The Baha'is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies.

• Author: Lambden, Stephen N.
• Position: Book review

The Baha'is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies. Edited by DOMINIC PARVIZ BROOKSHAW AND SEENA B. FAZL. Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, vol. 12. London: ROUTLEDGE, 2008. Pp. xv + 283. $160.

This important volume of collected papers contains eleven brief essays in the somewhat neglected, but now fast-evolving field of academic Babi-Baha'i studies, focusing on Iranian "socio-historical" topics. The subjects dealt with often utilize new data and methodological approaches leading to refreshing insights in a field sometimes dominated by anti-academic apologetics. The foregoing possibly limiting concerns are here largely transcended and there is much to praise about most of the outstanding essays published here.

The first essay by Mehrdad Amanat, "Messianic Expectation and Evolving Identities: The Conversion of Iranian Jews to the Baha'i Faith," contributes to an area of long-standing though increasing interest, Jews and Baha'is in Iran. This entry contains a very useful summary of early Jewish converts to the Babi-Baha'i religions (pp. 14-18) and has it that the conversion of many Jews to the Baha'i "persecuted minority religion" was a "unique phenomenon in Islamic Iran, if not the entire Muslim world" (p. 22). It goes way beyond the now inadequate viewpoint that Jews converted to the Baha'i faith for purely socio-economic reasons.

The second essay by Fereydun Vahman deals with "The Conversion of Zoroastrians to the Baha'i Faith" (pp. 30-48). It responds to the vexed question of why Persian Zoroastrians, as members of an ancient, perhaps three-thousand-year-old conservative Iranocentric religion, should be moved to embrace a new, persecuted, Arabic-embracing neo-Islamic faith. Factors highlighted by Vahman include empathy with persecuted members of the Babi-Baha'i faiths, messianic fulfillment through the advent of Saoshyant or Shah Vahram-i Varjavand, etc., as well as the hope for and contribution towards religious renewal. His article provides a rich, detailed, and valuable synopsis of historical information pertaining to a previously largely neglected subject.

The next essay, by the co-editor Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, "Instructive Encouragement: Tablets of Baha'ullah and 'Abdu'l-Baha to Baha'i Women in Iran and India" (pp. 49-93), goes beyond hagiographical biography in a detailed and fascinating consideration of around 250 primary Baha'i scriptural writings dating between 1870 and 1921, Arabic and Persian texts addressed...