Abstract: In the period between 1877-1921 significant numbers of non-Muslims converted to the
Bahá'í Faith in Iran. This was an essential development for the emergence of the
Bahá'í Faith as an independent religion possessing a distinct identity apart from Islam.
These conversions were largely confined to the Zoroastrian and Jewish communities and did
not involve Iran's largest religious minority, the Christians. This study attempts to
address some of the factors that were involved in this conversion process. These will
include the manner in which Bahá'ís made the transition from Islamic particularism to a
universalism that would attract non-Muslims, as well as the manner in which actual
conversions took place and the factors surrounding them. Major emphasis will be placed
upon examining what factors may have inclined certain minorities rather than others to
The Jewish conversion movement began in Hamadan around 1877, and
by 1884, according to the historian of Persian Jewry Habib Levy, involved some one hundred
and fifty of the eight-hundred Jewish households there (Levy, Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-Iran 657). From there, the Bahá'í Faith
spread to the Jewish communities of other Iranian cities, including Kashan (where half of
the Bahá'í community was of Jewish origin), Tehran, Isfahan, Bukhara, and Gulpaygan
(where seventy-five percent of the Jewish community was said to have converted) (Curzon, Persia 500). According to Dastur Dhalla, the eminent Zoroastrian theologian, roughly 4000 Zoroastrians converted to the
Bahá'í Faith in Iran, with an additional 1000 in India (cited in Dhalla, Dastur Dhalla 703). This conversion
movement involved a significant portion of the educated merchant elite of the Zoroastrians
in Yazd (Stiles, "Early Zoroastrian"), all of the
Zoroastrians of Qazvin (Dhalla, Dastur
Dhalla 726), and a significant number in Kashan and Tehran as well. The accuracy of all
these figures, being based largely on the impressions of outside observers, is open to
question. Neither the Bahá'ís nor the minorities from which the conversions were
occurring kept membership records at this time.
From Particularism to Universalism
A cursory examination of Bahá'í scriptures reveals that from early on, both the
Báb and Bahá'u'lláh were consciously formulating a new religious system. Yet the
paradigms by which Bahá'ís sought to establish their independence from Islam were
largely Islamic ones. Bahá'ís based their distinctiveness on the claim that
Bahá'u'lláh, the founder, had received a revelation direct from God, and that He had
promulgated new scriptures and ordinances to supersede those of past religions. These
criteria for what constitutes an independent religion--namely, a prophet, a book, a new
law--are peculiarly Islamic. Where other religions have categorized themselves similarly,
they have done so only in response to Islamic contacts.
The early Bahá'í community, as it had developed directly from that of the Babís, was
made up almost entirely of former Muslims. Of these, a significant portion had been
'ulamá. Under the conditions of persecution that existed at the time, these Bahá'ís
were careful not to draw attention to themselves by behaving differently from the Muslims.
In any case, most of their perceptions were drawn from the Muslim milieu in which they
lived. As long as the Bahá'í Faith remained entirely within the Iranian-Muslim context,
its theological assertion of its own independent nature could not hope to become a
sociological reality. While the initial changes were theological, proceeding from the
writings of Bahá'u'lláh, Bahá'ís still had to cease to identify psychologically with
Islam before non-Muslims would be attracted to the Bahá'í Faith.
During the Babí period there were few minority conversions. The only account I have
found is the lone instance of a Zoroastrian who witnessed a Babí being beaten, stripped
naked, and paraded through the streets. This persecution induced the Zoroastrian to
examine the religion, and he soon became a Babí ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Traveller's 21). According to the Bahá'í historian
Hasan Balyuzi, Táhirih was instrumental in converting a number of Jews to the Babí Faith
in Hamadan (Balyuzi, The Báb 165). These conversions do not appear
to have had any connection with later Bahá'í conversions. It should be noted however,
that of all the Babí leaders, Táhirih was the most outspoken in departing from Islamic
Harsh persecutions also caused some Bahá'ís to seek the protection and assistance of
those of other religions. Many Bahá'ís associated closely with European missionaries,
accepting employment from them, and in some cases feigning conversion to Christianity.
