Black flags and images of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah filled the streets of Beirut as tens of thousands of Shia mourners gathered to bury their spiritual leader today.
The grey-bearded cleric was laid to rest in the mosque from which his teachings had inspired millions of Muslims worldwide.
Delegations from across the region's centres of religious learning – from the Shia holy cities of Qom, in Iran, and Najaf, in Iraq, to Sunni Islam's al-Azhar mosque, in Cairo – travelled to the al-Imamain al-Hassanein mosque to pay their respects to a religious authority who was instrumental in the establishment of Hezbollah and the growth of Shia political power.
"To heaven, ayatollah, you were our teacher and school," read one of hundreds of banners flying from buildings across Beirut's southern suburbs. The cleric's body will be transported through the crowds before being buried in the Hassanein mosque.
The procession will pass by the place where in 1985 Fadlallah survived a car bomb assassination attempt that killed 80 people and was linked to the CIA and Saudi intelligence, in revenge for what the US saw as the ayatollah's role in inspiring suicide bombings against US troops during the Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s.
Security was tight in the suburbs, strongholds of Hezbollah, as Lebanon observed an official day of mourning for the ayatollah, whose family received condolences from the Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in an overnight visit kept secret for fear of an assassination attempt by the Israelis.
Fadlallah, who initially praised Barack Obama's election but last month expressed doubts over the US president's ability to bring peace to the Middle East, died on Sunday at the age of 74.