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Abstract: Excerpts of 60 articles in the Encyclopedia, with links to the offsite originals, which contain a reference to the Faith. These items are not long enough to warrant a separate entry in this Library, yet are included here for ease of discovery. Notes: The following selections, along with the articles posted as separate entries at bahai-library.com/series/Encyclopaedia Iranica, comprise all content about or related to Bahá'í Studies in that encyclopedia as of April 2013; if you find anything we missed, or see a new article posted there, please email us. As short excerpts, these are "fair use." For the purpose of keyword searches, the Iranica's transliteration has been changed to the Bahá'í standard, and underdots omitted. |
Mentions of the Bábí and Bahá'í Faiths in Encyclopedia Iranica:
Sixty Excerpts
by Hamid Algar, Moojan Momen, Denis MacEoin, et al.
published in Encyclopaedia IranicaNew York: Columbia University, 1985-2013
... Mírzá Alí Asgar B. ʿAlí Akbar Nayyer Borújerdí, author of several works including the ʿAqáʾed al-shíʿa, written in 1263/1874 and dedicated to Mohammad Shah Qáǰár; though not of outstanding merit, this work has been printed several times (first lithographed, Tehran, 1285/1868-69) and was summarized by E. G. Browne (Lit. Hist. Persia IV, pp. 381-402) as a typical example of popular Shiʿite ideas in the 13th/19th century. From this it is possible to observe that the author was hostile not only to Sunnism, but also to certain doctrines of Sufism (e.g., wahdat al-woǰúd) and to extremist (gholát) Shiʿite and Ismaʿili views on the subject of ʿAlí b. ʿAbí Táleb and other topics. M. ʿA. Modarres (Rayhánat al-adab, 3rd ed., Tabríz, n.d., I, p. 253) credits ʿAlí-Asghar with twenty-three works including Núr al-anwár (lithographed with his didactic matnawí, Żíáʾ al-núr, Tehran, 1275/1858-59, etc.) on the life of the Twelfth Imam and Zolma mazlema in refutation of Babism. ...
... More severe disorder prevailed in a number of provincial cities, especially Mashhad. Toward the end of the reign of Mohammad Shah, Hamza Mírzá Heshmat-al-dawla had been appointed governor of Khorasan, but he found his authority disputed by Hasan Khan Sálár, who, with the help of some local chieftains, had rebelled against the central government (1262/1846). Hamza Mírzá abandoned Mashhad to Hasan Khan and fled to Herat. Amír Kabír sent two armies against Hasan Khan, the second of which, commanded by Soltán Morád Mírzá, defeated his forces and captured him. Amír Kabír had him executed (1266/1850), together with one of his sons and one of his brothers, a punishment of unprecedented severity for such provincial resistance to central authority, and a clear sign of Amír Kabír's intention to assert the prerogatives of the state (ibid., pp. 232-41). A task of equal importance that confronted him in the early days of his ministry was the repression of the Bábí insurrections that had coincided with the period of transition between Mohammad Shah and Náser-al-dín Shah. Movements of rebellion were led in Mázandarán by Mollá Hosayn Boshrúyí and Mollá Mohammad Bárforúshí, in Zanǰán by Mollá Mohammad Zanǰání, and in Nayríz by Sayyed Yahyá Dárábí. After a series of bloody battles in 1266/1848, all three movements were defeated and their leaders executed. Wishing to prevent further outbreaks of Bábí insurrectionary fervor by doing away with the founder of Babism, Amír Kabír gave orders for the execution of Sayyed ʿAlí-Mohammad Báb, which took place in Tabríz on 27 shaʿbán 1266/8 July 1850. It is probable that his motives were purely political, and that he acted for the preservation of the state, not Shiʿite Islam. ...
... Hajjí Shaikh Mohammad-Taqí Esfahání Áqá Najafí (1262-1332/1846-1914), prominent religious leader involved with a number of important political events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Opinions differ concerning his role. One of his disciples, Háǰǰí Mírzá Hasan Khan Shaikh Jáberí Ansárí, states that Áqá Naǰafí elevated wisdom and religion and gave the state a new life (Táríkh-e Esfahán o Ray o hama-ye ǰahán, Tehran, 1331 sh./1952, p. 369 and passim). Áqá Bozorg Tehrání calls him "one of the pillars and custodians of religion in his age," and adds that the bloody incidents that resulted in Áqá Naǰafí's banishments were simply the fruit of his enemies' jealousy (Ághá Bozorg Tehrání, Tabaqát aʿlám al-shíʿa I, Naǰaf, 1373/1954, pp. 247-48). Other writers have called him a hoarder, conspirator, opportunist, and murderer....Áqá Naǰafí often accused his opponents, such as the well-known constitutionalists Mírzá Nasralláh Malek-al-motakallemín and Mohammad-Walí Khan Sepahdár Aʿzam Tonokáboní, of Babism and heresy (Názem-al-Eslám Kermání, Táríkh-e bídárí-e íráníán, ed. ʿA. A. Saʿídí Sírǰání, Tehran, 1967-70, I, pp. 259-60, 347, 355; III, p. 100). In the name of fighting Babism, Áqá Naǰafí became actively involved in two massacres, one in 1307/1889 (Mohammad-Hasan Khan Eʿtemád-al-saltana, Rúz-náma-ye kháterát, Tehran, 1350 sh./1971, pp. 684, 697, events related to 8 Raǰab and 15 Ramażán 1307; Dawlatábádí, Táríkh I, pp. 86-89, 315-25) and the other in 1320/1902. In a letter to Mírzá Mohammad-Hasan Áshtíání (d. 1319/1901), Áqá Naǰafí appears to have sought sanction for the execution of the "accursed sect of Babis" (E. Safáʾí, Námahá-ye táríkhí, Tehran, n.d., pp. 63-65). On the two occasions, Áqá Naǰafí was summoned to Tehran to reduce tensions. Dawlatábádí believed that the second incident stemmed from Babi activities under Russian patronage and the negative British response (Táríkh I, pp. 315f.). ...
... Khalil Ardjomande (b. Tehran, 1910; d. Tehran, 22 October 1944), mechanical and electrical engineer, professor at the University of Tehran, inventor, and industrialist (FIGURE 1). Arjomand is known for numerous inventions, for founding the ARJ Factory and single-handedly leading it to become a dominant source of technological innovation and modernization in Iran, for his humanitarian actions, and for his role in inspiring a generation of modern Iranian engineers....Passing and personal traits. "Altruism and succor to others were the principal ambitions of Arjomand and, ultimately, he offered his life for the realization of those ideals" (Etteláʿát). On 22 October 1944, he left a family gathering to visit the construction site of the above-mentioned well and appraise the advancement of the project. He had installed an electrically controlled elevator mechanism, which he used for his inspections of the interior of the well. On this occasion, as he was descending into the 36-meter-deep well, a supporting cable broke and, thus, a short, fruitful life of creative work and service came to an end. He was 34 years of age. The news of this tragic death was received with consternation throughout the city. His funeral ceremony was attended by an exceptionally large crowd, including Mohammad Nakhaʾi, Minister of Commerce and the Arts, ʿAli-Akbar Siási, President of the University of Tehran, Mehdi Bázargán, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, and more than 3,000 relatives, friends, university colleagues, students, ARJ employees, and anonymous admirers whose lives he had touched. The press covered the event extensively. Numerous commemoration ceremonies were held in his honor, notably that at the Society of Engineers (Kánun-e Mohandesin), during which Rahim Arjomand, Mohammad Nakhaʾi, Golám-ʿAli Farivar, President of the Society of Engineers, Mehdi Bázargán, and Esmaʿil Merʾát retraced the scientific and moral stature of Arjomand. One of the main workshops of the Faculty of Engineering was renamed "Arjomand Industrial Machinery Workshop" and adorned with a brass bust of his likeness. An elegant monument marked his resting-place at the Bahá'í cemetery in Tehran, the Golestán-e Jávid (‘Eternal Rose Garden'), until its demolition in the course of the Islamic Revolution. ...
... A term popularly used to distinguish ordinary Shiʿites from members of the Shaikhi sect. The distinction is sometimes expressed by the alternative formulae of "Shaikhi/Motasharreʿ" and "Shaikhi/Osúlí," the latter example implying a continuity between Akhbárí Shiʿism and Shaikhism. The Shaikhi school itself was also known in the early period by the name "Kashfíya" in reference to the principle of kashf or the revelation of knowledge by supernatural means (Rashtí, Dalíl, p. 9; cf. Chahárdehí, shaykhígarí, pp. 51-52). The term "Bálásarí" was applied to other Shiʿites by the Shaikhis on the grounds that, when in the shrine of the Imam Hosayn at Karbaláʾ, the former advanced to a position above the head of the imam in order to pray, whereas the Shaikhis, in imitation of their founder, Shaikh Ahmad Ahsáʾí (d. 1241/1826; q.v.), remained below the head out of respect for the imam (Kermání, Hedáyat, p. 83; Zarandí, Dawn-Breakers, pp. 84-85).Disputes between Shaikhis and Bálásarís began with the excommunication (takfír) of Ahsáʾí by Mollá Mohammad-Taqí Baraghání and other ʿolamáʾ around 1238/1822 and intensified during the leadership of Ahsáʾí's successor, Sayyed Kázem Rashtí (d. 1259/1844; q.v.; see MacEoin, From Shaykhism, pp. 75-81, 105-15). Both Ahsáʾí and Rashtí insisted on the essential orthodoxy of their teaching, a position which was maintained by the two main branches of the school after Rashtí's death, those of Azerbaijan and Kermán. Broadly expressed, the Shaikhi position was that differences between them and their Bálásarí opponents lay in the area of subsidiary religious matters (forúʿ) rather than basic principles (osúl) or that the two groups were divided by temperament (mashrab) rather than religion (maḏhab) (Kermání, Hedáyat; Jalálí, shaykhíya, p. 126). Shaikhi ʿolamáʾ often held important posts within the religious establishment, and it was not always easy or useful to draw clear lines between them and other Shiʿites.
In Azerbaijan, the Shaikhi community was led by Hájí Mírzá shafíʿ Ṯeqat-al-Eslám Tabrízí (ca. 1218/1803-1301/1884; q.v.) and Hojjat-al-Eslám Mollá Mohammad Mamaqání (d. 1268/1851-52 or 1269/1852-53; q.v.) and included numbers of influential individuals among the ʿolamáʾ, merchants (tojjár), government officials, and nobility (see Chahárdehí, pp. 175-98). Although the Shaikhi establishment in Tabríz asserted its orthodoxy by playing a central role in the condemnation and execution of Sayyed ʿAlí-Mohammad the Báb (q.v.) in 1264/1848 and 1266/1850 (see MacEoin, From Shaykhism, pp. 130-31), this did not result in an immediate resolution of the issue between the two parties. In 1266/1850, Mírzá Ahmad Tabrízí declared takfír against the Shaikhis and issued a fatwá banning them from the public baths. An altercation ensued and was followed by serious rioting throughout the city (Chahárdehí, pp. 49-50). Another outbreak of violence occurred in 1285/1868-69 following the death of Mamaqání (Bámdád, Rejál VI, p. 83). In general, the Shaikhi and Bálásarí communities remained religiously and socially divided, with separate mosques and baths, a ban on intermarriage, and restricted social relations. Efforts to reconcile the two groups were made by Mírzá ʿAlí Ṯeqat-al-Eslám (1277/1860-1330/1912; q.v.), a Shaikhi leader whose involvement in the Constitutional movement and death at the hands of the Russians were major factors in the reintegration of the Shaikhis into the orthodox community in the post-Constitutional period. ...
... Ayatollah Hájj Áqá Hosayn Tabátabá'í Borújerdí (1292-1380/1875-1961), director (zaʿím) of the religious teaching institution (hawza) at Qom for seventeen years and sole marjaʿ-e taqlíd of the Shiʿite world for fifteen years. He was born in Safar, 1292/March-April, 1875, in the western Iranian city of Borújerd to a family of scholars that traced its descent back by thirty intermediaries to Imam Hasan. Among his celebrated ancestors in more recent times were Sayyed Mohammad-Mahdí Bahr-al-ʿOlúm, (q.v.), the paternal uncle of his grandfather, and Mírzá Mahmúd Borújerdí, a great-uncle who clashed frequently with Náser-al-Dín Shah. At the age of twelve Borújerdí began his formal education at the local madrasa in Borújerd, where he studied with his father, Sayyed ʿAlí, and other scholars. In 1310/1892-93 he went to Isfahan, which was then still the major center of religious learning in Iran, and he swiftly acquired the main elements of his erudition. His teachers in the religious sciences were Abu'l-Maʿálí Kalbásí, Mohammad-Taqí Modarresí, and Sayyed Mohammad-Báqer Daṛchaʾí. He also studied philosophy with Ákhúnd Mollá Mohammad Káshí and the famous Jahángír Khan Qashqáʾí and ʿerfán with Mohammad Moqaddas Esfahání. Such was the prowess he displayed during his roughly ten years in Isfahan that he not only completed there the sotúh stage of the traditional curriculum but also attained the degree of ejtehád and began teaching osúl himself. ...About two years after the coup Borújerdí involved himself in the anti-Bahai campaign launched by the well-known preacher Abu'l-Qásem Falsafí. A letter from Borújerdí to Falsafí was published in Etteláʿát on 18 Ordíbehesht 1334 sh./9 May 1955, in which he expressed appreciation for Falsafí's efforts leading to the destruction of the dome of the main Bahai gathering place (hazírat al-qods) in Tehran. The same newspaper reported six days later that Borújerdí was preparing to demand the complete dismantling of the Bahai community in Iran and the sequestration of its assets. However, Borújerdí never pressed these demands, and the anti-Bahai campaign petered out in a few months.
