At the Imam Khomeini College of Higher Learning, you are as likely to hear English or Swahili as you are Persian.

Located in Qom, the centre of religious learning in Iran, the college specialises in taking in students from around the world and instructing them in the tenets of Shia Islam.

Part of Al-Mustafa International University, the college is an updated version of the traditional Islamic seminary.

In the early days of the Islamic Republic, senior Shia clerics were seized with the idea of exporting the revolution, and promoting their branch of the faith as opposed to the Sunni Islam practiced in many countries.

But while a legacy of that early proselytising spirit, Al-Mustafa International University is fairly recent in origin, established less than three years ago on the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The university’s president Ali Reza Arafi says the Imam Khomeini College has two objectives - “safeguarding the luminous path of the revolution in the international arena, and building confidence in different societies around the world.”

His deputy Mehdi Mahdavipour says the college is active or represented in 60 countries.

The Imam Khomeini College currently has 18,000 international students, of whom 11,000 are studying inside Iran.

The university authorities claim that over the past two decades, more than 20,000 students from 108 countries have graduated in Iran.

These images by Iranian photographer Javad Montazeri show students studying, praying and relaxing at the Imam Khomeini College.