This happened often enough that one missionary urged others to insist that any candidate
for church membership be required to specifically deny Bahá'u'lláh as the "return
of Christ" before being accepted for baptism. This disavowal was deemed necessary since Bahá'ís
regarded that each prophet was the 'return" of the preceding prophet in a manner
analogous to the way in which Christians understood John the Baptist to be the
"return" of Elijah. "Return" in this sense involved not
transmigration, but the symbolic fulfillment of the apocalyptic prophecies of another
religion by one whose spiritual station was identical to that of the past prophet. Since
all prophets were then regarded as identical, all of the religions They founded were
essentially one. By this means, early Bahá'ís could justify "conversion" to
Christianity so long as it did not directly entail denying Bahá'u'lláh.
Christians were not the only religious group to offer assistance to Bahá'ís in
difficult situations. When Mírza Abu'l-Fadl, the great Bahá'í scholar, was expelled
from his position as a teacher in a religious school after it became known he was a
Bahá'í in 1876, he was able to obtain employment from the Parsi agent Manakji Limji
Hatari, who had been sent by the Zoroastrian community in India to assist the Zoroastrians
of Iran. Mírza Abu'l-Fadl taught Persian literature to Zoroastrian children in Manakji's
new school and served as Manakji's personal secretary. Some of the earliest Zoroastrian
conversions to the Bahá'í Faith resulted from Mírza Abu'l-Fadl's association with the
Zoroastrian community (Mihrabkhani, Sharh
Among the theological doctrines introduced by Bahá'u'lláh that prepared the Bahá'í
community to receive non-Muslims as converts was his injunction to "consort with the
followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship" (Tablets 22). Islamic and Babí
doctrines relating to the ritual impurity of non-believers were discarded. Most important,
Bahá'u'lláh claimed to be not only the One foretold by the Báb but also the Promised
One of all religions: the return of Christ to the Christians, the Messiah to the Jews,
Shah Bahram to the Zoroastrians. Because of this, Bahá'ís came to regard all religions
as essentially true and believed religions all could find their ultimate culmination in
Bahá'u'lláh. They approached other religions determined to fulfil and not destroy.
Early Contacts and Conversions
While the psychological and theological changes that occurred within the
Babí-Bahá'í-communities between 1850 and 1875 prepared Bahá'ís to receive
non-Muslims, those changes did not in themselves cause the conversions. Were this the
case, we might expect a close correspondence between conversion and Bahá'í outreach to
certain groups. This does not seem to have been the case. Bahá'u'lláh's writings
addressed Christians more than any other non-Muslim religious groups and addressed them at
an earlier date. Early Bahá'ís often approached European Christians and requested their
scriptures, and missionaries
were often dismayed to find Bahá'ís using the missions as bases for their own conversion
efforts. Yet Christian response
to the Bahá'í revelation was negligible. The conversion of Jews and Zoroastrians to the
Bahá'í Faith occurred almost accidentally. Bahá'ís did not, at first, make any
concerted efforts to reach these people, who were attracted by association rather than
active proselytizing. The actual conversions took many Bahá'ís by surprise. Hájí
Muhammad Táhir, a Bahá'í from a Muslim background, observing this phenomenon, wrote:
Up to that time [1882-83] no one from among the Zoroastrians [in Yazd] had accepted the
Faith. Indeed, the Bahá'ís could not imagine that these people would embrace the Faith,
because they were not involved in the early history and events associated with the
Manifestations of God and were not included in any discussions concerning the Faith.
(Quoted in Taherzadeh, Revelation 103 1)
The conversions of the first Jews of Hamadan were equally unexpected. In 1877 a Jewish
physician Hakim Aqa Jan was called upon to treat the malaria stricken wife of Muhammad
Baqir, a prominent Bahá'í of Hamadan. Accidentally, Aqa Jan gave her strychnine pills
instead of quinine. When she nearly died, Aqa Jan became panic stricken, expecting violent
repercussions, not only for himself but towards the entire Jewish community as well.
Seeing his consternation, Muhammad Baqir assured him that he would not hold him
responsible for what was obviously a mistake. The wife recovered, but Aqa Jan was so
impressed by Muhammad Baqir's kindness that he assumed Baqir could not be a Muslim and
asked him regarding his religion. Muhammad Baqir then informed him that "a new
religion has appeared in the world by the name of Bahá'í"(quoted in Sulaymani, Masabih-i 4:452-53).
