19. The Bahai Faith

Qajar Dynasty

According to Dreyfuss, the man who was given the responsibility by the Scottish Rite Masons to organize the Persian and Middle East lodges was Wilfred Scawen Blunt (1840 – 1922), the father-in-law to Neville Stephen Lytton, the youngest son of Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831 – 1891), son of Edward Bulwer-Lytton.[1] And, the first recorded project of the nineteenth-century of this British occult aristocracy, further explains Dreyfuss, was the Bahai movement of Iran, which would spawn Blunt’s co-conspirator, Jamal ud Din al Afghani (1838/1839 – 1897), who in the late nineteenth century, was “one of the most influential Muslim reformers” of the era, travelling the Muslim world, advocating for Islamic modernism and pan-Islamism, a predecessor of the Salafi movement.[2] Afghani’s other British handler, other than Blunt, was Edward G. Browne (1862 – 1926), the famous British orientalist, who published numerous articles and books, including several of the few Western accounts of early Babi and Bahai history.

The Bahai movement was particularly active during the time of Nasser ad-Din Shah (1831 – 1896) of the Qajar dynasty, which was of Turkic origin, and ruled Persia from 1789 to 1925. After the Arab invasion, between 632 and 654 AD, the peoples of Iran gradually converted from Zoroastrianism to Islam over the course of about a hundred years. Iran continued to remain a predominantly Sunni country for many centuries, until it was conquered by Shah Ismail I (1487 – 1524), who led the Qizilbash, a diverse array of mainly Turkic Shiah militant groups that flourished in Azerbaijan, Anatolia, the Armenian highlands, and the Caucasus, who founded the Safavid dynasty in 1501, often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by establishing Twelver Shiism as the state religion of Iran. From that time on, the process of voluntary-forced mass conversion of the population to the Shiah faith of began. Ismail’s successor, Shah Tahmasp I (1514 – 1576), invited Shiah theologians from Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The shahs elevated the ulema as much as possible in order to strengthen their power, contributing to the birth of a golden age of the Shiah Ulama, bringing in large incomes, power, honor and respect in society and a privileged position at court.

The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1736, and at their height, they controlled all of modern Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia, most of Georgia, the North Caucasus, Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. After the Afghan invasion in the 1720s, the Safavid dynasty’s power weakened sharply and a protracted political crisis began in Iran. In 1722, Peter the Great of neighboring Imperial Russia launched the Russo-Persian War (1722–1723), capturing many of Iran’s Caucasian territories. Meanwhile, Persia’s imperial rivals, the Ottomans and the Russians, took advantage of the chaos in the country to seize more territory for themselves. Iran’s territorial integrity was restored by a native Iranian Turkic Afshar warlord from Khorasan, Nader Shah (1698 – 1747), founder of the Afsharid dynasty.

Under Nader Shah’s Sunni rule, Shiism remained only one of the officially permitted religions of Iran. Karim Khan Zand (c. 1705 – 1779) came to power, founding the Zand dynasty, developed relations again with the Ulama, but it was Agha Mohammed Khan Qajar (1742 – 1797), who ascended the throne after his death, founding the Qajar dynasty, who immediately proclaimed that he was an adherent of Shiism, and the Shia Ulama again occupied the place as they had under the Safavids. Under his son and successor, Fath Ali Shah (1769 – 1834), the strengthening the ties between the monarchy and the Ulama was continued.[3]

After the death of Fath Ali Shah in 1834, some of his sons including Hossein Ali Mirza and Ali Mirza Zel as-Soltan rose up as claimants to the throne. With the support of English and Russian forces, his grandson Mohammad Shah (1808 – 1848) suppressed the rebellious princes and asserted his authority.[4] During the rise of the Babi faith and its prophet Bab, Mohammad Shah refused to persecute them despite the Fatwa (decree) imposed by Shiah Ulama. However, when his son and successor Nasser ad-Din Shah came to power in 1848, with his sanction, thousands of Babis were killed, in reaction to an assassination attempt against him from a small group of Babis. This treatment continued under his Grand Vizier Amir Kabir (1807 – 1852), who even ordered the execution of the Bab, who was regarded by Babi's and Bahais as a manifestation of God.

 

Babism 

Afghani was commonly thought to be a Babi.[5] Very little is known about Afghani’s origins. Despite the appellation “Afghani,” to claim Afghan nationality, scholars generally believe that he was instead an Iranian Shiah. There are some reports that he was a Jew.[6] During a visit to India around 1855, Afghani was exposed to Western scientific and political thought for the first time, and may have begun form his attitudes toward European and British imperialism with the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.[7] Afghani spent four years in India, after which he appears to have made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and from there he is believed to have traveled through Syria, Iraq, and Iran to Afghanistan.[8] At the end of 1866, Afghani became confidential counselor to the new Amir, Azam Khan, the ruler in Afghanistan, whom he influenced in the direction of reform and modernization. That as a foreigner Afghani should have attained such a position so quickly was remarked upon in contemporary accounts. Some scholars have speculated that Afghani, then calling himself “Istanbuli,” was, or represented himself to be, a Russian agent able to obtain for Azam Russian money and political support against the British, with whom Azam was on bad terms.[9] When Azam lost the throne to one of his half-brother and rival, Sher Ali Khan (c. 1825 – 1879), he was suspicious of Afghani, and had him expelled from his territory in November 1868.

