We live in a cynical age. One approach to history as an account of what happened in time gone past is summed up in the phrase "history is a record of events that didn’t happen, made by someone who wasn’t there" - itself recorded by that well-known authority Anonymous. Many remember from their schools a subject apparently wedded to sterile lists of dynasties, battles, and discoveries, recalled without context or understanding. Others complain that since the winning side in any conflict was the one to write the history, or that it has been written from the viewpoint of one class, caste, power group, or whatever, with other views overlooked, the whole subject is untrustworthy.

One can sympathise with these views to some extent. They have a grain of truth even if they do not do justice to the field and its development in recent years. But as Bahá’ís it would be foolish of us to adopt such a partial or dismissive view of our own history and its context, and discard the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

Our faith began and has grown in the era of modern historical study and record keeping. There are sources both within the Bahá’í community and outside of it such as were never dreamed of in past dispensations. There is also an understanding of how even something as powerful as God’s Revelation does not just spring into existence, fully formed and unresponsive to what is around it. In short, we have the resources and we have an understanding of processes such that we can understand and appreciate our Faith in a way that people could never do before.

The two books featured in this review exemplify this in different ways, representing as they do, ends of the wide spectrum of "Bahá’í history".

Servant of the Glory is the latest in Mary Perkins’ series of histories and is every bit as satisfactory and readable as its predecessors. The canvas is a broad one, nothing less than the life and mission of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, so her strokes are sometimes broad. The circumstances into which the Master was born, his childhood, growth, adulthood, travel, experiences and teaching are all well covered, and other material is extensively quoted. But these are often accompanied by personal touches, small stories which bring the personalities to life and generate an "I could have been there" feeling.

By contrast Shoghi Effendi in Oxford takes a narrow canvas, although not as narrow as its title states. It is in fact an account of the Guardian’s youth and education, with information about his growing up and his time at what is now the American University of Beirut (from which he graduated) before his sojourn in England. The Oxford experience is well covered, and Riaz Khadem has put a lot of work into research that could only be done while Shoghi Effendi’s college contemporaries survived, but this alone would have made a thin book. What has been done is more satisfying and is complemented by a wealth of photographs.

It was perhaps inevitable that what seems a rather episodic approach should have resulted in some unevenness, and there is for the non-English reader a somewhat irritating Anglocentrism. Opportunities to put people and events in a meaningful context for those in other parts of the United Kingdom are missed, and the account of Bahá’í events in Scotland is not error-free.

In spite of this Shoghi Effendi in Oxford is a useful addition to the wide range of Bahá’í historical work, not least because it gives an account of a particular part of our Faith before the historical record is overlaid by time and the sources are lost.

Iain S Palin