Aqa Jan made a thorough investigation of the tenets of the Bahá'í religion and
eventually embraced it along with some forty friends and family members, including his
father, a leading rabbi of the town.
Early Jewish and Zoroastrian converts carried out most of the actual teaching work
themselves within their respective communities, relying on Muslim Bahá'ís for support.
Neither the theology, attitudes, nor the efforts of the Bahá'ís themselves adequately
explain why conversion occurred among Jews and Zoroastrians, but not Christians in Iran.
Factors Underlying Conversions
Various Jewish scholars have suggested reasons why the Iranian Jews might have
been attracted to the Bahá'í Faith. We might see how many of these can be shown to apply
both to Jewish and Zoroastrian converts.
Habib Levy suggests that the poor economic and social conditions under which Jews lived
induced many of them to convert (Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-lran
781-82). If this were the case, we might expect the conversions to occur mostly among
the poorer classes of Jews and in areas where the Jewish community was the most depressed.
This does not seem to have been the case. Bahá'í biographies indicate that the Jews who
first converted were often doctors or educated artisans.
Poorer Jews seem to have converted somewhat later.
At the time Jewish conversions began in 1877 in Hamadan, the economic position of the
Jews there had improved considerably due to a shift in trade routes. In 1862, the British
established regular steamer service between Basrah and Baghdad. This placed Hamadan on the
major artery linking Baghdad and Europe with Tehran. Jews were prominent in the trade of
cotton textiles from England that were transported on this route. By the end of the
century, eighty percent of that trade was in their hands (Issawi, Economic History 62). The Jews of Yazd, however,
were dependent on the declining silk trade and experienced the greatest economic
deprivation during this period. Yet, Yazd did not experience a significant number of
Jewish conversions to the Bahá'í religion at that time.
However, the condition of the Zoroastrian community in Yazd began steadily improving in
the latter half of the nineteenth century when representatives from the Parsi community in
Bombay were sent to Iran to ameliorate the oppression and poverty under which the
Zoroastrians lived. Besides establishing schools, influencing government regulations, and
introducing internal reforms into the Zoroastrian community, the contacts with the Parsis
of India led to the establishment of trade relations between Bombay and Yazd in which
Zoroastrians played a prominent role. Out of this relationship arose a mercantile and
professional class that had been hitherto absent among the Zoroastrian community of Iran.
The early conversions to the Bahá'í Faith occurred among this group and again followed
or accompanied economic improvement. The upwardly mobile were often the first to convert.
Habib Levy also suggests that Jews sometimes converted to the Bahá'í Faith to obtain
relief from persecution (Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-lran 626-31).
Evidence does not support this view. Bahá'ís lacked even the secondary legal status
accorded to other religious minorities within the Islamic state as "People of the
Book." Attacks against Bahá'ís were usually the more virulent, and they could
hardly offer anyone else protection. Converts to the Bahá'í Faith remained within their
ancestral community as long as they were tolerated there and could avoid persecution by
doing so. In the event of expulsion, they found themselves in the precarious position of
belonging to no recognized religious community.
In Hamadan, many Jewish Bahá'ís pretended to convert to Protestantism in order to
obtain the protection of the Presbyterian missionaries (Mihrabkhani, Sharh Ahval-i 130). In Yazd, Zoroastrian
Bahá'ís had better success maintaining their position within the Zoroastrian community
and thereby remained relatively immune to the persecutions that afflicted Bahá'ís of
Muslim background (Stiles, "Early Zoroastrian").