According to a report, from a man who must have been an Afghan with the local government, Afghani was, “….well versed in geography and history, speaks Arabic and Turkish fluently, talks Persian like an Irani. Apparently, follows no particular religion. His style of living resembles more that of an European than of a Muslim.”[10] Several of those who witnessed Afghani’s teachings confirm his deviation from orthodoxy. Among them was Lutfi Juma, who recounted, “his beliefs were not true Islam although he used to present they were.”[11] In addition, Afghani had acquired considerable knowledge of Islamic philosophy, particularly of the Persians, including Avicenna, an Ismaili scholar named Nasir ud Din Tusi, and others, and of Sufism. Evidence also proves that he possessed such works, but also that he showed interest in occult subjects, such as mystical alphabets, numerical combinations, alchemy and other Kabbalistic subjects.[12]

Afghani had clearly rejected Islam, or any other religion, as a legitimate belief system, so his defense of it, or any other ideas he may have expressed, explains Keddie, “should be criticized on tactical rather than logical or theological grounds.” [13] In Afghani’s own words, as cited in Elie Kedourie’s Afghani and ‘Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam:

 

We do not cut off the head of religion except with the sword of religion. Therefore, if you were to see us now, you would see ascetics and worshipers, kneeling and genuflecting, never disobeying God’s commands and doing all that they are ordered to do.[14]

 

More specifically, Afghani was more likely a Dönmeh, an Ismaili, or a Bahai, or all of the above. Afghani, explains Keddie, was acquainted with and influenced by the religio-political developments in Iran in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries manifested particularly in the Shaykhi and Babi movements.[15] Shaykhism is a mystical strand of Twelver Shiah Islam of the followers of Shaykh Ahmad (1753 – 1826), and which attracted followers from throughout Qajar Iran and the Ottoman Empires. Shaykhism, which was regarded as heretical by many of the pre­dominant Usuli school of Twelver Shiism, introduced novel ideas about as the nature of the End Times and the Day of Resurrection. According to Keddie, Shaykhism and its offshoot Babism betray traces of foreign interference, as is typical of the numerous cults and heresies that tend to follow contact with Western imperial powers, like the Ratu Adil (“Just Ruler”) in Indonesia, the Ahmadiyya in India, and both Islamic Mahdism and Christian messianism in Africa. As explained by Keddie, despite the roots of Babism in Shaykhism, and its resemblance to other Shiah heresies like the Ismailis:

 

…there are some phenomena which suggest possible ties also between Babism and the early Western impact. One is the new content of Babi thought itself; another the little-studied role of the Azali branch of the Babis in preparing the revolution, as well as the Westernism of the Baha’is, who changed original Babism. Third, it seems more than coincidental that radical messianic movements have arisen in several parts of Asia and Africa shortly after they first felt significant Western economic and political impact.[16]

 

Shaykh Ahmad’s successor, Kazim Rashti (1793 – 1843), was aware of Freemasonry in Europe, but provided the following mysterious response, when asked seven questions about the order in 1833:

 

These houses have great fame, and I know of the miracles that occur in them. Many things that are not in these houses are “present” there in a special way. There are also various methods of healing through magic and sorcery, which are related to the “science of white magic,” with the help of which they call upon the triune angel Shamun, Zeitun and Simun. And with the help of the triune angel, the assistants [Masons] by the power of thought reveal and clarify the difficulties descending from the level of the second heaven, and that which is caused by the direction of the movement of the star Mercury, and that which is connected with “white magic.” All these wonders are in the order of things.[17]

 

After Rashti’s death in 1843, many Shaykhis converted to Babism and the Bahai faith. Babism was founded in 1844 when a young sayyid, Ali Mohammed of Shiraz (1819 – 1850), had declared himself to be the Bab, or gate, to the Twelfth Imam, whose manifestation was expected by some Shaykhis. The concept Bab has Gnostic roots, and is commonly ascribed in later literature to the eight-century Ghulat sect the Khattabiyya, to which belonged the father of Abdullah bin Maymun, founder of the Ismaili sect. The term was in use in the early Ismaili movement for “a figure in the hierarchy of the missionary movement who participated in preaching an esoteric interpretation of the Islamic revelation.”[18] The early Ismaili missionary and author Jafar ibn Mansur al-Yaman, Ibn Hawshab (d. 914), who established the Ismaili doctrine in Yemen, writing before the accession of the Fatimids in 909, applied the term to the heirs and designated successors (Wasi) of the Imam and to Imams, and to Ali ibn Abi Talib, as the son-in-law and successor of Mohammed, all of whom he regarded as bearers of esoteric truths. In Fatimid Ismailism the Bab was the leading figure in the Da’wa of the Da’i al-Duʿat (“head missionary”).[19] The office gradually declined and disappeared after the end of the Fatimid Caliphate.[20]

