BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Sayyed  Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of Shi’ite Islam’s highest  religious authorities and an early mentor of the militant group  Hezbollah, died in a Beirut hospital yesterday.

Political leaders and clerics from Iran, Bahrain and Iraq  paid tribute to Fadlallah, reflecting the loyalty he enjoyed  from Shi’ites as far away as the Gulf and Central Asia.

Fadlallah, who was 74, had been too frail to deliver his  regular Friday prayers sermon for several weeks, and had been in  hospital since Friday suffering from internal bleeding.

Crowds gathered to pay condolences at the Hassanein mosque  in southern Beirut where he preached, and Hezbollah said it  would mark his death with three days of mourning. Fadlallah’s  office said he would be buried at the mosque tomorrow.

Black banners and pictures of the white-bearded,  black-turbaned cleric hung outside mosques and his charitable  institutions in Shi’ite areas of southern Lebanon and the Beqaa  valley in the east.

“He was a guide not just for Lebanon but for the whole world  and for Muslims,” said mourner Abu Muhammed Hamadeh outside the  Hassanein mosque where men and women wept openly, some of them  clutching his picture. “With his death, he has left a very large  void in the Arab and Muslim world”.

Fadlallah was a supporter of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and  one of the first backers of the Iraqi Dawa Party of Prime  Minister Nuri al-Maliki. He was also the spiritual leader and  mentor of the Shi’ite guerrilla group Hezbollah when it was  formed after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, though he later  distanced himself from its ties with Iran.