...Borújerdí's relations with Ayatollah Khomeyní are difficult to assess. Khomeyní was one of the group of Qom ʿolamáʾ that escorted Borújerdí from Tehran to Qom in 1323 sh./1944, and he was also active in canvassing support for Borújerdí as marjaʿ-e taqlíd, traveling to Hamadán to persuade the senior ʿolamáʾ of that city of Borújerdí's suitability (Rúhání, p. 98). Khomeyní's support for Borújerdí is said (Rúhání, p. 99) to have been based on the hope that he would mobilize the hawza against the shah's regime, having given indications of his willingness to do so. Although this clearly did not happen, Borújerdí is related to have consulted Khomeyní occasionally on political matters, including the threat perceived in government plans to amend the constitution. In general, however, apolitical or pro-shah elements in Borújerdí's entourage were able to prevail, and in 1334 sh./1955, during the anti-Bahai agitation, Khomeyní confided to Dr. Mohammad Mofatteh his suspicion that "hidden hands" were at work in Borújerdí's household, hindering him from accepting the advice that Khomeyní proffered (interview with Mofatteh, Tehran, 16 December 1979). ...
... The population of Iranian immigrants in Canada is marked by its relatively low average age: "The 1996 census revealed that about 12% were under the age of 10, while 22% were between the ages of 10 and 24. The largest age group was between 25 and 39, representing about 35% of Iranians in Canada. Only 6.5% of Iranians were over the age of 60" (Rahnema, p. 1189). Although the majority of Iranians in Canada are Muslim, there are also members of other religious and ethnic groups among them. In the 1998 edition of the Canadian Encyclopedia, Baha Abu-Laban noted that "the eastern Christians [Assyrians] and Bahá'ís are over-represented proportional to their distribution in Iran," (Abu-Laban, p. 1091. Most Iranian immigrants have settled in large urban centers in Canada. In the late 1980s, the distribution of the Iranian immigrant population in Canada was estimated to be 50% in Ontario, 20% in Québec and 20% in British Columbia (Ibid). Some slight changes in these settlement patterns can be observed over a decade: "The vast majority of Iranian immigrants come from urban areas, particularly large and medium-sized cities, so they have chosen to settle in major urban centers of Canada. Ontario, particularly Toronto, has the largest concentration of Iranians. According to the 1996 census 56% of Iranians lived in Ontario, 15% in Quebec and 23% in British Columbia," (Rahnema, p. 1189). In Toronto, the majority have settled in the city's North York suburb, where one can find Iranian grocery stores, mosques, restaurants, travel agencies, bookstores, and other services catering to the local population, just as one can find in the other localities where Iranians have chosen to settle. ...
... Twelver Shiʿism has been a field of scholarly research at a number of Canadian universities in recent years. A student of Hermann Landolt, Todd Lawson of the University of Toronto has focused on Qurʾanic exegesis in the Twelver Shiʿite traditions, including "Akhbari Shiʿi Approaches to Tafsir," Approaches to the Qur'an, eds. G. R. Hawting and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef, London, 1993, pp. 173-210, and "Note for the Study of a ‘Shiʿi Qur'an'," Journal of Semitic Studies 36, 1991, 279-95. He has also written several articles on Babism and the Bahá'í faith including "The Structure of Existence in the Bab's Tafsir and the Perfect Man Motif," Studia Iranica: Cahiers 11: Recurrent Patterns in Iranian Religions from Mazdaism to Sufism. Proceedings of the Round Table held in Bamberg, Paris, 1992, pp. 81-99. Another student of Landolt, Lynda Clarke at the department of religion at Concordia University, has contributed significantly to the historical study of Twelver Shiʿsm. ‘Abdulaziz Sachedina, a specialist on shiʿite Islam (Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shiʿism, Albany, 1980, and The Just Ruler in Twelver Shiʿism: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence, New York, 1988) was educated at the University of Toronto, and taught at a number of Canadian universities before receiving an appointment at the University of Virgina. Shî'îsm and Constitutionalism in Iran (Leiden, 1977) by the late ʿAbdul-Hadi Hairi (Háʾeri) was a revised expansion of his doctoral dissertation at McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies which was later translated into Persian and became a seminal text in contemporary Iranian political studies. Also at McGill University's Institute of Islamic Studies is Eric Ormsby, who has contributed to contemporary understanding of the great Persian theologian and scholar, Gazáli, with Theodicy in Islamic Thought: the Dispute Over al-Ghazali's "Best of all Possible Worlds," Princeton, 1984. Pre-Islamic Iranian religions, most notably eastern and western manifestations of Mithraism, have been examined by Roger Beck, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, in Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras, Leiden, 1988, as well as in other articles. ...
... The real successor to Isfahan as the metropolis of Iran proved to be Tehran, in the north of the country, near its medieval predecessor, Ray. Despite Tehran's strategic situation on the highway to Khorasan, however, there was an element of the fortuitous in its rise to fame and fortune. A provincial town under the Safavids, although occasionally a residence of the later shahs, it was adopted by the founder of the Qajar dynasty Ághá Mohammad Khan (q.v.) as his capital in 1200/1786 in the course of his attempts to subdue rival powers in the south and east of Iran from his northern base and to unify the country under his tribe and family. The location of Tehran was not particularly well-favored by nature, and a critical factor in its choice as a capital was its being within easy reach of the Qajar Turkmen's tribal pastures in the Astarábád-Gorgán area (cf. Planhol, pp. 445ff.). In its external appearance and the absence of most of the amenities normally associated with capital cities, it remained essentially a provincial town until the rebuilding and expansionary measures of Náser-al-Dín Shah (q.v.), which were in part inspired by what he had observed during his European journeys from 1284/1867 onwards. Náser-al-Dín Shah could therefore in good conscience claim, in Curzon's words (I, p. 305), "to have made his city a capital in something more than the name." The adoption of Tehran as capital naturally meant a clear displacement of the center of importance in Iran from south to north, a process which did not take place without engendering some tensions, witness the unrest in Fárs during Mohammad Shah's reign in the 1830s and 1840s directed at unpopular Turkish northerners and possibly the resentment by the south at its lost status and the neglect of its commercial interests as a factor in the genesis and early development of Babism (q.v.; see Davies, pp. 173ff.; Avery, pp. 52-53; but cf. Momen, p. 179). Tehran nevertheless grew inexorably, probably trebling its population in the century or so between 1222/1807 and 1328/1910 (cf. Ettehadieh, pp. 199ff.), and has in the present century so far overtaken in population growth and urban sprawl the other cities of Iran as to enjoy what would appear to be an unassailable position as the country's capital for the foreseeable future. ...
... By the 1330s/late 1880s the Russian advances in Central Asia came to a halt, bringing a semblance of normality to the Perso-Turkmen frontier. Ashkhabad (q.v.) on the Russo-Persian border, the new capital of Turkmenistan, was developed into a Russian showcase of colonial urbanization in Central Asia and attracted a large population of Persians in search of jobs, trade, and relief from religious persecution, and it became a center for the Russian and European trade. With its ethnic and religious diversity (including a Bahai community), for a few decades into the 14th/20th century, Ashkhabad was a successful commercial center in "Transcaspia," comparable to similar Russian colonies in the Caucasus. By the 1310s sh./1930s, however, Stalin's policy of compulsory repatriation forced a large portion of the Persian community back to Persia, and nearly all contacts with Central Asian cities were severed. ...
... (b. Copenhagen 9 January 1875, d. Copenhagen 31 March 1945), Danish orientalist and scholar of Iranian philology and folklore. Apart from periods of travel and study abroad he spent his entire life in Copenhagen. He passed his secondary-school examinations (studentereksamen) in 1893 and in 1900 received from the University of Copenhagen the master's degree in French, history, and Latin, having also studied Persian and Arabic with A. F. van Mehren, Avestan with Edvard Lehmann, Sanskrit with V. Fausbøll, and Turkish with Johannes Østrup. Even before taking his degree he had published "Rustem, den persiske Nationalhelt" (Rostam, the Persian national hero; Nord og Syd 1, 1898, pp. 316-23, 435-42) and "Fortællinger og fabler af persiske Rammeværker" (Stories and tales from Persian framing narratives; Studier fra Sprog- og Oldtidsforskning 40, 1899). ...Christensen made three trips to Persia, in 1914, 1929, and 1934, after each of which he reported his impressions of the people, their culture, and the natural setting; Hinsides det Kaspiske Hav (Beyond the Caspian Sea; Copenhagen, 1918), in which the author, an advocate of liberal ideas, included an admiring chapter on Babism (q.v.) and the Bahai faith (q.v.); Det gamle og det nye Persien (The old and the new Persia; Copenhagen, 1930), an enthusiastic homage to Reżá Shah Pahlaví's zeal for technology and reform; and Kulturskitser fra Iran (Cultural sketches from Iran; Copenhagen, 1937), in which he introduced the work of Jamálzáda, a giant of modern Persian prose literature, to the Danish public. ...
1844 Sayyed Mohammad-ʿAli shirázi proclaims himself the Báb, founding the Bábi movement, precursor to the Bahaʾi faith....
1848 Mohammad Shah dies. Accession of Náser-al-Din Shah.
1848 Mirzá Taqi Khan, who had begun his career under Qáemmaqám Faráhani, is appointed grand vizier by Náser-al-Din Shah; he begins a series of administrative, financial, and cultural reforms.
...
1850 Execution of the Báb in Tabriz by order of Amir Kabir.
1850 Amir Kabir is exiled to Kashan, a victim of court intrigues and the oppostion of those antagonized by his judicious reforms.
...
1852 Mirzá Taqi Khan Amir Kabir (b. 1807), reformist and capable prime minister, is executed by order of Náser-al-Din Shah.
1852 Massacre of the Bábis, following the failed attempt by three Bábis on the life of Náser-al-Din Shah.
...
1926 Edward Granville Browne (b. 1862), eminent British scholar of Persian literature, history, and culture, a distinguished historian of the Bábi movement, an ardent supporter of Persian constitutionalism and freedom, author of A Year Amongst the Persians (1893), A Literary History of Persia (4 vols., 1902-24) and The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910), editor of a number of Bábi texts and translator of ʿAbd-al-Bahá's Maqála-ye shakhsi sayyáh (translated as A Traveller's Narrative, 1891), dies. ...
1940 Sir Edward Denison Ross (b. 1871), British Orientalist, professor of Persian at the University of London (UCL), author of "Babism," in North American Review (1901), "Persian Mysticism," in East and West (1902), and Eastern art and literature, with special reference to China, India, Arabia, and Persia (1928), dies....1946 Assassination of Ahmad Kasravi (b. 1890), historian, jurist, ideologist, noted for his outspoken views on several cultural and religious issues, including refutations of, or attacks on, Sufism, Sufistic poets, Shiʿism, Baháʾism, and Imámzádas; author of Ázari yá zabán-e bástán-e Azarbáiján (1925), shahriárán-e gomnám (1928), Tárikh-e pánsad sále-ye Khuzestán (1933), and editor and publisher of Peymán periodical and Parcham newspaper. He is killed at the hands of Sayyed Hosayn Emámi, a member of the fundamentalist religious group, Fedáʾián-e Eslám.
...1955 Anti-Baháʾi movement is set in motion in Tehran and Shiraz; soldiers occupy the Baháʾi Center in Tehran, led by General Náder Bátmánqelich, and dismantle and destroy the dome of the Center. ...
... In the turmoil leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1357 sh./1978-79 as many as 185 movie theaters were targets of arson (Akrami, p. 138). Immediately after the Revolution screening permits for all domestic and foreign films were revoked subject to reinspection. Only 200 of about 2,000 such films were approved, most with significant cuts (Naficy, 1990, p. 451). Filmmakers were frequently summoned to Islamic courts to answer charges of corrupting moral standards, connections with the preceding regime, prostitution, and other similar crimes (Motavalli, p. 59). A few filmmakers were accused of following the Bahai faith (q.v.) and were forced to recant publicly. One of them, Mansúr Báqeríán, was executed on charges of having connections with Israel and importing pornographic films (Naficy, 1990, p. 452). Another, Mahdí Mítáqíya, was jailed, his studio closed, and his theater confiscated. ...
... The myth of síásat Engelís was applied retroactively to the history of the 19th century, during most of which Russia had actually been the dominant foreign power in Persia. For example, in his influential book Dast-e panhán-e síásat-e Engelís dar írán (The hidden hand of British policy in Iran) Khan-Malek Sásání, an influential diplomat and ardent conspiracy theorist, described a supposed great British plot to dismantle Persia. From this perspective the massacre of Alexander Griboedov, the Russian minister to Tehran, and his staff by a mob on 5 shaʿbán 1244/11 February 1829 was intended to encourage Russia to annex the Caucasus and make further advances into Persia (pp. 1-6; cf. Ráʾín, 1346 sh./1967, pp. 162-85; Avery, pp. 41-44). According to Sásání, the British induced the Ottomans to occupy Bahrain (q.v.), the Turkmen Gorgán, and the Afghans Sístán (pp. 19, 42-52, 104-05). They also had the grand vizier Abu'l-Qásem Qáʾem-Maqám murdered because he championed the geographical integrity of Persia (Sásání, 1331 sh./1952, pp. 7-12; Ráʾín, 1346 sh./1967, pp. 44-68; cf. Ádamíyat, 1352 sh./1973, pp. 5-27). Sásání explained the dismissal and murder (in 1268/1852) of Mírzá Taqí Khan Amír(-e) Kabír (q.v.), chief minister to Náser-al-Dín Shah (1264-1313/1848-96), as the result of a rumor that he had planned to usurp the throne, a rumor launched by British diplomats and spread by a group of Jews (1331 sh./1952, pp. 24-41; shamím, pp. 125-26; cf. Ádamíyat, 1355 sh./1976, pp. 682-760). He even claimed that British agents had tricked the Russians into bombarding the shrine of Imam Reżá in Mashhad in 1330/1912 in order to foster Persian hatred of the Russians (pp. 63-68; cf. Rabino, pp. 117-45). The British were also supposed to have meddled in religious matters, controlling the ʿolamáʾ through so-called "Indian money," donated by Shiʿites in British India and transferred to the ʿolamáʾ in Iraq through British diplomatic channels (Sásání, 1331 sh./1952, pp. 102-04); encouraging the Babis to rebel in the mid-19th century (Sásání, 1331 sh./1952, pp. 100-01; N. Malekí, pp. 145-46; Pashútan, I, pp. 157-60, II, pp. 42-49; Ráʾín, 1346 sh./1967, pp. 97-112, 367-79; Safáʾí, 1344 sh./1965, I, p. 16; shamím, pp. 109-10, 170; see babism ii); instigating pogroms against the Bahais to force them to collaborate with British agents in return for protection (see bahai faith vii); and urging Jews to become Bahais so that they could forge closer ties with the families of Persian notables and spy on them (Sásání, 1331 sh./1952, pp. 100-02). ...According to the satanic theories, the failure of Persia to attain its "natural" position of political, military, cultural, and religious superiority is the result of conspiracy by inimical global forces, variously "Hellenic westernism," Freemasonry, Zionism, the Bahai faith, and even the Shiʿite clergy.