Walter Fischel, another historian of Middle Eastern Jewry, sees the general ignorance
that existed among the Jews of Iran regarding the basic tenets of their religion as a
primary determinant of the conversions:
Had Persian Jews possessed the spiritual leaders of a high cultural standing in
the last century, had the rabbis and the schools taught and asserted a Judaism free from
superstitious notions, empty formalism and medieval prejudices, had they shown a true
sense for Judaism and its ethics, the conception of God, its ideas of the messiah, its
national aspirations, its contributions to world culture, Bahá'ísm would hardly have won
any Jewish hearts. (Fischel, "Jews
in Persia" 156)
Contemporary Western accounts of the Jewish community would tend to support Fischel's
evaluation. Before the arrival of Christian missionaries the Bible was read in Hebrew,
often without any understanding. The earliest translations of the Bible into Persian and
Judeo-Persian were made and distributed by the Christians. Even Hebrew Bibles were
generally obtained through missionaries. The Talmud was virtually unknown, and the Jewish
clergy had little education (Spector,
"A History" 226-52). The converts, however, judging from their literature, had a
good knowledge of scripture, as well as of rabbinical exegesis (cf. Arjumand, Gulshan Haqayiq). One
Bahá'í of Jewish background stated that his father carefully taught all of his
apprentices "the trade, the Torah, and the Bahá'í Faith" (personal interview
with the author). But in none of these accounts have I found any reference to the Talmud.
Like the Jewish clergy, the Zoroastrian priests in Iran were poorly educated entrenched
in ritualism, and unable to respond to social change. Parsi agents sent to assist the
Iranian Zoroastrians often found their efforts frustrated by intransigent priests. When
one Parsi agent, Kay-Khusraw Ji Sahib, established a body of elected laymen to oversee the
activities of the Zoroastrian community including those previously regulated by the
clergy, the Zoroastrian priests were said to have poisoned him (Sulaymani, Masabih-i 4:404-6).
Several other factors seem to have encouraged conversion. Fischel notes that the
universality displayed by the Bahá'ís in contrast to the insularity of the Jewish
community also provided a strong inducement to conversion ("Jews in Persia" 154). Levy also noted
the profound impression Bahá'ís made upon the Jews by their kindness and tolerance:
The Jews observed that the very Muslims [Baba'is] who yesterday had regarded Jews as
unclean and infidels and who tormented them even unto death, today, with the utmost
affection, showed respect to them. If a Jew went to a Bahá'ís' place of worship there
was no danger, the Bahá'í would even invite him and regard him as having the same rank
as hirmself; for the leader of the new religion [Bahá'u'lláh] had said that all humanity
are the servants of God and there is no difference between them. (Levy, Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-lran 627)
The biographies of Bahá'í converts confirm this factor. Sulaymani tells the story of
a Zoroastrian youth named Ardishir who visited the home of a prominent Bahá'í Mulla
'Abdu'l-Qani. The host graciously received him, serving him tea with his own hand, then,
deliberately ignoring the strictures of ritual uncleanliness, drank out of the same glass
after him without washing it. Turning to his surprised guest, Mulla 'Abdu'l-Qani remarked,
"You must have heard how, in the days of the advent of the Promised Lord, the lamb
and the wolf will drink from the same stream and graze in the same meadow. Do you still
doubt that we are living in that Day?" (Sulaymani, Masabih-i 3:79).
While these factors seem to have been important to the Jewish and Zoroastrian
conversions, Christian conversions were nearly nonexistent. I will now examine the
communal experience and identity of each minority to determine what factors might account
for the differences in response to the Bahá'í revelation.
Communal Experience and Identity
Christian missionaries noted a profound difference between the way in which
Armenians were perceived and perceived themselves in contrast to the Jews. Samuel Wilson,
a Presbyterian missionary writing in 1896, described the Armenians as highly westernized,
materialistic, and with strong nationalistic attachment to the Gregorian Church despite
their skepticism in matters of faith. At the
same time, he describes the Jews as despised and persecuted, forced to submit to the
vilest insults on the part of both Muslims and Christians.
Zoroastrians seemed to have experienced mistreatment similar to the Jews. Napier Malcolm,
a missionary living in Yazd at the turn of the century, noted how Zoroastrians were
subjected to petty humiliations and previously had been excluded from trade and education.
