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Noun(1) a high-ranking Shiite religious leader who is regarded as an authority on religious law and its interpretation and who has political power as well

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(1) His father was a well-known ayatollah - the top rank in the Shi'ite clerical hierarchy.(2) At the same time a stream of visitors from Iran, including many clerics, are received by the ayatollah in his mud-brick home in downtown Najaf each day.(3) The chief ayatollah of the Shiite Muslims in Iraq says he wants direct democratic elections to take place.(4) Eventually, a new dictator, perhaps a Shiite ayatollah , takes control and forms a passionately anti-American government.(5) The ayatollah warned Iran would be pitiless towards rabble-rousers.(6) The ayatollah wields considerable influence among Shiites, who make up more than 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people.(7) He said in an interview that he would never allow direct talks with the coalition, but said discussions were being led by Iraq's four leading Shiite ayatollahs .(8) The highest real crude oil prices in recent memory were in 1979 after the ayatollahs seized power in Iran and the global price of crude oil peaked at around US $35 per barrel.(9) Najaf is the seat of the Shi'ite's ayatollahs , or spiritual leaders.(10) The Iranians are a god-fearing people and believe in an afterlife, and this is certainly true of the mullahs and ayatollahs who comprise their government.(11) The same applies to Protestant and Orthodox Christian leaders, the Dalai Lama, the Muslim ayatollahs , Jewish rabbinical councils, and all other modern-day religious patriarchs.(12) All the top imams and ayatollahs decided to meet on such religious questions to settle some urgent details of dogma.(13) Three of Najaf's four grand ayatollahs are from Iran.(14) Because we see, of course, in Iran, the ayatollahs have been in control now since the fall of the shah.(15) How does this differ, except by degree, from the message of the imams and ayatollahs that government exists not to carry out the will of the people, but the will of the prophet as they choose to interpret it?(16) Out of respect for his father and not wanting to increase the younger cleric's allure, the ayatollahs and other Shiite political groups have mostly remained silent in public about the situation.