On 3 June 1989, at 22:20 IRST, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution and the first Supreme Leader and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, died in Jamaran, Greater Tehran aged 86 after spending eleven days at a private hospital, near his residency, after suffering five heart attacks in ten days.
Other sources put his age at 89, and list the cause of death as bleeding in the digestive system.
As a mark of respect, Iran’s government ordered all schools closed Sunday and declared 40 days of mourning and said schools would be closed for five days.
Pakistan has declared ten days of national mourning,
Syria announced seven days of mourning,
Afghanistan and Lebanon announced three days of mourning.
Khomeini was given a state funeral and then buried at the Behesht-e Zahra (The Paradise of Zahra) cemetery in south Tehran. It was estimated that around 10 million people participated in his funeral, one-sixth of the population of Iran, that is the largest proportion of a population ever to attend a funeral procession and also one of the largest gatherings in human history.
On 5 June, the coffin with Khomeini’s body was transferred to the Musalla, a vacant lot in north Tehran. The body was displayed there on a high podium made out of steel shipping containers, in an air-conditioned glass case, wrapped in a white shroud. It stayed there until the next day. Hundreds of thousands of mourners had seen the body.
On 6 June, the body was brought down and the coffin opened for Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani to lead the Salat al-Janazah (funeral prayer), which lasted for 20 minutes.
Afterwards, since the crowds of mourners had swelled overnight to several millions, it was impossible to deliver the body to the cemetery through Tehran to the southern part of the city in a procession. Eventually, the body was transferred to an Army Aviation Bell Huey helicopter and brought by air to the cemetery. A stampede among the massive crowd also killed eight people at the funeral procession.
At the cemetery, the crowd surged past the makeshift barriers and the authorities lost control of the events