Two major groups of Christians reside in Iran, the Nestorians or Assyrians, who in the
nineteenth century resided principally in parts of Kurdistan and Urumiyyih, and the
Armenians, many of whom were settled in New Julfa just outside of Isfahan. The areas in
which the Nestorians resided were largely rural and formed a part of what they believed
to be their national homeland. They possessed a glorious past and a strong identity based
on their language and liturgy. In the missionary schools they learned Assyrian and
European languages but remained ignorant of Persian. They saw themselves as the remnant of
Assyrian as well as Christian glory. So strong was their sense of ethnic pride that they
sought independence at the Versailles Peace Conference. Their rural status and relative
isolation allowed them greater autonomy than other minorities; they remained aloof from
Iranian Muslims. From the 1840s on they cultivated close relations with the American
Presbyterians and other missionaries who offered economic aid and political protection.
While Nestorians had experienced little outside interference, from the 1870s on Kurdish
incursions into their territory became more frequent. Through the missionaries, Nestorians
made frequent appeals to the central government which was afraid to offend Western powers
by not acceding to their demands. Although
the efforts of the missionaries did not result in the reform of that church as they had
envisioned, they reinforced the positive self-image and pride of the Assyrian Christians.
Their ethnic identity as Assyrians prevailed over Iranian nationalism.
The Armenian situation was similar in many respects. Although an urban minority, they
were not subject to all the disabilities suffered by Jews and Zoroastrians. The Armenians
had been forcibly settled in New Julfa in the early part of the seventeenth century as a
result of Shah Abbas' policy of depopulating the border areas between Persia and
the Ottoman Empire. Shah Abbas greatly admired the craftsmanship and merchant
abilities of his Armenian subjects, and so he settled them next to the Safavid capital,
Isfahan, in hopes that their activities would stimulate the Persian economy. Like
Armenians elsewhere in the Middle East, they played an intermediary role between Europe
and the Muslim world, both in trade and ideology. Yet, as the fortunes of the Safavid
dynasty waned, so did the privileged position of the Armenians. They frequently became
scapegoats and were subjected to persecutions and heavy taxation. The decline of the silk
trade added to their misfortunes. Still, the high level of education, culture, and ethnic
pride that they attained during the Safavid period carried over into the nineteenth
century. With an ingrained sense of superiority over other Persians, Armenians jealously
guarded their language and culture. Often they knew only enough Persian to engage in their
trade relations. Like Assyrians, Armenians could look to the West for political protection
and for models of reform.
Persecution and Shí'í Paradigms
Through the centuries, Jews and Zoroastrians in Iran had few contacts with their
co-religionists outside the country and lived in closer contact with the Muslim majority.
Because of this, the identity of Jews and Zoroastrians and the boundaries that
distinguished their communities from others were determined by their relationship with the
Shí'í Muslims. As anthropologist Judith Goldstein discovered in her study of religious
groups in Yazd, Muslims and minorities "use similar forms from what can be seen to be
one cultural repertoire to define themselves as different and as mutually exclusive"
(Interwoven Identities 44). The
cultural repertoire from which their distinctive identity was drawn was largely determined
by the categories established by the Shí'í majority.
Among the values which Jews and Zoroastrians adopted from Shí'í Muslims was the
attitude they held towards suffering, persecution, and oppression. The Shí'ís perceived
of themselves as dispossessed. They maintained that self-perception despite their dominance
in Iran by representing the meaning of their sacred history in terms of the sufferings
endured by Muhammad's descendants, the Imams, at the hands of the oppressive Sunni state.
The Shí'í rejected the triumphalism sometimes associated with Sunni Islam and instead
regarded persecution in the path of God as an indication of legitimacy. The Jews and
Zoroastrians found this motif uniquely suited to their own situation and came to interpret
their own sacred history in similar terms, for if suffering and persecution lent
legitimacy to a religion, then their own legitimacy was proven. But, by the same token,
the Bahá'ís could be seen as even more legitimate. No single factor proved more
impressive to those who converted than the persecution that Bahá'ís endured at the hands
of Muslims. The reply given by Mulla Bahram, one of the first Bahá'ís of Zoroastrian
background, to a mulla who asked by what proof Mulla Bahram had accepted the Bahá'í
revelation indicates to what extent Zoroastrians had accepted Muslim paradigms. Mulla
Bahram told the mulla:
The proof of the truth of Zoroaster is that this man arose to make his claim and the
Zend and the Avesta which contains divine laws were revealed to him. When he arose for the
propagation of his religion a group came under the shadow of his word, in the propagation
of which pure blood was spilt and luminous souls were sacrificed. Acceptance of such trials
and difficulties in the path of religion is proof of its truth. Knowing these things, I
was confirmed in the Zoroastrian religion. These same proofs I had accepted for
Zoroastrianism I saw demonstrated with my own eyes in this blessed Cause. For holy souls
to sacrifice their very lives is the greatest act in the world, and this miracle is higher
than all miracles and this reason stronger than all reasons. (Sulaymani, Masabih-i 4:412-16)
Mulla Bahram's self-understanding of his conversion is not an untypical one for Iranian
Bahá'ís. He claims that the Bahá'í religion confirms the beliefs he held prior to
becoming a Bahá'í. Yet the proofs he adduces to support this are not Zoroastrian in
origin but rather are drawn from Shí'í paradigms. A prophet arises, he makes a claim,
reveals a book, and is received by those pure ones willing to suffer in the path of God.
