمد خاتمي

Mohammad Khatami (born 14 October 1943) is an Iranian cleric and reformist philosopher who served as president of Iran from 3 August 1997 to 3 August 2005, succeeding Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Minister of culture from 1982 to 1992, he proposed the Dialogue Among Civilizations adopted by the United Nations for 2001 and later led Iran's reformist camp; he is the son of Ruhollah Khatami.

Depth

At a glance

Roles
Scholar · Philosopher · Politician
Region
Persia & Central Asia
Identifiers
Wikidata
Review

Life in time

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The Colonial Era · The Contemporary Era · The Modern Era Contemporaries: A. K. Fazlul Huq · Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani · Abbas Hilmi II · Abbas Kiarostami · Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad

Place in the story

    Unknown (unknown)

    Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

    Early life and formation

    He was born at Ardakan in Yazd province, the son of Ruhollah Khatami, and studied at the seminaries of Qom and Isfahan before taking degrees in philosophy. The Persian article presents him as a reformist politician and the fifth president of the Islamic Republic; the Urdu article gives his birth erroneously as 12 October 1931, a date no other edition supports and which is not followed here. 1 2 3

    Career and presidency

    Khatami headed the Islamic Centre in Hamburg in the late 1970s, was elected to the Majlis in 1980, and served as minister of culture from 1982 to 1992, when he resigned under conservative pressure. Elected president in 1997 with about seventy per cent of the vote and re-elected in 2001, he proposed the Dialogue Among Civilizations, which the United Nations adopted for the year 2001, and he later came to lead Iran's reformist camp; the Arabic article's infobox names Rafsanjani as his predecessor and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his successor. 4 5

    Religion

    His faith is recorded as unknown, and the reason is stated plainly. Only one independent text attests an affiliation for him personally: the English article's lead calls him a Shia cleric. The Persian and Arabic texts name no affiliation (the Arabic infobox gives Islam in general), the Urdu text calls him a scholar and cleric without naming a tradition, and its categories file him under Shia headings — a filing, not a text. Wikidata carries Shia Islam in general. Branch-supporting context exists — a seminary-formed cleric, son of a Grand Ayatollah, president of a republic whose constitution establishes Twelver Ja'fari Shi'ism — but the museum's mapping rule requires two independent texts attesting "Shia", and only one does, so the attestation and the context are preserved here without a recorded value. 4 1 5 3

    Sources

    • The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
    • Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.

    Connections

    Explore the connections

    Predecessor of
    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
    Successor of
    Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

    People and things also explored

    Ali Khamenei· Hassan Rouhani· Ruhollah Khomeini· Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani· Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

    Sources

    1. Mohammad Khatami — Persian Wikipedia
    2. Mohammad Khatami — Urdu Wikipedia
    3. Mohammad Khatami — Wikidata Q180795
    4. Mohammad Khatami — English Wikipedia
    5. Mohammad Khatami — Arabic Wikipedia
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “Mohammad Khatami”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/mohammad-khatami/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-27.

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    Related

    Ali Khamenei

    Ali Khamenei (1939–2026) was an Iranian Shia cleric and politician, president of Iran from 1981 to 1989 and then its second supreme leader from 1989 until his assassination on 28 February 2026 in Israeli airstrikes during the 2026 Iran war — the longest tenure of any supreme leader. Born at Mashhad, he studied at Qom in the classes of Ruhollah Khomeini and was a mainstream figure of the Iranian Revolution; his son Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen to succeed him as supreme leader.