...Conspiracies of the Freemason, Bahais, and Zionists. It is commonly believed in Persia that various elite groups are organized in secret lodges of Freemasons under the control of the British, who use them to advance their secret designs to control world affairs. Groups accused of being under the thumb of the Freemasons include former courtiers, landowners, tribal chiefs, intellectuals, leading ʿolamáʾ, wealthy merchants, contractors, influence peddlers, political bosses, and most politicians, including deputies to the Majles and cabinet members (Ráʾín, 1348 sh./1969, III, pp. 580-636). The roles of well-known Freemasons like Jamál-al-Dín Afghání, Mírzá Malkam Khan Názem-al-Dawla, and Hasan Taqízáda in the Persian Constitutional Revolution are taken as evidence that, "like the French Revolution," it was designed and led by Freemasons and "illuminati." Freemasons are also thought to have played an important part in bringing the Pahlavis to power (Bashírí, I, pp. 48-52; Mahmúd, V, pp. 25-34, VII, pp. 2-42; Ráʾín, 1355 sh./1976, pp. 41-140; and Safáʾí, I, 1344 sh./1965, pp. 4, 15, 41-63, 122-31, II, 1346 sh./1967, pp. 227-45; idem, 1352 sh./1973, pp. 95-112).
Belief in a conspiracy among adherents of the Bahai faith is based on a forged document attributed to Prince Dimitri Dolgorukov (known in Persian as Kínyáz Dálgúrokí), the Russian minister to Persia in 1263-70/1846-54. It purports to be a memoir in which the prince described how he created the Babi and Bahai faiths as a way of weakening Shiʿism and Persia as a whole. It was first circulated in Tehran in various forms in the late 1930s and has since been widely cited in Muslim polemics as evidence that the Bahais were controlled first by the Russians and later by the British or the Americans or both. A number of editions of this work have been printed, sometimes modified to reflect political developments (see, e.g., Eʿzám Qodsí, II, pp. 549-80; Mostawfí, sharh-e zendagání, p. 44 n, 1; for a recent publication of the document in a monarchist newspaper, see shahfaráz-e áryán 32, Bahman 2548=1368 sh./February 1989, pp. 2-7), although a number of scholars have refuted its authenticity (see, e.g., Eqbál; Kasrawí, pp. 88-90; Mahmúd, VIII, p. 143; Mínoví, pp. 25-26; Mostawfí, sharh-e zendagání I, pp. 42-44). In the 1970s the relative prosperity of Persian Bahais and the rumor that their numbers had grown to about 3 million (ten times the actual figure) engendered the belief that they had conspired to "buy" Persia. As proof the extensive holdings of several businessman who were known or thought to be Bahais were adduced. Furthermore, as Bahai world headquarters is located in Haifa, Israel, the Bahai faith is taken by some to be a Zionist political organization, rather than a religion. Some authors have connected it with Freemasonry (Závosh) and Islamic fundamentalism; Bahais have also been accused of funding the Islamic revolution (Bashírí, I, pp. 9-26, 45-52).
...Those who believe in an international Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world find their proof in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Cohen), a document originally forged by the czarist secret police but still widely accepted as authentic in the Middle East. The Zionist conspiracy is thought to have supported the "despotic" rule of the shah; for example, the soldiers who are supposed to have massacred "thousands" of innocent people on Black Friday (17 shahrívar 1357 sh./8 September 1978) are said to have been Israelis (Davání, VIII, pp. 49-59; for the view that they were Palestinians, see shafá, 1354 sh./1985, III, pp. 1789-91). Some people have argued that Israel supported the Islamic revolution in order to weaken its only potential rival for domination in the region by replacing the shah with a "vulnerable and dependent Islamic regime" (shafá, 1354 sh./1985, III, pp. 1697-744). In 1358 sh./1979 stenciled signs appeared on Tehran walls announcing the formation of an organization to fight against the conspiracy of Zionism, the Bahai faith, and Freemasonry (Sázmán-e żedd-e Sahyúníst, żedd-e Baháʾíyat, wa żedd-e Ferámásonerí-e írán).
... Iranians were among the very earliest converts to Islam, and their conversion in significant numbers began as soon as the Arab armies reached and overran the Persian plateau. Despite some resistance from elements of the Zoroastrian clergy and other ancient religions, the anti-Islamic policies of later conquerors like the Il-khanids, the impact of the Christian and secular West in modern times, and the attraction of new religious movements like Babism and the Bahai faith (qq.v.), the vast majority of Iranians became and have remained Muslims. Today perhaps 98 percent of ethnic Iranians, including the population of Persia, are at least nominal Muslims. For such a fundamental, pervasive, and enduring cultural transformation, the phenomenon of Iranian conversions to Islam has received remarkably little scholarly attention (for an early and still worthwhile survey of the subject, see Arnold, pp. 209-20; for significant recent advances, see Bulliet, 1979a; idem, 1979b). ...
... Travel accounts, documents of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Paris, and Christian missionary reports all include descriptions of persecutions of Jews in 19th-century Persia; in Tabríz, Marágha, Salmás, Míándoáb, Síáhkal, Bárforúsh, Shiraz, and other cities these persecutions were sometimes accompanied by forced conversions. At the beginning of the 20th century the representatives of the Alliance counted 50,000 Jews in Persia. During the Qajar period a number of Jews voluntarily converted to the Bahai faith (q.v.) and to Christianity. More than 5,000 Jews, mainly from Hamadán, Káshán, Arák, Shiraz, and Tehran seem to have converted to the Bahai faith alone (Fischel, 1932; idem, 1937a). Some Jews also willingly embraced Islam, generally as a result of intracommunal quarrels or to take advantage of the Muslim law of inheritance, which allowed the convert to inherit all the property of his Jewish relations. For example, in about 1237/1822, as the result of a quarrel with a rival, Rabbi Áqábábá converted to Islam, taking the name Mohammad-Reżá (Leví, pp. 566-69). He announced his conversion as the result of "a revelation" and published a book called Manqúl al-Reżá yá radd al-Yahúd condemning the Jews as forgers of the Bible, "which had foreseen the coming of the Prophet Mohammad" (Leví, p. 568). Some convert families attained prominence in politics and scholarship under the Pahlavi regime. ...
... The spiritual knowledge acquired by every faithful adherent from his superior in the teaching hierarchy forms a resplendent light in his soul that grows as he advances in gnosis. When he dies his soul, together with this light form, join the soul of his superior. The cause of its rise is the divine magnet (maghnátís eláhí) or Light Column (ʿamúd al-núr), which extends from the Originator through the spiritual and the teaching hierarchies to the faithful, conveying spiritual light and taking it back. The soul and light form thus rise from rank to rank until they reach the gate (báb) of the Qáʾem, where all of them assemble to form a light temple (haykal núrání) in the shape of a man. The light temple is called the Emáma. ...
... The imams are created from light, their enemies from darkness, and all others from a mixture of the two (Ahsáʾí, 1355-56 Sh./1976-77, II, p. 68). Man is formed of reason and ignorance, having two "mirrors" within him, one facing reason, the other ignorance (Ahsáʾí, 1355-56 Sh./1976-77, II, p. 18). As representations of good, the imams are in a state of perpetual confrontation with their counterparts, the "imams of error" (aʾemmat al-żalála; Ahsáʾí, 1355-56 Sh./1976-77, II, pp. 258, 260, 292). Heaven was created from love of the imams, hell from hatred of them (Ahsáʾí, 1355-56 Sh./1976-77, II, p. 273; cf. IV, p. 157). This division of the world between the forces of affirmation and denial came to play a major role in the cosmological system of the Báb.... Although this system of four bodies was not retained in either Babism or the Bahai faith (q.v.; see viii, below), its influence may still be discerned in the allegorized eschatology and spiritual survival detailed in the writings of both groups. ...
... Dárábí performed the hajj in 1260/1844, the same year as Mírzá ʿAlí-Mohammad, the Báb (q.v.). Neither then nor after his son Sayyed Yahyá converted to Babism, a move that he is said to have discussed with his father, did Dárábí himself become a convert (Amanat, pp. 247-48; Balyuzi, pp. 70, 93-94; Browne, 1975, p. 8; idem, 1893, p. 347-48). He witnessed both his son's subsequent involvement and death in the failed Babi uprising in Neyríz and the execution of the Báb in 1266/1850. ...
... A three-part typology of dreams can be drawn from the work of R. G. A. van Lieshout (pp. 12-34) and G. E. von Grunebaum (pp. 11-20). Type 1 is the "passive" or "enstatic" dream, of which there are three subtypes: a "recognizable" visual perception or a symbolic form; a message conveyed by a figure, recognized by the dreamer; and, less frequently, an "objective record," for example a piece of paper (báb) found in the morning or marks on the dreamer's body (MacEoin, p. 56). ...Dreams also play a central role in legitimizing the Shiʿite institution of weláya,that is, the guardianship of the elect over the multitude. This channel is, for example, fully described in Shaikhi literature, especially by Shaikh Ahmad Ahsáʾí (q.v.; d. 1241/1826), who considered the authority of his own investiture dreams to be undisputed (MacEoin, p. 57). These dreams were closely paralleled in the visionary experiences of Mohammad-ʿAlí the Báb (q.v.), who reported a dream in which he drank blood from the severed head of Imam Hosayn (MacEoin, p. 84 n. 44; cf. Amanat, pp. 168-69). Baháʾ-Alláh (q.v.), too, placed special emphasis on the revelatory function of dreams (pp. 34-35). ...
... The premodern conception of women's education was varied. In some medieval books of ethical instruction and counsel (see Andarz ii) teaching women to read was recommended (Fání Kashmírí, p. 141), whereas other authors warned against it (Kay Kávús, p. 98; cf. Qotb-al-Dín, pp. 135, 142; Túsí, pp. 229-30, Shojáʿ, p. 220; Dawwání, p. 206). In the Qajar period girls were sometimes sent to maktabs (see iii, above) until the age of eight or nine years, to be taught rudimentary reading and writing and to receive religious instruction. There were, however, also a number of women who were educated beyond such rudimentary levels at home, for example Ámena Baygom, daughter of Mollá Mohammad-Taqí Majlesí (d. 1070/1659) and wife of Mollá Mohammad-Sáleh Mázandarání (d. 1081/1670; Beheshtí, III, pp. 208-09); Hamída Esfahání (d. 1087/1677), daughter of Mohammad-Sharíf Esfahání; and her daughter Fátema (Beheshtí, III, pp. 66-67). Occasionally women were described as mojtaheda, faqíha (see Faqíh), ʿálema, and mojáza, indicating that they had reached the highest levels of religious knowledge and had received permission to teach theology (ejtehád, q.v.) and to grant their students similar authorization (Yádgár-Ázádí, pp. 30-31). Two such figures in the 19th century were Núr-Jahán Tehrání, author of Neját al-moslemát, a 372-page manuscript written in 1224/1809, and Fátema Baraghání Qorrat-al-ʿAyn (1231-68/1814-52), a Babi leader (Amanat, pp. 295-331; Milani, pp. 77-99). In modern times Fátema Amín (1303-1403/1886-1983) attained similar status (Beheshtí, I, pp. 122-26; Zan-e rúz, 30 Khordád 1371/6 June 1992, pp. 4, 60; 24 Mordád 1371/ 8 August 1992, pp. 6-9, 57). ...The beginnings of modern women's education. As cultural interactions between Persia and Europe intensified, one of the issues defining the differences between the two cultures was the status of women (Tavakoli-Targhi; cf. Abú Táleb, pp. 234-36). Thinkers associated with the Babi movement (see Babism) were among the earliest advocates of women's literacy and education (Áqá Khan and Rúhí, pp. 9, 121, 139). Even contemporaries who were not Babis, like Mírzá Fath-ʿAlí Ákhúndzáda (q.v.; pp. 135-36, 177-78), praised the Ismaʿilis and the Babis for educating their daughters and sons in similar fashion. ʿAbd-al-Rahím Tálebof, in his Ketáb-e Ahmad, modeled on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Émile (p. 44), depicted Ahmad's sisters, Máhrokh and Zaynab, as participating marginally in his educational regime and benefiting from it.
...Modern schools. Establishment of modern elementary schools for girls began in the 19th century, when American Presbyterian missionaries established the first such school in Urmia in 1253/1838 for Assyrian Christian children (see xv, above). In 1282/1865 the Daughters of Charity (Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul) opened schools for girls in Urmia, Salmás, Tabríz, and Isfahan and in 1292/1875 one in Tehran. In 1313/1895 the American school for girls was established in Tehran (for these schools, see Wezárat-e maʿáref, p. 62; "Táríkhcha," p. 462). Various religious denominations in Persia also sponsored schools for girls. The Armenians opened such schools in Tehran in 1287/1870, in Qazvín in 1307/1889, in Soltánábád in 1318/1900, and in Isfahan in 1321/1903. Ettehád, the first Jewish school for girls in Tehran, was established by the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1316/1898. In Kermán Zoroastrians established Enát-e jamshídí for girls in 1320/1902. Tarbíat-e banát was established in Tehran by Bahais in 1329/1911 (for these schools, see Wezárat-e maʿáref, pp. 74, 110, 124, 130, 142, 158; Qawímí, p. 142). ...