Iran may be considered the birthplace of eschatology, which arose first in
Zoroastrianism and later influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Bahá'í Faith
grew out of the millennial expectations of the Shí'í Muslims of the nineteenth century
who awaited the coming of the Hidden Imam. The conversion narratives I have studied
suggest that those Jews and Zoroastrians who became Bahá'ís had, before their
conversion, diligently searched through their respective scriptures for signs of the
advent of the promised one. Eschatology provided one of the primary bridges between the
Bahá'ís and those of other communities. Bahá'u'lláh was consistently presented as the
fulfilment of all the apocalyptic prophecies. Virtually all Bahá'í literature written by
the Jewish and Zoroastrian converts revolves around this theme.
In Hamadan, where Bahá'ís and Presbyterian missionaries vied for the Jewish
community, both groups endeavored to present their respective founder as the Messiah.
Organized debates on biblical prophesy took place between Jewish Bahá'ís and the
missionaries. Missionaries used the fundamentalist methodology of the Princeton theology,
while Bahá'ís relied more on rabbinical exegesis.
In the end, the Bahá'í claim was probably more persuasive because it presented less
cultural dissonance than did Western Christianity.
For Bahá'ís of Zoroastrian background, Bahá'u'lláh was considered Shah Bahram, an
apocalyptic figure who had been the focus of Zoroastrian hopes for a restoration of their
religion after the Arab invasions. Great use was made of Bahá'u'lláh's genealogy, which
traced his descent from Yazdigird III, last of the Sassanian monarchs. When Bahá'u'lláh
wrote to Zoroastrians, he used pure Persian with no admixture of Arabic words (Stiles, "Early Zoroastrian").
By presenting the Bahá'í Faith as the culmination of all religious traditions,
Bahá'ís were able effectively to present their religion to minorities, both as an
affirmation of their own past as well as a new possibility for facing the future. But this
tool could only be effective to those whose hopes lay in a radical change. For Christians
in Iran hope lay in the extension of European hegemony, not in the Second Coming.
Unlike Jews and Zoroastrians, Bahá'ís had a few contacts among the Christians outside
of the context of the Protestant missions. The Bahá'ís could not speak their language,
and those Christians who knew Persian often had the strongest identification with the
West, were the most secularized, and generally were uninterested in religion.
The major factors that distinguished Jews and Zoroastrians from native Christians were
the nature of their association with the Muslim majority and the extent to which their
identities were intertwined with that of the Muslims. The fact that Christians maintained
a distinct language from other Iranians and rarely learned Persian meant they were able to
maintain an identity apart from Muslim paradigms and to isolate themselves from other
influences. The only such influences that were welcomed were those emanating from the
Jews and Zoroastrians viewed themselves as Persians and drew their identity from within
the Iranian context. In contrast, the Christians saw themselves as Armenians or Assyrians
first and identified strongly with the West. For Iranians, persecution lent legitimacy to
a religion. Christians assumed the triumphal posture of their Western co-religionists who
assumed the religion of that culture which now dominated the world was the righteous one.
Jews and Zoroastrians drew their poor self-image from the attitudes of Muslim Iranians.
The Christians derived a much more positive image from sources outside of Iran. When Jews,
through the influence of European Jewry, began to identify themselves with the West as
well, the incidence of conversion slowed considerably.
