Amín Hájjí:
trustees of Huqúqu'lláh

by Moojan Momen

published in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Volume 1
New York: Columbia University, 1985

AMĪN, ḤĀJJĪ, name given successively to two Bahaʾis who were trustees of the Bahaʾi system of religious taxation, the Ḥoqūq Allāh. The first was Šāh-Moḥammad Manšādī, Amīn-al-bayān, who was a farmer and shepherd before his conversion to the Bābī faith. He then lived for a time in Baghdad while Bahāʾallāh was there. Later in about 1867, he made the first of his journeys to take the gifts and offerings of the Bahaʾis to Bahāʾallāh in Edirne (Adrianople). Bahāʾallāh then appointed him the Trustee (Amīn) of the Ḥoqūq Allāh. Thereafter he made journeys almost every year to ʿAkkā taking money and letters from Iran and returning with Tablets (Alwāḥ), which he distributed traveling from town to town, especially in the north of Iran. He was killed in his travels during Shaikh ʿObaydallāh’s revolt in 1297/1880.

The second Ḥāǰǰī Amīn was Abu’l-Ḥasan Ardakānī, Amīn-e Elāhī, who had become a Bābī in the early days. He was the first Bahaʾi from the outside world to succeed in meeting with Bahāʾallāh inside the prison-city of ʿAkkā, and he assisted Ḥāǰǰī Šāh-Moḥammad before being appointed his successor. See further under Ardakānī.

Bibliography: Fāżel Māzandarānī, Ẓohūr al-Ḥaqq VI (ms. in private hands), fols. 742-48; VIII, part 2, Tehran, 132 Badīʿ/1975, pp. 901-94.