... Another significant religious minority are the Ahl-e Haqq (q.v.), who are concentrated in Kurdistan, but are also to be found in the Kurdish diaspora in other parts of Persia, and even more recently among non-Kurds in the cities (Mir-Hosseini). Non-Muslim identities are also represented. Armenians of the Gregorian rite, Assyrians of the Nestorian rite, and Bahai, Jewish and Zoroastrian communities not only in Yazd and Shiraz but also clusters of families scattered in and around Arák and Hamadán (Desmet-Grégoire and Fontaine, Fischer, Loeb, Magnarella, Schwartz). Information on Jews is most detailed for Shiraz (Loeb), and on Zoroastrians for Yazd (Bekhradnia, Boyce, Fischer). Bahai communities and scattered clusters of Bahai and Hindu families are mentioned in Khorasan and Baluchistan (Spooner). As might be expected these descriptions give precedence to information that explains the persistence of the particular communities and identities. Firsthand description of Zikri communities in Panjgur (Pakistani Makrán) is also available (C. Pastner, S. Pastner; see also article BALUCHISTAN). The most important factor in the survival of such communities appears to lie in their ability to control marriage. The Esháqzí Dorrání in western Afghanistan, and perhaps most Dorrání, manage to maintain absolute prohibition of marriage of their women to other groups—obviously an effective boundary maintenance mechanism. The fact that there is essentially no divorce among them similarly reduces the opportunities to cross the boundary. In such tribal cases the sanctions may be unilateral, whereas in the case of non-Muslim minorities the boundaries are commonly reinforced from both sides (R. Tapper). ...
... By 1268/1851 the political base of Amír Kabír had eroded, ironically after he had managed to put down two major threats to Náser-al-Dín Shah's throne: the Sálár revolt (1264-68/1847-51) and the Babi insurrection (1265-68/1848-51; see Babism). When Amír Kabír was removed from office in 1268/1851, Áqá Khan was offered the post. His appointment was made public on 22 Moharram 1268/17 November 1851, after he had unequivocally renounced his British protégé status. In consultation with Justin Sheil, the British envoy in Tehran, Áqá Khan gave his pledge that he was "under the protection of no state but that of the shadow of His Majesty the shah of Iran" (Ketáb-khána-ye saltanatí, album no. 249, cited in Qáʾem-maqámí, 1968, p. 108). ...The first real crisis during Áqá Khan's tenure came in Du'l-qaʿda 1268/August 1852, ten months after his appointment, when a group of Babis affiliated with Shaikh ʿAlí Torshízí (ʿAzím) attempted to assassinate the shah outside Níávarán palace, in revenge for the execution of the Báb two years earlier. The ensuing panic in the capital and fear of further attacks and uprisings prompted the shah to order a round-up of Babis, including at least six citizens of the Núr region, of whom Mírzá Hosayn-ʿAlí Núrí (later Baháʾ-Alláh; q.v.), a distant relative of Áqá Khan, was the most prominent (Watson, pp. 407-10; Zarandi, pp. 595-602; Amanat, 1997, pp. 207-11). The alleged involvement of the Núrí elements was a serious liability for Áqá Khan. Mahd-e ʿOlyá accused him of being an accomplice of Mírzá Hosayn-ʿAlí and thus a party to the plot. His earlier inconclusive contacts with the Babis in Káshán during his exile there and his advice against execution of the Báb in 1265/1850 may also have been known to his enemies. To absolve himself and to prove his loyalty to the shah, Áqá Khan thus fully indulged the shah's desire to inflict an exceptionally brutal punishment against the arrested Babis (Watson, p. 410). By allocating the victims for execution to government officials, notables, princes of the Qajar family, army officers and troops, royal guards, members of his own family, as well as the ulama, merchants, and the students of the newly established Dár al-fonún, Áqá Khan turned the massacre into a collective act of retribution by blood (qesás). ...
... Religion. The majority of the population in Fárs, as elsewhere in Persia, converted to Sunni Islam. The process was slow. Zoroastrian communities still flourished in the 4th/10th century. Estakhrí states that they were more numerous in Fárs than in any other province (pp. 118-19, 139; Moqaddasí/Maqdesí, p. 439). Widespread conversion to Shiʿism came under the Safavids. Lár, however, and some communities on the shores of the Persian Gulf remained Sunni (see Aubin, 1965). Sufism spread throughout the province from an early period. Ebn al–Khafíf (d. 371/981) flourished in Shiraz and had numerous followers. Shaikh Abú Esháq Ebráhím b. Shahríár Kázerúní (q.v.; d. 426/1035), continued his teaching and founded the Esháqíya or Kázerúníya order. The later Morshedíya were affiliated to the Esháqíya. In the early 11th/17th century the Dahabí order (q.v.) was established in Fárs, with its center in Shiraz. Khánaqáhs were founded in different places from time to time. One such was the khánaqáh of Shaikh Rokn-al-Dín Danyál, who was affiliated to the Kázerúníya, in Khonj (Aubin, 1969, p. 25). It was one of the four great khánaqáhs of Fárs, the others being the khánaqáhs of Shaikh ʿAbd-Alláh Khafíf in Shiraz, of Táwús-al-Haramayn in Abarqúh and of Shaikh Abú Esháq in Kázerún (ibid., p. 26). Throughout the middle ages Shiraz was a center of learning, where Islamic theology, mysticism and poetry flourished. Smaller centers were found time to time in other cities. Islamic sciences flourished in Īj in the 8th/14th century (ibid., 41) while Jahrom was an intellectual and religious center in the second half of the 15th century (ibid., 32). ...In 1260/1844 Sayyed ʿAlí-Mohammad announced in Shiraz that he was the Báb (q.v.). The main Bábí center in Fárs was Nayríz (see Babism). There were Nestorian communities under bishops at Beh Shápúr, Dárábjerd, Síráf, Estakhr and Rēv Ardáshír in the early 5th century (Fiey, 1971, p. 284). The metropolitan lived at Rēv Ardashír (idem, 1969, p. 179). About the year 900 suffragan bishops are mentioned in Shiraz, Estakhr, Shápúr, Dárábjerd, and Síráf (ibid., p. 191). After the death of ʿAżod-al-Dawla (q.v.) the Christians of Fárs suffered many vicissitudes (ibid., p. 192) and towards the end of the Il-khanids and thereafter virtually disappeared. ...
... Shaikh Ahmad Ahsáʾí (q.v.; d. 1241/1826), founder of the Shaykhí movement, was denounced as an unbeliever in a fatwá delivered in Qazvín by Mollá Mohammad-Taqí Borghání (d. 1264/1848) because of his apparent denial of the bodily nature of resurrection (Corbin, p. 225). Ahsáʾí's successor, Sayyed Kázem Rashtí (d. 1259/1843), together with the whole body of Shaykhís, was the target of a similar fatwá delivered in Karbaláʾ in 1246/1830 jointly by Sayyed Ebráhím Qazvíní, Bahr-al-ʿOlúm Tabátabáʾí, Shaikh Mohammad- Hasan Najafí (d. 1266/1849), and others (Moussavi, pp. 138-39; Amanat, pp. 67, 159-61). For a variety of reasons, none of the anti-Shaykhí fatwás resulted in bloodshed, and after Rashtí the leadership of the movement passed to Mohammad-Karím Khan Kermání (d. 1288/1870), who himself issued fatwás for the regulation of marital and property disputes among his followers (Manoukian). More definitive in their effects were the several fatwás issued in denunciation of Sayyed ʿAlí-Mohammad the Báb (q.v.; d. 1266/1850), the originator of Babism (q.v.), and his followers. The first of these fatwás resulted from the trial in Baghdad in 1261/1845 of Mollá ʿAlí Bestámí, accused of apostasy because of his propagation in Iraq of Qayyúmal-asmáʾ, a composition of the Báb written in imitation of the Koran while claiming to supersede it. The fatwá condemning him was signed by nineteen Sunni scholars, of whom the most prominent was Sheháb-al-Dín Alúsí (d. 1270/1853), the Hanafite moftí of Baghdad, and ten Shiʿite mojtaheds including Shaikh Hasan Káshef al-Getáʾ and Sayyed Ebráhím Qazvíní. This may well have been the first joint Sunni-Shiʿite fatwá ever issued; it was, however, only the Sunni signatories who pronounced Bestámí deserving of death, the mojtaheds taking at face value his assertion that he was ignorant of the contents of Qayyúm al-asmáʾ (Momen; Amanat, pp. 220-32). The first fatwá to call for the execution of the Báb himself was issued in 1263/1846 by the mojtaheds of Isfahan, but its implementation was prevented when Sayyed Mohammad Khátúnábádí, the emám-e jomʿa (q.v.) of the city, declared the Báb to be of unsound mind (Amanat, pp. 257-58). A similar finding made by Dr. Cormick, a British physician well disposed to the Báb, saved him from execution in Tabríz later the same year when ʿAlí-Asghar Shaykh-al-Eslám and his nephew, Abuʾl-Qásem, delivered a fatwá declaring him worthy of death if found to be sane (Browne, 1918, p. 259). The fatwás that, together with certain political factors, finally encompassed his execution in 1266/1850, were delivered by Mollá Mohammad Mamaqání, Mollá Mortażá Harandí, and Mollá Mohammad-Báqer, the emám-e jomʿa of Tabríz; they found him guilty of apostasy, and this time determined he was sane (Amanat, pp. 399-400)....
Undated fatwás of socio-political content from Khomeyní's years of exile are to be found grouped together under headings such as "enjoining the good and forbidding the evil" (amr ba maʿrúf wa nahy az monkar), "defense" (defáʿ), or simply "miscellaneous questions" (masáʾel-e motafarreqa) as a supplement to Tawżíh al-masáʾel, the systematic collection of rulings on the major topics of jurisprudence he first published in the early 1960s (none of the numerous reprints of this work bear any date, with the exception of the edition published in 1359 Sh./1980 by Ayatollah Reżwání under the title Resála-ye ahkám). Among the more significant of these fatwás are rulings that denounce as invalid in their totality all laws approved by the Majles "on the orders of agents of the foreigners"; reject as incompatible with Islam the Family Protection Law (Qánún-e hemáyat-e khánaváda) of 1346 Sh./1967 and classify as adulteresses women who remarry after obtaining a divorce under its provisions; forbid the employment of Muslims in Jewish-owned businesses known to be supporting Israel; and proscribe property dealings with Bahais (Khomeyní, 1980, p. 328; idem, Tawżíh al-masáʾel, pp. 503-5; Khomeyní, tr. 1981a, pp. 437-42). ...
... The history of the women's rights movement in Qajar Persia was intimately linked to other social, religious and intellectual movements of the era such as liberalism, nationalism, social democracy, and Babism (q.v.). An early manifestation of feminism took place in June 1848 in Badasht, a village on the border of Mázandarán and Khorasan, where Qorrat-al-ʿAyn (1814-1852), the outspoken Babi woman leader, removed her veil before a bewildered audience. European liberal ideas, as well as social reforms taking place in Turkey, Transcaucasia, Egypt, and India, also influenced late 19th century intellectuals who condemned the practices of veiling and other forms of women's oppression. Mírzá Fath-ʿAlí Akhúndzáda (q.v.; 1812-1878), noted for both his polemical writings and plays, spoke of the need for women's education and an end to polygamy. Mírzá Yúsof Khan Áshtíání Eʿtesámí, Eʿtesám-al-Molk (q.v.; 1874-1938), editor of Bahár (q.v.) in Tabríz, translated Tahrír al-marʾa, the classic work of the Egyptian reformist Qásem Amín, into Persian as Tarbíat-e neswán (Tabríz, 1900). Bíbí Khánom Astarábádí (1858-1920) wrote Maʿáyeb al-rejál (Vices of men), the most extensive feminist text to have survived from this period. Written in the style of advice manuals (andarz-námas), it was a response to Taʾdíb al-neswán, an earlier treatise by an anonymous Qajar aristocrat. Bíbí Khánom penned an angry denunciation of contemporary educated men with a double standard. She pointed out that these men wrote admiringly of the relative freedom enjoyed by urban middle class European women, while at the same time they upheld traditional patriarchal relations at home. Persian journals published abroad, including Akhtar (q.v.; published in Istanbul), Habl al-matín (q.v.; published in Calcutta), as well as Ṯorayyá and Parvaresh (published in Egypt), devoted editorials and articles to women's education and advocated their greater participation in society. ...Anjoman-e mokhaddarát-e watan (Association of the Ladies of the Homeland), formed in 1910, included wives, mothers, and daughters of many prominent constitutionalists (Bámdád, 1977, p. 34). Sadíqa Dawlatábádí (q.v.), whose father was the leader of the Azalí Babi community of Persia, was both a member of the Association for the Freedom of Women, and the Association of the Ladies of the Homeland.
... Editors of other journals such as Mosáwát (1907-9), Habl al-matín, and Īrán-e now (q.v.; 1909-11) also encouraged women to write letters, and devoted editorials to the subject. Of particular interest are the essays by Táyera ʿEsmat Tehrání (1869-1911), published in 1909 in the social democratic Īrán-e now. Táyera was a Bahai woman writer and a leading advocate of women's rights, who had suffered much abuse at the hands of her husband because of her conversion to the Bahaʾi faith. ...
... Jules Michelet (1798-1874) had in his Bible de l'Humanité a chapter on La Perse which judged very favourably that ancient country, home of a religion of justice, Zoroastrianism. Gérard de Nerval (1808-55), in his Voyage en Orient, gives Persia as one of the destinations of the spiritual pilgrim, and his novel Aurelia the three sacred names of Shiʿism are inserted: Alláh! Mohammad! ʿAlí! Joseph-Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (q.v.; 1810-82) described in his Nouvelles asiatiques a corrupt regime, with generals pocketing the pay of their soldiers, etc.; on the other hand, in his Religions et philosophies en Asie centrale, and in his novel Amadis posthumously published in 1887, he not only portrayed ancient Persia as the paragon of the "Aryan race" but also, fascinated by Babism and Shiʿism and by several performances of taʿzía, he prophesied the emergence, as in ancient Athens from the cult of Dionysos, of a new kind of tragedy. Gobineau as an admirer of Shiʿism was followed, in our time, by another enthusiast, Henry Corbin (q.v.), who taught both in Tehran and Paris and wrote, among other books, Face de Dieu et face de l'homme, 1983. ...