The despised and poor economic position of Jews and Zoroastrians did not cause their
conversions. Rather, conversions occurred as conditions were greatly improving. With social
and economic progress, new self-perceptions and ideologies were needed. When the old
religion failed to keep pace with the changing circumstances, many embraced the religion
that best allowed them to progress into the future while affirming their past with the
least amount of dissonance.
This study has examined the manner in which the Bahá'í Faith began to leave its
Islamic context and appeal to those outside the Muslim fold. In attracting Jews and
Zoroastrians, the Bahá'í Faith succeeded in divorcing itself from Islamic particularism
but not Persian culture. This latter step would only be achieved in the twentieth century
when the Bahá'í Faith left its Iranian homeland and found acceptance in the West.
1. There is also the case of about sixty Jews
who became Babis or Bahá'ís in the late 1860s or early 1870s in
Mashád. These conversions, however, were among Jadidú'l-Islam,
part of a community of Jews who had been forcibly converted to
Islam a generation earlier.
2. Táhirih was the most prominent female
adherent to the Babi religion. Her audacious act of publicly
removing her veil irrevocably severed the Babis from the Islamic
community. She was executed in 1853.
3. The "confession" of faith
recommended for baptismal candidates went as follows "I
believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; that He really died
on the cross for our salvation; that He really and truly rose
from the dead, leaving behind an empty tomb; that He alone is the
Savior of the World. I deny the doctrine of rij'at (return), by
which I am to believe that Jesus was Moses returned, and that
Mohammad, the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh were 'returns' of Jesus, and I
declare it to be false teaching. Accepting Jesus as my Lord and
Savior I declare Mohammad, the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh to have been
false prophets and false guides, leading men away from the
truth" (Richards, The Religion 235-36).
4. Dr. Robert Bruce, a minister of the Church
Missionary Society, noted the interest in Christianity in thc
town of Nayríz, which he visited in 1885: "The people are
more enlightened than in the purely Muhammedan towns through
which we passed on the road as many of them are Babis. And many
of them disputed with us; but they did not dispute like the
people in other places, but only for not selling more Testaments
to them. Having sold twenty-five copies, we told them we must
keep some for other towns. They said, 'do you think other people
will have more desire to buy these books than we have?' "
(Quoted in Wilson, Persia 332).
5. See Moojan Momen, "Early Relations
between Christian Missionaries and the Babi and Bahá'í
Communities" in Studies in Babi and Bahá'í History
6. About forty converts are listed in Masabih-i
Hidayat, vol. 4. The listings generally include their
7. Wilson writes of the
Armenians: "They are progressive, ready to accept new
methods in education and business, and all the amenities of
civilization. In their dress, house furniture and social customs
they are following close upon their foreign models. In truth the
young men seem entirely too apt disciples of advanced
thoughtlessness. They have heard or read of French infidelity and
are tinctured with it.... Another characteristic of the Armenians
is their intense patriotism. Next to their desire for education
and acquisition of wealth, this is the most remarkable. The
feeling is intense, fervid, overpowering.... It entwines itself
around the Gregorian Church as the only visible embodiment of
national unity, the bond of race, its representative. The skeptic
joins the devotee, the enlightened scholar joins the
superstitious and ignorant in supporting, though not approving of
priest and bishop and their formal rites, not from love of
religion or care of its ceremonies (which are despised), but
because the church is the recognized and only organization of
race" (Persian 108-10).
8. Wilson quotes one missionary as writing:
"Despised and persecuted, they are unable to command respect
or arouse feelings of humanity in the breasts of their
oppressors. They passively submit to the vilest insults, while
petty acts of persecution gradually become habitual. A Mussulman
child may with impunity pull a Jew's beard and spit in his face.
The word "Jew" is considered a term of disgrace and is
never used by the Persian without an apology for giving it
utterance.... Even the native Christian, I am sorry to say, join
the Mussulmans in abhorring the Jews. The Jews, in turn, hold
themselves apart from all and probably in their hearts despise
and hate all others" (Persian 108-10).