... Nearer our time, the neoclassical Bahai poet Mohammad-Naʿím Sedehí (1856-1916), departing from the stereotyped references to fruits in a well-known mosammat (pp. 163-73), has used novel, picturesque imagery to depict seven summer and autumn fruits as wonderful signs of God's manifestations as a preamble to his long eulogy addressed to ʿAbd-al-Baháʾ (q.v.). For example, he describes the pomegranate (its scarlet grains, whitish septa, and tough rind) as follows (p. 165): "The ruby-making nature has again hewed the ruby, has arranged the hewn ruby [pieces] close to each other, has wrapped these in silver [envelopes], which he has disposed in a casket." The náranj with its corrugated peel is described as follows (ibid.): "[When] the orange tree was a matured little girl, she was inflated by spring breeze and became pregnant in the garden. It gave birth to a plump baby without a midwife's help. Its plump infant's body [later] became all covered with smallpox pimples whose moist scars remained on its rosy face." ...
... (b. Sabzavár, 3 Ramażán 1310/21 March 1893; d. San Francisco, 9 Farvardín 1331 Sh./29 March 1952; Figure 1), physician, diplomat, and well-known scholar on the poet Háfez. He was a prolific writer and, during his many years abroad, corresponded with several eminent figures of the time. His diaries, notebooks, and letters have been compiled and edited in twelve volumes under the general supervision of his son, Cyrus Ghani (Yáddáshthá-ye Doktor Qásem Ganí/The Memoirs of Dr. Ghassem Ghani, London, 1980-84; see under Memoirs below). His eye for the telling detail, and his habit of jotting down daily events immediately, and methodically recording the date and place of encounters and incidents, make these volumes a valuable documentary source for his life and that of many of his contemporaries.Ganí was born into a moderately prosperous family of small landholders. On the maternal side some of his close relatives were prominent members of the Bahai faith, a fact that caused him some consternation early in his political career (S. H. Amín, "Doktor Qásem Ganí," Yaghmá 24, 1350 Sh./1972, pp., 599-606, p. 602) He was first educated in his hometown's traditional maktabs. Around 1908 he was sent to Tehran to continue his education. He attended Tarbíat, a Bahai school with a modern curriculum and then enrolled in Dár-al-Fonún (q.v.), where he studied for two years. In 1913 he set out for Beirut for further studies. He first attended a French pre-medical school run by the Jesuits (Yáddáshthá I, pp. 101-5) and after the closure of the French educational institutions in Lebanon during the First World War, he learnt English and transferred to the American University of Beirut in 1915, where he received a medical degree in 1919. He gives an affectionate account of his teachers and student days in his memoirs (Yáddáshthá I, pp. 105-84). ...
Mirzá Golám Rezá Khoshnevis Esfaháni (b. Tehran, 1245/1829-30; d. Tehran, 1304/1886-87), a calligrapher and epigraphist of late 19th-century Persia. He was a master of the nastaʿliq, shekasta-nastaʿliq, and shekasta scripts and signed his works with the invocation "Yá ʿAli madad" or "Golám-Reżá, Yá ʿAli madadast." ... Although Golám-Reżá obtained commissions from Mohammad Shah's son and successor, Náser-al-Din Shah (1264-1313/1848-96), he did not receive the same favorable treatment from him and his court. He lost his teaching job when he was accused of involvement in the Babi movement, which almost cost him his life. He was pardoned, however, after pleading to Náser-al-Din Shah, but his classes were closed down. In a letter to Náser-al-Din Shah, he mentioned his lack of income and asked to be appointed as the librarian of the crown prince (Bayáni, Khoshnevisán II, pp. 553-54). ...
... Despite the acquisition of a following in various parts of Persia (administered on his behalf by four shaikhs in addition to Kayván-e Qazvini), Soltán-ʿAlisháh had to contend with substantial enmity in Khorasan itself. ... He also hinted that he was himself—in an undefined sense—the Imam of the Age, and proclaimed that "whoever knows his own imam does not need to wait for the appearance of the Hidden Imam" (hazrat-e qáʾem; Soltan-ʿAlisháh, p. 269). Safi-ʿAlisháh (d. 1316/1899)—admittedly a rival for supremacy in the world of the Neʿmat-Alláhis—had already accused Soltán-ʿAlisháh's master of concocting a mixture of Shaikhism and Babism, flavoring it with some of his own notions, and attempting to substitute it for authentic Neʿmat-Alláhi tradition (Diván, p. 14), and it was comprehensible that accusations of straightforward heresy should now be raised against Soltán-ʿAlisháh himself (Gramlich, 1965, p. 66). ...
... With the establishment and growth of the Indo-European Telegraph Department (hereafter IETD) in Persia from the mid-1860s, the British networks for news-gathering and local influence grew in size and efficiency. Some of the telegraph offices were in remote towns and villages and clashes with the locals were not rare nor were frequent recruiting from the local population. Creating a vital link with colonial India, IETD became the most significant British investment in Persia up to the early 20th century. The officers and employees of the IETD, whose security and well-being was the responsibility of the British government, often acted as informal British representatives at their posts and invariably exerted some measure of authority through their Persian contacts. Qualified members of the Armenian and Bahai communities were among the employees of IETD which offered them jobs and a degree of security. Like British consuls and agents, IETD often happened to be the only refuge for members of religious minorities at the time of crisis and persecution, particularly for the Babi-Bahais and the Jews. Like the British consulates, the telegraph offices were recognized as the inviolable property of the British government, and were used as sanctuary (bast) by those escaping from persecution of some mojtaheds, of mob frenzy, and from tax collectors and oppression of the government agents (Momen, pp. 268-73). ...During the 1873 and 1889 royal tours of England, with the help of the British government, influential Jewish figures such as Sir Moses Montefiore, Baron Lionel de Rothschild, and Sir Albert Sassoon urged Náser-al-Din Shah to improve the condition of the Persian Jewry. These concerted efforts, to which the shah responded positively, no doubt helped curtailing the recurrence of severe persecutions and eventually led to the lifting of the hated religious tax (jeziya) in 1882 for Zoroastrians but only partially for others. Seldom, however, before the 20th century, did the members of the Jewish community act as instruments of British influence in Persia. In dealing with persecutions, though the Foreign Office did act on humanitarian grounds, often it went only far enough to satisfy the concerned constituencies at home. Occasional British efforts to save the Babi-Bahai communities from merciless killings, torture and imprisonment were far less successful not only because of the ingrained enmity towards them among the governmen-tal and religious authorities, not to mention the shah himself, but also for the want of any representation on their behalf outside Persia. Despite groundless accusations in the late 20th century anti-Bahai literature, only few Babi-Bahais acted as British commercial agents in Yazd and Bushehr. Nor did they receive any blanket protection from any foreign power except in local level and in severe cases of persecution. Only in the late 19th century when a Bahai community emerged in the city of Ashkabad in the Russian Turkestan (today's Turkmenistan), was there any sign of Russian attention to the fate of the Bahais in Persia. ...
... According to Levy (p. 444), the pressure on the Jews of Hamadán continued until the beginning of 1900. During this period, many converted to Islam, Christianity, and especially the Babi/Bahai religion (see below)....
Conversion. Hamadán's Jewish community was also faced with the constant threat of voluntary conversion (see CONVERSION iv and v), especially during the second half of the 18th century. In this period, conversions in Hamadán were common enough that on occasion one would even see Jews, Babi/Bahais, and Christians all belonging the same immediate family (Sarshar, p. 201). Conversion to Christianity was mainly due to the European and American missionary activities in Hamadán. Those who converted to Christianity were, for the most part, young men who received their education in the school of the American Mission. According to George Curzon, there were about a hundred Jews in that school in the early 1890s (Curzon, Persian Question I, p. 510). Besides, many Jewish physicians in Hamadán who received their medical training in the American Hospital would also convert to the Christian faith. According to Cohen, "not many Jews adopted Christianity and those who did so were enticed by the money which the missionaries distributed, or wished to escape from their life of humiliation, and hoped that the diplomatic representatives in Persia would protect them as Christians" (Cohen, p. 162). The greater majority of Jewish-born converts, however, converted to the Babi/Bahai faith. According to Susan Stiles Maneck, the first Jew to convert to the Bahai faith in Hamadán was a physician by the name of Hakim Áqá Ján who, in 1877, "was called upon to treat the malaria stricken wife of Muhammad Báqer," a prominent Bahai in town (Maneck, p. 37). As she nearly died, Áqá Ján feared violent repercussions not only towards himself but the entire Jewish community. When Mohammad-Báqer assured Áqá Ján that he would not hold him responsible, Áqá Ján, judging by his reaction, assumed that Mohammad-Báqer could not be a Muslim and hence inquired about his religion. When Áqá Ján found out that Mohammad-Báqer was a Bahai, he became curious about the faith and eventually "embraced it along with some forty friends and family members, including his father, a leading rabbi of the town" (Maneck, p. 38; for more on the conversion of Jews to the Bahai faith, see Fischel). Reports suggest that by 1884, 150 of the 800 Jewish families in Hamadán had converted to Bahaism (Levy, p. 423).
While there was no doubt a range of reasons why the Jews of Hamadán were converting to Bahaism or Christianity at such a high rate during these years, one of the irrefutable causes was the atmosphere of extreme anti-Semitism, hostility, and oppression in which the Jews lived.
...It is possible to imagine how the absence of a mahalla would translate on a psychosocial level into a more general absence of boundary between self and other, and thus result in a relatively more fluid sense of a collective identity that does not definitively distinguish Jewish from gentile. From this perspective, the absence of a mahalla in Hamadán may well have been a non-negligible factor in the disproportionate ratio of conversions to Christianity and Babi/Bahaism that nearly devastated Hamadán's Jewish community in the last half of the 19th century. ...
... The successful agitation against the tobacco monopoly can be regarded as the first instance of mass politics in Persia, and it was no accident that Mirzá Hasan, as the supreme if not sole marjaʿ of the day, stood at the center of the episode. His preeminent role earned him at least a show of respect from Náser-al-Din Shah, who henceforth addressed him with the honorific "Hojjat-al-Eslám" (Taymuri, p. 18). Various oppositional elements began seeking to enrol Mirzá Hasan in their broader campaign against Qájár rule. A group of Persians resident in Ottoman Turkey reportedly asked Mirzá Hasan to declare obedience to the state as no longer incumbent, given its tyrannical practices (Qánun, no. 20 [n.d.], pp. 1-2), and Mirzá Malkom Khan suggested that he issue a fatwá forbidding the payment of taxes (Qánun, no. 29 (n.d.), p. 3). A letter sent by Mirzá Áqá Khan Kermáni in Istanbul to Mirzá Malkom Khan in London suggests that certain individuals were ready to take matters into their own hands: "Some people here have had the idea of requesting from Mirzá Hasan Shirázi a fatwá on some other matter, and then transferring his seal photographically to a piece of paper declaring that the payment of taxes to these oppressive tyrants is forbidden and a great sin" (collection of letters received by Malkom Khan, Bibliothežque Nationale, supplément persan 1996, fols. 110-11). Amin-al-Soltán, Náser-al-Din's chief minister, therefore found it advisable to warn Mirzá Hasan against Malkom Khan as a "heretic" (zendiq) and Jamál-al-Din Asad-ábádi as a onetime propagator of Babism in Afghanistan (letter dated Rajab 1309/February 1892, in Safáʾi, pp. 316-18). There is no sign that Mirzá Hasan responded favorably to any of these overtures, whether from the Persian government or its opponents. ...
... Amir ʿAbbás Hoveydá, the longest serving prime minister in the modern history of Iran (b. 28 Bahman 1297 Sh./19 February 1919; d. 18 Farvardin 1359 Sh./7 April 1979; Figure 1). He was born in Tehran to a family of hybrid affinities and identity (Milani, p. 37). His mother, Afsar-al-Moluk, was a descendent of the middle-level Qajar clan and a devout practicing Shiʿite. His father, Habib-Alláh, came from a middle class family with roots in the newborn Bahai religion, but there is little evidence that he was a practicing Bahai for any part of his adult life. Furthermore, there is much evidence to suggest that he never tried to raise his children as Bahais. He was a tutor to the children of Sardár Asʿad Bakhtiári, a powerful tribal chieftain; and at his suggestion Ahmad Shah granted the favored tutor a title. Thus Habib-Alláh became ʿAyn-al-Molk. In the third decade of the 20th century, when the government decided to issue identity cards for its citizens, ʿAyn-al-Molk (lit. "eye of the realm") chose Hoveyda ("visible"). The ocular theme in both his granted title and chosen family name is particularly ironic, in that both father and son were known, amongst other things, for the opacity of their characters. ...
... The passage of article VIII of the Persian supplementary constitutional law of October 1907, which guaranteed equal legal rights to Iranian Zoroastrians among other religious minorities (with the exclusion of Babis and Bahá'ís), appears to have owed part of its success to private and public campaigns financed by Iranian and Indian Zoroastrian merchants (Bayat, pp. 190-91, 262). E. G. Browne, long watchful of the conditions of religious minorities in Persia, blamed the failure of Iranian reformers to found a national bank in 1907 (intended to end their country's financial dependence on British and Russian Imperial Banks) in part to the lack of anticipated financial support from India's Parsi community in reaction to the murder of one of their prominent co-religionists in Persia, Arbáb Parviz Sháhjahán Jahánián (Browne, 1910, p. 137). In late 1909 and early 1910, Browne informed one of his closest Iranian friends, Taqizádeh, that to alleviate Persia's economic crisis and remedy the government's financial predicament Iranians should resort to Bombay's wealthy Parsis, whose financial assistance could be secured through additional improvements in the conditions of Persia's Zoroastrian population (Zaryáb and Afshár, pp. 24, 29-30). ...
... India also continued to serve as a major location of emigration for Iranians (including Zoroastrians, Armenians, Nestorians, and Jews). It also was a primary center of proselytization for the newly founded Bahá'í faith (q.v.) in the latter part of the 19th century, with one of largest Bahá'í communities in the world today. The emigrants consisted of merchants, those in search of better economic opportunities, political dissidents or other fugitives from local and state authorities, clergy of various religions assuming charge of émigré and/or Indian congregations, a small number of naturalized British subjects who entered the service of the English East India Company (EIC; q.v.) prior to its administrative dissolution in 1858 or the British diplomatic service, as well as those fleeing religious persecution by regional authorities, the state, and/or the conservative Shiʿite clergy. For instance, in the 1880s, after the official removal of the religious poll-tax (jezya) on Zoroastrians by the state (see below), two hundred Zoroastrian families fled the maltreatment of the governor of Yazd, Moʿaddel-al-Molk Shirázi. They settled in Bombay, where they received assistance from the Zoroastrian Parsi community. In the first half of the 19th century, Iranian Jews in cities such as Mashhad or Tabriz experienced intensified harassment and pressures to convert to Shiʿite Islam. As a result, some opted for emigration to India, among other locations. Babi (see Babism) and Bahá'í believers were subject to some of the most harrowing spates of communal, clerical, and official persecution, while Armenians appear to have experienced a much lesser degree of religious discrimination than in the 18th and the early 19th centuries. Some members of these religious communities, too, chose to emigrate in search of greater religious freedom. To these groups should be added members of Sunnite Muslim and non-official Shiʿite sects, including the Nezári Ismaʿili Shiʿites (see below). In addition to their relatives and friends, the minority religious émigré communities (in India or elsewhere) frequently provided financial assistance to their co-religionists in Persia in times of crisis, as during the 1870-71 famine in southern Persia. However, it should be stressed that emigration among Persia's minority religious communities was not entirely the outcome of religious restrictions and persecution; similar to their majority Shiʿite compatriots, many migrated for other reasons, including economic incentives. (See also Ershád, p. 157; Cole, 1988, passim; Pirnazar, passim; Afary, passim; Issawi, pp. 57-66; Bournoutian, passim; Garlington, passim). In the ranks of volunteer or coerced, "economic" migrants from Persia to India should be included "prostitutes," who were also the subject of some Persian diplomatic correspondence in the early 20th century (e.g., see the documents in Kázemi, pp. 141-42, passim). ...
... Rashti omitted to name a successor before his death in 1259/1843, with the result that several claimants to his mantle arose and the Shaikhi community was sundered into four. One group was led by Sayyed ʿAli-Mohammad the Báb (d. 1850), the founder of Babism (q.v.), a movement that lies beyond the purview of this article. Another, directed by Mirzá Hasan Gowhar of Karbaláʾ, never gained much support in Persia. The two factions important for the history of Shaikhism in Persia were those led by Háji Mirzá Shafiʿ Ṯeqat al-Eslám and Mollá Mohammad Mamaqáni Hojjat-al-Eslám in Tabriz and by Hájji Mohammad-Karim Khan Kermáni (d. 1871), a member of the Qajar family, in Kerman. Both factions moved swiftly to "normalize" their doctrines, that is, to align them with the conventional beliefs of Twelver Shiʿism as then understood, and Mohammad-Karim Khan Kermáni in particular was energetic in distancing Shai-khism from Babism. This process of adjustment did not prevent the Shaikhis, however, from forming distinct and fairly substantial communities, under the hereditary leadership of first the Hojjat-al-Eslám and then the Ṯeqat-al-Eslám family in Tabriz, and of the descendants of Mohammad-Karim Khan in Kerman. In both Tabriz and Kerman, clashes repeatedly took place between the Shai-khis and their neighbors, in yet another manifestation of the recurring propensity of Persian cities for factional warfare. The adversaries of the Shaikhis became known, in this context, as the Bálásaris (q.v.), that is, those who paid their respects at the shrines of the Imams while standing at the head of their tombs, by contrast with the Shaikhis, who thought it more respectful to stand at the foot. It is, however, improbable that the mutual hostility derived from this or any other detail of doctrine or ritual. Shaikhi-Bálásari clashes ravaged Kerman for a full year in 1295/1878, and for a somewhat shorter period in 1322/1905; on the latter occasion it was rivalry for the control of lucrative awqáf that ignited the hostilities. In Tabriz, the Shaikhis were deemed heretics and ritually unclean, and they were accordingly denied access to the city's bathhouses. Hamadán also witnessed clashes between Shaikhis and Bálásaris in 1315/1897. Smaller Shaikhi communities than those in Tabriz and Kerman came into being in Khorramshahr, Ábádan, Shiraz, and Zonuz (Momen, pp. 225-31). ...
... The prevalence of the Osuli school and the emergence of the mojtahed (see Ejtehád) establishment in the early Qajar period, and the tacit alliance forged with the Qajar state, created an atmosphere of growing intolerance for alternative thought, which included Akhbáriya (q.v.) school, Sufism, and the Shaykhi school of theology (see Ahsá'í), whose doctrines of the Perfect Shiʿa (shiʿa-ye kámel) became the prominent loci for speculative messianism in early 19th century. The Babi movement (see Babism), no doubt the most conscious and the most explicit messianic current since the rise of the Safavids, was the outcome of nearly half a century of millennial speculations and renewed engagement with Shiʿite hermeneutics within and outside the Shaykhi school. The claim of Sayyed ʿAli-Mohammad Shirázi first to be the Báb "Gate" (see Báb) to the Imam of the Age and in 1264/1848 his open claim to be the promised millennial Mahdi, opened the way for an apocalyptic break with Islam and the beginning of a new Bayáni dispensation (see Bayan). The movement's broad appeal to the socially deprived and discontented within the clerical class and beyond to include women, petty merchants, and the guilds, made Babism the most explicitly messianic current in modern Iranian history. Harassed and persecuted by both the Shiʿite ulama and the Qajar state, the Babis (see Babism) shift to radical millenarianism eventually resulted in armed confrontation with the state, culminating in the destruction of its leadership, exile and banishment, and more than half a century of underground dissent (see Amanat, 1989). In the later Bahai phase (see Bahá'í Faith), the claim of Baháʾ-Alláh (q.v.) to be the "locus of all divine manifestations" can be seen as further unfolding of the Babi messianic break with Islam. In due course, the formative Bahai thought adopted in the latter half of the 19th century a universalistic message of moral humanism and religious reconciliation, while the rival Azali Babis advocated political dissent and active engagement with the progressive Shiʿite clerical elements, thereby exerting some influence in the early shaping of the Constitutional Revolution (q.v.). The Babi movement and its aftermath may be considered as a unique experience not only in the Shiʿite context but also in the history of Muslim reform movements for attempting to forge an endogenous form of religious modernity beyond the accepted precepts of normative Islam (see Amanat, 1998, pp. 241-48). ...State of scholarship. Critical episodes of Iranian messianism, including early Islamic era, development of Ismaʿili and Twelver Shiʿite messianism, the Safavid movements, and the Babi movement have been subject of numerous Western studies from as early as the middle of the 19th century. Late medieval trends such as Horufi, Noqtawi, Nurbakhshi, and Sarbadári movements have also received scholarly attention in recent years, as have aspects of speculative messianism and the doctrine of Occultation in the Twelver Shiʿite tradition. Muslim authors of the past, such as Ebn Khaldun (q.v.), also devoted some attention to the phenomenon of the Mahdi in Shiʿism. Yet theoretical study of Iranian messianism as a cultural paradigm and its social, political, and cultural implications remains to be further explored (see Amanat, 2002). ...
... The field of Shiʿite doctrine and literature was explored by Etan Kohlberg (Hebrew University) in a series of books and articles. Early Shiʿite history was dealt with by M. Sharon, who has also worked on the Bahá'í religion, and who is the first incumbent of a Chair for Bahá'í Studies at the Hebrew University, the first of its kind. Meir Bar-Asher (Hebrew University) has worked on the Yazidis. Sabine Schmidtke (Freie Universität Berlin), who did part of her studies at the Hebrew University, has worked on aspects of Shiʿite doctrine. ...
... The beginning of contemporary Iranian studies may be set in 1957. In that year Alessandro Bausani won the chair of Persian Language and Literature at the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples (IUO, now Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"), and Giuseppe Tucci, President of the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (IsMEO, now Istituto per l'Africa e l'Oriente; see xvii, below), inaugurated the first archeological expedition at Ghazni, which was to be followed by expeditions in Sistán (1959), and at Isfahan and Persepolis (1964)....
Iranian studies in Italy are divided academically into two broad divisions. The first goes under the name of Persian Language and Literature, a field inaugurated by Italo Pizzi, mastered by Alessandro Bausani, and continued by Angelo Michele Piemontese, Giovanni Maria D'Erme, Riccardo Zipoli (Chair, 1987), Maurizio Pistoso (Chair, 1987), Rahim Raza, Daniela Meneghini, Michele Bernardini, Paola Orsatti, and Carlo Sacconi. It specializes in literary and linguistic studies of the Persian language, but also covers literary and linguistic studies concerning other modern Iranian languages. The second is more concerned with philological, historical, religious, and linguistic studies and has its roots in historical linguistics, history of religions, and ancient history; it now encompasses Islamic Iran as well.
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... Alessandro Bausani (1921-88) is no doubt the most important Italian scholar of Islamic Iran. From 1957 he taught at the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples from where he moved to the University "La Sapienza" of Rome in 1971. It is fair to state that every Italian Iranist has been his student, either directly or indirectly. Less well known is his contribution to the understanding of pre-Islamic Iran. His most important contribution to Iranian studies is the volume Persia Religiosa (1959) recently translated into English (2000), a seminal work in which he sets out to prove the trends of continuity in the discontinuity that characterize the Iranian religious world of both pre-Islamic and Islamic periods without surrendering to the then current nationalistic interpretation of religious history. He further underlined the contribution of Mesopotamian and Near Eastern thought to Iranian religion, a contribution which he understood as complementary to the Indo-European heritage. In the field of pre-Islamic Iran he also published an interesting booklet containing a complete translation of the Dádestán í Mēnōg í xrad (q.v.) and Chēdag andarz í pōryōtkēshán (see ANDARZ) and excerpts from the Bundahishn and Dēnkard (qq.v.). ...
... The link with Persia is never broken and is often reinforced by economic ties with the family. A feature that characterizes Persian immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s is a sense of national identity common both to those who come from a religious background and culture and those who have arrived with secular or lay backgrounds and positions. The former, even when politically opposed to the authorities of their country, consider the return to the homeland as absolutely fundamental, whilst the latter seem to be more open to integration in the context of Italian society, even if in a state of continuous uncertainty. In any case, partly due to this constant "utopia of returning home" and also due to the higher than average level of culture and social conscience, Persians in Italy do not consider themselves "immigrants" and tend not to lay down the foundations for the creation of a real Persian social network. Work—always present even if often temporary, especially for those who have arrived most recently (and particularly in the carpet sector, as already mentioned)—, personal relations within a limited range, and the distant but rooted link with their homeland have been main features of the Persian identity in Italy in the last two decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.Persians of the Bahai religion are an exception. Though overall a minority, they put their religious faith with its ecumenist characteristics before their national identity. They consider themselves citizens of the world and brothers of the Italians (or people of other nationalities) sharing the same religion. Consequently, they pursue social integration in the country where they are guests, supported by an efficient network of assistance from their own community, which in Italy is focused mainly in Rome and the surrounding area. ...
... The first Italian travelers who left significant accounts of their visits to Qajar Persia were the members of the 1862 mission, which included diplomats, scientists and military officers. The greatest contributions in terms of scientific articles and general information about Persia were brought by Filippo de Filippi (q.v.) and the physician Michele Lessona (1823-1894). Lessona was particularly interested in zoology and his essays are basically devoted to natural life in Persia, such as its landscapes and "magnificent nature [that is] so great and excellent that I cannot describe it properly" (letter written in 1865, in Camerano, pp. 25-26). He also became very interested in the Bahai religion, so much so that he wrote a book on it (I Babi). ...
... Jafr, a term of uncertain etymology (for which, see below) used to designate the major divinatory art in Islamic mysticism and gnosis, the ʿelm al-jafr (the science of jafr) also simply al-ʿelm. It is of discovering the predestined fate of nations, dynasties, religions, and individuals by a variety of methods and is represented by a vast literature that is well documented already during the Umayyad period, and more so during the ʿAbbasid period. ...There has been a continuous line of mystic and gnostic movements and prominent individuals engaged in certain or most aspects of numerological speculations and jafr. Omitting theologians such as Abu Hámed Mohammad Gazáli (d. 505/111, q.v.) and Qurʾánic commentators who wrote on the al-asmáʾ al-hosná and/or the horuf, these include: (1) the late 5th-century Mazdakites and the later Khorramdinis (see Madelung); (2) the Ismaʿilis (q.v.); the 10th-century Ekhwán al-Safáʾ (q.v.); (3) individuals, including Avicenna (Ebn Siná d. 428/1037; q.v.), Sheháb-al-Din Sohravardi (d. 587/1191); Abu'l-ʿAbbás Ahmad Buni (d. 622/1225; see Dietrich), Ebn al-ʿArabi (d. 638/1240; q.v.); and ʿAbd-al-Rahmán Bestámi (d. 858/1454; q.v.); (4) later movements, including the Horufis (see Horufism), a Muslim sect founded by Fażl-Alláh Astarábádi (d. 796/1394, q.v.), who distinctly added the four Persian letters ("p," "ch," "ž," "g") to the twenty-eight Arabic letters; the Bektáshiya (q.v.); Mahmud Pasikháni (d. 831/1427), the founder of the Noqtawiya "Pointers" Order (Babayan, pp. 57-117; Algar), who believed that all creation and knowledge is ultimately contained in the first emanative differentiating power point, the one under the Arabic letter "b" of the initial besmelláh (q.v.) "in the name of God," of the first Sura of the Qurʾán, the Surat al-fáteha; Shaikhism, founded by Shaikh Ahmad Ahsáʾi (d. 1826; q.v.); Babism, founded by Mirzá Mohammad-ʿAli, known as the Báb (executed 1850, q.v.; see also Babism); and Bahaism.