9. "Up to 1895 no Parsi was allowed to
carry an umbrella. Even during the time I was in Yazd they could
not carry one in town. Up to 1895 there was a strong prohibition
upon eye-glasses and spectacles; up to 1885 they were prevented
from wearing rings; their girdles had to be made of rough canvas,
but after 1885 any white material was permitted. Up to 1886 the
Parsis were obliged to twist their turbans instead of folding
them.... Up to 1891 all Zoroastrians had to walk in town, and
even in the desert they had to dismount if they met a big
Mussulman.... Up to about 1860 Parsis could not engage in trade.
They used to hide things in their cellar rooms, and sell them but
not in bazaars nor may they trade in linen drapery. Up to 1870
they were not permitted to have a school for their children"
(Malcolm, Five Years 45-46).
10. Besides Kurdish raids, most of the
Nestorian complaints centered around landlord-tenant relations
rather than on communal disputes. The intervention of the
missionaries disrupted the balance of power in that region and
created resentments among the neighboring Muslims. By exciting
unrealistic hopes and dangerous prejudices among the Nestorians,
the actions of the missionaries served, along with the political
instability of the times, to create a situation of communal
tension that had not existed before and that led to senseless
massacres on both sides and finally to the tragic exodus of the
bulk of Nestorians from Urumiyyih in 1918. While some would later
return, others emigrated from Iran entirely. Still others
assimilated into the large urban areas. A full discussion of
Nestorian and Muslim relations in the nineteenth century can be
found in The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors by John
Joseph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961).
11. Shah Bahram Varjavand by Firuz
Ruzbehyan and Gulshan Haqayiq by Haji Mahdi Aljumand are
examples of this kind of literature.
12. Part of these debates are reproduced in Gulshan
1. 'Abdu'l-Bahá. A Traveller's
Narrative. Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1980.
2. Arjumand, Haji Mahdi. Gulshan Haqayiq. Los
Angeles: Kalimat, 1982.
3. Bahá'u'lláh. Tablets of
Bahá'u'lláh. Comp. Research Department. Trans. H.
Taherzadeh et al. 2d ed. Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1978.
4. Balyuzi, H.M. The Báb. Oxford:
George Ronald, 1973.
5. Curzon, George. Persia and the Persian
Question. Volume 1. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1882.
6. Dhalla, Maneckji Nuservanji. Dastur
Dhalla: The Saga of a Soul. Karachi: Dastur Dhalla Memorial
7. Economic History of Iran
1800-1914, The. Ed. Charles Issawi. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1971.
8. Fischel, Walter. "Jews in
Persia" in Jewish Social Studies 12 (April 1950):
9. Goldstein, Judith. "Interwoven
Identities: Religious Communities in Yazd, Iran." Ph.D.
diss., Princeton University, 1975.
10. Joseph, John. The Nestorians and
Their Muslim Neighbors. Princeton: Princeton University
11. Levy, Habib. Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-lran. Volume
3. Tehran: 1960.
12. Mihrabkhani, Ruhu'llah. Sharh Ahval-i
Jinab-i Abu'l-Fadl-i Gulpaygani. Tehran, 1976.
13. Momen, Moojan. "Early Relations
between Christian Missionaries and the Bábi and Bahá'í
Communities" in Studies in Bábi and Bahá'í History. Volume
1. Los Angeles: Kalimat, 1982: 49-82.
14. Napier, Malcolm. Five Years in a
Persian Town. New York: Dutton and Co.,
15. Richards, J.R. The Religion of the
Bahá'ís. New York: Maanillan, 1932.
16. Spector, Daniel Earl. "A History of
the Persian Jews." Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin,
17. Stiles, Susan. "Early Zoroastrian
Conversions to the Bahá'í Faith in Yazd, Iran" in From
Iran East and West. Ed. Juan R. Cole and Moojan Momen. Los
Angeles: Kalimat, 1984.
18. Sulaymani, 'Aziz'u'llah. Masabih-i
Hidayat. Volume 4. Tehran: n.p., 1959.
19. Taherzadeh, Adib. The Revelation of
Bahá'u'lláh. Volume 2. Oxford: George Ronald, 1977.
20. Wilson, Samuel G. Persia: Western
Mission. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board, 1896.