Similar to cabbalistic gematria in Jewish tradition, the quasi-alchemical divinatory techniques to find hidden dates and connections involve two distinct aspects of letters, numerical and non-numerical. A simple additive examples is the foretelling by Ebn al-ʿArabi of the Almohads' victory over the Christians at Alarcos (al-Arak) on the Iberian Peninsula, when pointed by a mysterious friend to the phrase fathan mobinan "clear victory" (Qurʾán 48:1; the numerical value of the phrase, according to the Abjad table, is 592, corresponding to 1195-96 C.E.; Ebn al-ʿArabi, 1971, p. 29). Another example is the association of two names with the same date, for instance, the birth year of Timur, 736/1336, which is also the year that the last Il-khan, Abu Saʿid (q.v.) died, for which was found the chronogram lawḏ (LVD) "refuge" (3+6+700; Roemer, p. 181; Browne, III, p. 58). Or, two fundamental terms are found to have the same numerical value, such as the sacred number 19 in Babism and Bahaism, which is encoded in the equation of wáhed (Váhid; 6+1+8+4) "the One," with wojud (VJVD; 6+3+6+4) "existence." More complex operations include addition and subtraction (e.g., dud az Khorásán bar ámad "smoke came up from Khorasan" for the death year of the poet Jámi, obtained by subtracting the numerical value of "dud" [14] from that of "Khorásán" [912]; Brown, III, p. 512); anagrammatic transposition; replacement of letters by others from various types of alphabetic arrangements; the combination with letters from significant words, such as the ninety-nine most beautiful names of God with those of the names of the desired object; the notaricon, that is, acronymic exegesis by which each letter is replaced by a different significantword (for a variety of chronograms, see Nasrábádi, pp. 468 ff.). ...
... Beside European influences, the intellectual sources of Jalál-al-Din Mirzá's acknowledged freethinking are not entirely known, though allusions in the sources to his "broad association" (wosʿat-e mashrabi) and making "remarks contrary to the spirit of pure shariʿa" (Diván-Beygi, I, p. 370) may suggest not only traces of possible indebtedness to the European Enlightenment, for instance through the perusal of works by Voltaire, but also exposure to the indigenous Persian antinomian tradition found in Sufi circles and the heterodox (báteni) milieux of the time. This tradition culminated in the emergence of the Babi movement (see Babism) in the middle of the 19th century, with its advocacy of a break with Islam and the founding of a new circle of revelation (Amanat, 1999, pp. 8-9; Idem, 1989, pp. 48-105). ...
... Japanese cities which had facilities for foreigners, such as international schools, cemeteries, and religious institutions, were few, and therefore foreigners in Japan, especially those from Western, south Asian, and west Asian countries, tended to live mainly in big cities like Tokyo or in the old ports, such as Yokohama and Kobe, which have long been open to foreigners. These cities had communities of different national and religious groups. For example, a Muslim community existed in Kobe from the 1930s, and both a Jewish and a Bahai community from the 1950s. Some Iranian residents in Japan belonged to these communities. In general, the lifestyle of most Iranians in Japan was similar to that of the Westerners. They sent their children to international schools and used shops that sold imported goods. Japanese people usually treated the Iranians living in Japan just in the same way as they did the Westerners. ...
... (Abdullah Cevdet, b. Arapkir, 9 September 1869; d. Istanbul, 29 November 1932), Ottoman poet, writer, translator, and thinker. He was the son of Ömer Wasfi Bey who belonged to the Ömer-oġulları Kurdish family. Upon finishing primary school in Hozat (Khozát) and Arapkir he studied at the Military Middle School in the city of Maʿmurat al-ʿAziz (today Elazığ) in 1882-85, and then at the Kuleli Military High School in 1885-88 and at the Gülhane Military Medical School in 1888-94, both in Istanbul. During his military studies he developed an interest in politics and in 1890 became one of the founders and active members of the political group that later became known as the Society for Union and Progress (İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti). In 1894 he graduated as a medical officer. In 1896 he was exiled to Tripoli for political reasons. In 1897 he went through Tunisia and France to Geneva, where he joined the Young Turks. He wrote various articles for ʿOtmánli, a critical newspaper, and founded the journal Qahriyát which was against the Ottoman political system. In 1899, while continuing his political activities, he accepted the position of medical officer at the Ottoman Embassy in Vienna. After having been expelled from Austria in 1903, he went back to Geneva, where in 1904 he founded the periodical Ejtehád. After some time he was expelled from Switzerland as well and came to Cairo in 1905 and then to Istanbul in 1910, where he renewed the publication of the Ejtehád. Although this periodical was banned many times, he continued publishing it under different names. After World War I, he became director-general of public health for a short time. He wrote an article in which he praised Bahaism (see Bahai Faith) as an ideal religion. As a result of this, in 1922 he was summoned to court for having allegedly insulted the Prophet Muhammad, but in 1926 the proceedings were dropped. However, he was never again allowed to take any public post, because he had sided with the British after World War I and also because he had had contacts with Kürt Te'âli Cemiyeti (Society for the Advancement of the Kurds). He died from a heart attack on 29 November 1932 in Istanbul. ...
... Iranian Jews were also active in the Zionist organization that was established in Iran in the beginning of the 1940s. The movement accepted Jewish youth who wanted to immigrate to Palestine and join the kibbutzim. Following the conference, Ha-Khalutz opened branches outside of Tehran. In 1947, there were fifteen branches of the movement, three of them in Tehran. Some two thousand youths were members of the movement. The movement laid the foundation for the emigration of thousands of Jews from Iran in the 1950s. Ha-Khalutz prevented many Jewish youths and other Jews from converting to the Bahai faith and from joining the communist movement (Saʿidi, pp. 48-162; Sasson, 2005, pp. 157-72; Davidi, pp. 238-58; Hanásáb, pp. 3-12). ...
... This period begins with publication of a meaningful manifesto titled Emruz che báyad kard (What must be done today?), Tehran, 1941; followed by Khodá bá mást (God is with us), Tehran, 1942. Other relevant works include Payám be dáneshmandán-e Orupá va Ámricá (A message to the scholars of Europe and America), Tehran 1942; Háfez che miguyad (What does Hafez say? [a critical assessment of his Gnostic poetry]), Tehran, 1942; Dar pirámun-e Eslám (About Islam), Tehran, 1943; Dar pirámun-e kherad (On wisdom) Tehran, 1943; Varjávand bonyád, Tehran, 1943 (for details, see Katiráʾi, pp. 373- 74); Farhang chist (What is culture?), Tehran, 1943. Kasravi's most critical works in this period are three books on Shiʿism, Bahaism, and Sufism: Shiʿigari (Shiʿism), became the most famous and controversial book on the dominant religion of the Iranian people, first published in 1943 and revised as Bekhᵛánid o dávari konid (Read and judge), also as Bekhᵛánand o dávari konand, 1944 (with commentary, ed M. Amini, Los Angeles, Calif., 2011); Sufigari (Sufism), Tehran, 1943; Baháʾigari (Bahism), Tehran, 1943; repr. as Baháyigari, Shiʿigari, Sufigari, Köln, 1996. Pendárhá (Thoughts), Tehran, 1943. His defense of Brigadier General Rokn-al-Din Mokhtári, the police chief of Reza Shah, was also published in this period as "Defáʿiyát-e Ahmad Kasravi az Sarpás Mokhtári va Pezeshk Ahmadi," Parcham-e ruzáne va haftegi, 1942-43; repr., Paris, 2004....Selected books and essays by adversaries. Numerous critical, and often bitterly rhetorical, articles, pamphlets, and books were published in response to Kasravi's influential work, Shiʿigari, which effectively challenged the main principles of Shiʿism: Taqi Adibpur, Tisha bar bonyád-e Kasravi (A cutting blow to the foundation of Kasravi), Shiraz, 1945; ʿAbd-Alláh Átashkadi, Náma-ye sargosháda (Open letter), Ahvaz, 1944; Nur-al-Din Chahárdehi, Wahhábiyat va rishahá-ye án (Wahhabism and its roots), Tehran, 1984; Yusof Fażáʾi, Bábigari, Baháʾigari, Kasravigari (Babism, Bahaism, and Kasravism), Tehran, 2003 ...
... Historical context. Students of the modern history of Iran are presented with two distinctive religious reform movements since the mid-19th century. The first was begun by some disciples of Shaikh Ahmad Ahsáiʾi and Sayyed ʿAli-Mohammad Báb (qq.v.). Later, those influenced by and close to Sayyed Jamál-al-Din Asadábádi (see afgháni, jamál-al-din) used new religious concepts to challenge the established Shiʿite hierarchy as well as the social order. This socio-religious reform movement left two lasting legacies. One was the creation of the Bahai faith (see Bahaism), and the other was unquestionable, though indirect, influence it had on the 19th-century Modernity Movement and early 20th-century Constitutional Revolution in Iran (see Islam In Iran: Movements in 20th Century Iran)....It is evident from Kasravi's writings during the final years of his life that his assessment of Islam, in particular Shiʿism and to some extent Bahaism, as not based on a desire to return to the origin of Islam and emulate the ‘forefathers' (as advocated by salafi Muslims). Rather he upheld kherad (that is, reason and knowledge) as the most valuable faculty bestowed on mankind by God. But Muslims do not distinguish this faculty—which all should recognize and cherish as a part of a universal creed—as a God-given gift. Instead, they affirm the opposite by believing that the past was better than today, and the future promises no hope (Kasravi, 1943b, pp. 8-9).
...In Shiʿigari followed by Baháʾigari (1943c), Kasravi left no doubts that he sought no dialogue with the most ardent proponents of the sanctified belief that the Twelfth Imam (Imám-e zamán) disappeared and will return on the Judgement Day. To him, it made no difference that Shiʿites believed that the Imám-e Zamán is yet to appear and Bahai faithful saw Báb as personification of the absent Imam. Kasravi wrote that the entire concept of believing in an absent Imam was ludicrous, against reason, and therefore a hindrance to progress and enlightenment (ibid., pp. 138- 45). He saw no shortcuts or back roads toward a modern and secular Iran without an intellectual confrontation with some of the most sacred tenets of the dominant religious thinking (ibid., pp. 224, 233-34). ...
... During the period of late 1941 to mid-1945 Kasravi wrote some of his sharpest critique of the clergy and tenets of Shiʿism, Bahaism and Sufism. He became the embodiment of intellectual revision of official religious and cultural thought and the self-appointed, outspoken adversary of the resurgent Islamic movement. Kasravi let it be known through seventeen books and pamphlets, as well as numerous articles in his newspaper Parcham, that he believed the renaissance of political Islam and attempts to hold the government to Islamic law (shariʿa) were hostile to the modern values and institutions espoused by the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, in which Kasravi was a young participant (Kasravi, 1990, pp. 30-33; see above, i, and below, v). ...
... Early life. Kasravi was born in Hokmávár, a poor rural quarter in the suburbs of Tabriz, to Háji Mir Qásem, a small merchant in a family of religious functionaries. He entered a traditional school (maktab; see education iii) at the age of six in the expectation that he would become a mullah to carry on his paternal ancestors' role of religious leader for the quarter. Although the school's semiliterate mullah could not educate the intelligent and curious young boy, Kasravi successfully completed the traditional program in the course of four years with the help of his father and other relatives at home. At the age of 11, he lost his father. At 13, responsible for his family's future, he took charge of his father's carpet-weaving business, a job that ended after eight months upon the permanent closing of the business. He then took over the management of the carpet-weaving business of a close friend of his father. About three years later, at the urging of his family he left that trade to resume his theological studies. In a short time he mastered Arabic grammar and then enrolled in the Tálebiya School, the biggest school in Tabriz, where he met Shaikh Mohammad Khiábáni (q.v), who was teaching traditional astronomy (Hayʾat-e qadim; Kasravi, 1990, pp. 5-30)....
At Zanján, he continued to write his Arabic history of the role of Azerbaijan in the constitutional movement (see below, iii) and simultaneously undertook research on the Babi movement, of which this town had been one of the most active centers. At the end of summer 1923, he took a few weeks of vacation to visit his family in Tehran (he had remarried during his stay in Mázandarán). Then Justice appointed him examiner of the competence of judges in Qazvin and Zanján—a job which involved administering a series of tests.
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Faithful to his principles, to the end of his life Kasravi remained an unremitting defender of order, national unity, justice, the Constitution, and the modernization of the country. He staunchly opposed everything he considered an obstacle to realizing these ideals. Thus it was that he ventured onto a dangerous path that all the secular intellectuals of his period attempted to bypass. The defiance he would hurl at Shiʿism was unforgivable, not only for the clergy and religious fanatics, but also for the high officials of the country. With the publication of his book Shiʿigari [Shiʿism] in late 1943, he signed his own death warrant. Shortly after its publication, he wrote another book, on Bahaism, called Baháʾigari, which takes it to be an extension of Shiʿism. The two books complemented each other. Kasravi treats some aspects of Shiʿism in the book on Bahaism. According to him, the messianism on which Bahaism relies is an illusion, contrary to the natural law of the universe. Such a belief prevents men from exercising good behavior, since it is assumed a priori that man can do nothing against the evil that grows from day to day (Kasravi, 1996a, p. 63). In his analysis of this religion, Kasravi appeals generously to reason. He rejects all argument from authority (dalil-e naqli), without which no revealed religion can stand. He intended in part to lift the intellectual obstacles that formed a barrier to national unity and in part to propagate a degree of rationalism in a world where the ancestral culture transmitted by literature and religious faith found it hard, because of its propensity for the irrational, to incorporate scientific thought, the keystone of the incredible success of Western societies. ...
... (ʿAli Mohammad Khádemi, b. Jahrom, Fars, 30 November 1913; d. Tehran, 7 November 1978), pilot, officer, and first general manager of Iran Air (FIGURE 1). Khademi was a career officer in the Air Force, who was promoted in 1966 to lieutenant general (sepahbod). He served from 1962 until 1978 as the general manager of Iran Air, the newly founded national flag-carrier, which under his stewardship became a very successful domestic and international airline. In 1970-71 he served as president of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). ...Family and eduction. His father Lotf-Alláh Khádemi belonged to a prominent Muslim family. In the early 1900s he joined the Bahai faith, and the subsequent persecution forced him to leave everything behind and to move in 1927 his family to Isfahan. ʿAli Mohammad attended high school in Isfahan and graduated in 1932 at the top of his class. He passed the demanding entrance examination of the Military Academy (Dáneshkada-ye afsari) in Tehran, and graduated with honors in aviation studies in 1936. The following year he graduated with distinction from the Air Force Flying School (Ámuzeshgáh-e khalabánán-eniru-ye haváʾi). ...
... Jiri Kramskyi (b. Plzen [Pilsen], western Bohemia, 23 October 1913; d. Prague, 30 September 1991), Czech general linguist who specialized in Persian language studies. He was born into a lawyer's family and attended secondary school in his native town. He then studied English and Persian (the latter under Professor J. Rypka) at the Charles University, Prague. After the forced closure of the Czech universities during the German occupation, he taught at secondary schools outside Prague. After the end of World War II, he completed his university studies by defending his thesis for the Ph.D. degree, "Introduction to Orthography and Phonology of Modern Persian." He first took a job in the State Institute of Linguistics and then worked in the Research Institute of Special Education, Prague in 1955-78. His research was published in leading orientalist journals....
While many of Krámsky's works deal with English and Turkish linguistics, those on Persian phonology are especially distinctive. He presented one of the first truly innovative attempts at describing modern Persian phonology in 1939. The work has certain shortcomings resulting from the contemporary standard of research in Persian phonology and from problems in data collection, but his further studies filled up such gaps. He also was active in Ural-Altaic and Turkish linguistics, and his research in general linguistics (e.g., Krámsky, 1976) always paid attention to Oriental languages. For instance, the Persian dialects of Khonsár and Gaz are discussed in his papers (1976; see rev. of W. Ehlers, Die Mundart von Chunsar and Die Mundart von Gäz [Wiesbaden, 1976, 1979] in Bibliotheca Orientalis 37, 1980, cols. 85-87; 38, 1981, cols. 489-93). He enriched Iranian linguistics with his fresh ideas in book reviews, especially in the journal Archiv Orientální (e.g., 50, 1982, pp. 93-95, on Mohammad Reza Majidi, Struturelle Beschreibung der iranischen Dialecte der Stadt Semnan [Hamburg, 1980]). Krámský was tied to the Iranian world in other respects, too. His first book, in 1945, was Východ a nová doba "The East and the New Age" (apparently based on John E. Esslemont, Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era, London, 1923; rev. ed., New York, 1937); it discusses in detail some aspects of Iranian thinking and the distinctly peaceful nature of the Baháʾi movement. ...
... Although temporary peace with the Shiʿite ulemas prevailed at the beginning of the reign, there remained a strong clerical opposition at Isfahan. The quarter of Bidábád, where the religious leaser Háji Sayyed Mohammad-Báqer Shafti resided, enjoyed the status of sanctuary (bast). To foster his influence, he had allies among the urban thugs (luti). These engaged themselves in murder, robbery, and rape. The shah, led an expedition to Isfahan in 1839-40. Many thugs were cruelly executed or banished to Ardabil (Eʿtemád-al-Saltana, Montazam-e náseri, ed. Reżwáni, p. 1648; Hedáyat, Rawżat al-safá X, pp. 253-55; Algar, pp. 108 ff.; eyewitness account by Flandin, 1851, XI, pp. 985-86). Manuchehr Khan Moʿtamed-al-Dawla, who had accompanied the shah, was then appointed governor of Isfahan, Lorestán, and Khuzestán (Bamdád, Rejál III, pp. 109-10). Manuchhehr Khan thus extended his power to regions beyond Áqási's control (Amanat, 1997, p. 40). He provided shelter to Sayyed ʿAli-Mohammad Shirázi, the Báb (Amanat, 1989, pp. 257-58). Local thugs at Karbaláʾ created similar problems with subsequent Ottoman harsh repression that resulted in a wholesale massacre of the inhabitants. Both British and Russian envoys intervened to prevent war between Persia and the Ottomans (Algar, pp. 114 ff.), which led to the signing of the second treaty of Erzerum (16 Jomádá II 1263/31 May 1847; Hedáyat, Rawżat al-safá X, pp. 302-6; see Boundaries i).Mohammad Shah's reign was, in many ways, a period of renewed Sufi activities and a subsequent decline of the Osuli Imami clerical influence (Amanat, 1988, p. 109). Some Sufis attained prominent positions. The Persian branch of the Neʿmat-Alláhi order, revived in late 19th century, gained political influence. Places of Sufi pilgrimage were erected or repaired, and Sufi shrines were endowed like those of the Imams (Algar, pp. 105-7.). Other orders (the Dahabiya, Nurbakhshiya, Kháksár) were also revived. There was, however, "no striking shift of influence from the ulemas to the Sufis" (Amanat, 1988, pp. 79-80). ...The most important religious event during Mohammad Shah's reign was the emergence of the Bábi movement, which started with the claims of its founder, Sayyed ʿAli-Mohammad Shirázi, and his proclamation in May 1844. The degree of involvement of the Báb and his followers (beginning with Mollá Mohammad-Hosayn Boshruʾi) with Sayyed Kázem Rashti and succession remains open to discussion. The shah's sympathetic attention towards the new prophet alarmed Áqási, who had the Báb sent to Máku in Azerbaijan, where he was kept under confinement and later transferred to the fortress of Chahriq near Urmia. Facing internal dissent and worrying about the shah's illness, Áqási avoided adopting any drastic measures against the Babis. This attitude corresponded with his policy of restraining the influence of the ulema. Final confrontation of the Babi movement with the ulema and the Qajar state and its bloody repression was left to Mirzá Taqi Khan Amir Kabir in the next reign (Amanat, 1989, pp. 372 ff.). The movement eventually broke with traditional Islam and evolved, after splitting into branches, into a new religion (see AZALI Babism, Báb, Babism, Bahaism). ...
... Tumanskiǐ was friendly with the Bahais (see Bahá'í Faith), whom he first met in Ashgabat in 1890. He maintained close relationship with the Bahais in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, and he studied and translated Bahai works and literature. The most important publication of Tumanskiǐ in the field of Bahai studies was his translation (1899) of the Ketáb-e aqdas by Baháʾ-Alláh (1817-92). Besides the Russian translation, the publication also contains the Arabic original and an introduction on 48 pages. An earlier publication of Tumanskiǐ (1892) deals with Baháʾ-Alláh's other work, Ketáb-e ʿahd. In his studies in the field, Tumanskiǐ corresponded with E. G. Browne (1862-1926). He offered significant assistance to the Bahai community in Russia, especially when the first Bahai temple was being constructed in Ashgabat (Hudüd al-ʿálam, pp. xlii-xliii). Tumanskiǐ translated into Russian the work Shajara-ye Tarákema (‘Genealogical Tree of the Turkmen') of Abu'l-Gázi Bahádor Khan of Khiva (1603-63). This translation was published in Ashgabat in 1897. Being a military man, he wrote a book entitled Military Art of the Ancient Arabs (1897). ...
... Zhukovskiĭ as a specialist on contemporary religious and political studies. Zhukovskiĭ lived and worked in two countries (Russia and Persia), which both went through one of the most difficult and decisive periods in their modern history; both were at the peak of their revolutionary situation when Zhukovskiĭ had been already not only a prominent specialist but also a high-rank administrator (Director of the Teaching Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, see below). This made him being interested not only in medieval poetry, but also in the contemporary political events in both Persia and Russia, and in their relations. A significant part of Zhukovskiĭ's archive is his correspondence with his former students, who were appointed to various diplomatic posts in different parts of Persia. This regular and frequent correspondence shows that he was constantly aware about the events of the Great Game, and in many cases he guided the Russian diplomats in some particular fields and situations. Zhukovskiĭ was sending out concrete recommendations and requests on what he wished to receive (manuscripts and publications on Babi movement [see Babism], pamphlets on famines and uprisings, satires on different political and religious leaders); his correspondents, most of whom were working in the Russian mission and consulates in Iran—among them A. R. Baranovskiĭ, G. D. Batyushkov, D. D. Belyaev, N. Z. Bravin, M. M. Girs, N. Dubrovin, A. Ya. Miller, and V. P. Nikitin—were providing him with the latest information and recently published materials, describing the political, economical, and religious situation in their regions and explaining the meaning of colloquial words used in the pamphlets. For example, on 26 October 1902 A. Baranovskiĭ sent a satire from Isfahan, where all the political and religious leaders were mentioned in the most severe manner, with his own comments on each of them. M. Girs from Mashhad sent an article from the newspaper Habl al-matin and two brochures describing the uprising at the end of April 1903 against the ruler of Khorasan Nayer-al-Dowla, who owned the whole of Nishapur and its vicinities. In a letter dated 17 May 1905, the Russian consul in Kerman, A. Miller, described the religious situation in the city, the influence of the Neʿmatalláhi order, the Babis, and other sects, as well as the appearance of a new S haykh Ahmad. Such fresh and valuable materials allowed Zhukovskiĭ to prepare important and up-to-date presentations, like the one he made on 20 November 1903 in the Oriental Department of the Russian Archaeological Society, which was dedicated to the modern situation of Persia and contemporary literary works (O chertah, 1904)....The impact of the scholar on religious studies is reflected in his interest on the ‘living' Islam, which was practiced by the Iranians during his stay in the country. His interests, which embraced the history and the peculiar features of different Muslim movements, such as Babism and Ahl-e Haqq, are still of special interest for historians and the historians of religions and religious art (Shapshal, pp. 131-34).
...Zhukovskiĭ as artist. Besides his University activities, Zhukovskiĭ was also famous in the artistic circles of St. Petersburg. Friends knew him as a talented painter and a musician, but his favorite hobby was theatre. In 1910 he participated in putting the play Bab on the stage in the Suvorin Theatre in St Petersburg. This play was written on the basis of the news coming to Russia about the appearance of the new religious movement of Babism, which was proclaimed by Sayyed ʿAli-Mohammad Shirázi (1819-50) in Persia in 1844. The play was written by Izabella Grinevskaya (1854-1944), a poetess and playwright from St. Petersburg, who constantly consulted Zhukovskiĭ during her work on the play. Among Zhukovskui's closest friends were such famous Russian men of letters as Nikolaĭ Leskov (1831-95) and Vsevolod Solovyov (1849-1903). Under Zhukovskiĭ's influence, poet and writer Vasiliĭ Velichko (1860-1903) created a whole cycle of poems entitled Vostochnye motivy (Oriental Motifs, published in 1890).
...On 5-6 May 1958 the Research Committees of the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) University and the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences held a conference dedicated to the centenary of Zhukovskiĭ's birth. The proceedings of this conference were published in 1960, and they include the contributors of Yu. E. Borshchevskiĭ (unpublished archives of Zhukovskiĭ), M. N. Bogolyubov (Zhukovskiĭ as a linguist), O. I. Smirnova (Zhukovskiĭ's archeological survey of ancient Marv), A. T. Tagirdzhanov (Zhukovskiĭ's contribution to the study of Persian Sufi literature, and specifically his work on the divan of Bábá Kuhi), P. P. Bushev (Zhukovskiĭ's first trip to Persia), S. V. Zhukovskiĭ (the son of Zhukovskiĭ, memoirs about his father), S. M. Shapshal (his correspondence with Zhukovskiĭ from the time when Shapshal worked in Persia on Zhukovskiĭ's recommendation and his interest in ‘Muslim icons,' shamáʾel), I. I. Umnyakov (Zhukovskiĭ's interest in Persian manuscripts and the Babi movement in Bukhara, where Umnyakov was appointed in 1916 as the representative of the Russian government), and A. M. Muginov (he expanded on Zhukovskiĭ's article about the use of the verb dáshtan in Persian folk tradition). ...
... Sháh Begom Ziá as-Saltana (1799-1873), seventh daughter of Fath-ʿAli Shah Qajar (r. 1797-1834), private secretary to him, calligrapher and poet. Her mother, Maryam Khanom, the shah's thirty-ninth wife, was of Jewish origin and had previously been married to Ághá Mohammad Khan Qajar (Lesán-al-Molk, I, p. 555; Khávari, II, p. 986; Ażod-al-Dawla, p. 33; Bámdád, IV, p. 51). Żiáʾ-al-Saltana had one full sister, Soltán Begom, and four full brothers, Mahmud Mirzá, Homáyun Mirzá, Ahmad-ʿAli Mirzá and Jahánsháh Mirzá (see Maryam Khanum and Fath Ali-Shah). Of Żiáʾ-al-Saltana's four full brothers, the eldest, Mahmud Mirzá (1799-1835), was the most accomplished. ...Żiáʾ-al-Saltana's eldest daughter, Shahansháh Begom, known as Ághá Ján (ca. 1836-1917), married Mirzá Mohammad Háshem Qázi Tabátabáʾi (d. 1864) (Torábi Táabátabáʾi, pp. 186-89, 202-207 and 411). Of their three daughters, the eldest, Ághá Shahzáda (1850-ca. 1910), married Sayyed ʿAbd-Alláh Entezám-al-Saltana (d. 1891), son of Mirzá Musá Wazir (1783-1865) and younger brother of Mirzá ʿIsá Wazir (d. 1892) (Bámdád, II, p. 514; IV, p. 164). A few months prior to his death, Entezám-al-Saltana was appointed Tehran's chief of police (Bámdád, II, pp. 282-3). Entezám-al-Saltana's grandsons, ʿAbd-Alláh (1895-1983) and Nasr-Alláh (1899-1980) Entezám, rose high in the service of the Pahlavi state (see Entezam, and Nasru'llah). Both Entezám-al-Saltana and Ághá Shahzáda were prominent members of the Tehran Baháʾi community, and they succeeded in converting Shahansháh Begom and her youngest daughter, ʿAḏráʾ Khanom, known as Żiáʾ-al-Hajjiya (1861-1924), to the new religion (Balyuzi 1985, p. 173; Asdaq, p. 36; Brookshaw, pp. 21-22). Both Ághá Shahzáda and her sister received numerous tablets (alwáh) from Baháʾ-Alláh and his son, ʿAbd-al-Baháʾ (Baháʾ-Alláh, pp. 235-300; Asdaq, pp. 13, 20, 36; Brookshaw, passim). Soon after converting (ca. 1884), Żiáʾ-al-Hájjiya married the prominent Baháʾi (see Bahai Faith) teacher (moballegh) Ebn Asdaq (1850-1928). ...
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