“The openness and cosmopolitan attitude of many Bahai merchants and missionaries,” explains the Encyclopaedia Iranica, “enabled them to make contact with and to achieve conversions among non-Muslim minorities in Persia, particularly Zoroastrians and Jews.”[21] Among the considerable number of Jews, who numbered about 50,000 in these parts of Persia and the mountains of Kurdistan, a number were attracted to the religion of Babism.[22] The Iranian historian Abdollah Shahbazi claims that when the Babi religion began it was not Muslims who converted to the Babi and Bahai religions, but crypto-Jews (Anusim) who had assumed Muslim names. Shahbazi claims that when Jewish Zionists had been unsuccessful in a first attempted to invent a new religion approximately 150 years ago, they converted to Islam so as to assume the Babi faith as Muslims.[23] According to Shahbazi, Mullah Husayn (1813 – 1849), also known by the honorific Jinab-i Babul-Bab (“Gate of the Gate”), who was originally a Shaykhi and studied under its leader Siyyid Kazim Rashti, and the first person to profess belief in the Bab as the promised Mahdi of Islam and a Manifestation of God, would have been a crypto-Jew and spread the new faith in Khorasan in order to undermine Islam.[24]

The Babi poet-preacher Tahira Qurrat al-‘Ayn, one of the most reputed religious scholars and poets of nineteenth century Iran, associated with a number of Jews in Hamadan who were sympathetic to the Babi movement.[25] She was one of the Letters of the Living, a title provided by the Bab to the first eighteen disciples of the Babi religion. The daughter of Mohammed Salih Baraghani (b. 1753), an Usuli Twelver Shiah Mujtahid, she was born into one of the most prominent families of her time. In the early 1840s she became a follower of Shaykh Ahmad and began a secret correspondence with his successor Kazim Rashti.

The Bab progressively revealed his claim in his extensive writings to be a Manifestation of God, of a status as great as Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, receiving revelations as profound as the Torah, Gospel, and Quran. Bab composed hundreds of letters and books, often termed tablets, in which he communicated his mission and defined his teachings, which constituted a new Sharia or religious law. His movement eventually acquired tens of thousands of supporters, but was virulently opposed by Shiah Ulama, and bloodily suppressed by the Iranian government. Bab, who is also one of the central figures of the Bahai Faith, gradually and progressively revealed his claim in his extensive writings to be a Manifestation of God, of a status as great as Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, receiving revelations as profound as the Torah, Gospel, and Quran. This new revelation, he claimed, would release the creative energies and capacities necessary for the establishment of global unity and peace. When the Bab was executed for apostasy in 1850, he was tied up in a public square in Tabriz and faced a firing squad of 750 rifles. Babi struggles and uprisings occurred in Iran during Afghani’s childhood there, and a great persecution and emigration of Babis came in 1852 after a group of them had made an attempt on the life of the young Shah, Nasser ad-Din Shah (1831 – 1896), the fourth Shah of Qajar Iran.[26]

 

Bahaullah

In 1845, at the age of 27, Bahaullah (1817 – 1892), founder of the Bahai faith, accepted the claim of the Bab and became one of the most outspoken supporters of the movement.[27] E.G. Browne published two translations of Babi histories, and wrote several of the few Western accounts of early Babi and Bahai history. The man who taught Browne Persian was Mirza Mohammed Baqir, one of Afghani’s associates in the Bahai movement. Baqir was described as “successfully a Shiite, a Muhammedan, a dervish, a Christian, an atheist, and a Jew,” who elaborated “a religious system of his own which he called “Islamo-Christianity.”[28] The history A Traveller’s Narrative was written by Bahaullah’s son and successor, Abdul Baha (1844 – 1921), and translated by Browne. Browne was granted four successive interviews with Bahaullah during the five days he was a guest at Bahi in 1890.[29] In A Traveller’s Narrative, Browne writes of the first of his four interviews with Bahaullah in 1890:

 

The face of him on whom I gazed I can never forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes seemed to read one’s very soul; power and authority sat on that amply brow… No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself before one who is the object of a devotions and love which kinds might envy and emperors sigh for in vain![30]

 

Bahaullah was descended from the rulers of Mazandaran, a province in northern Iran, bordering the Caspian Sea in the north. Nearby is the city of Damavand, which according to Iranian historian Abdollah Shahbazi was the only place where crypto-Jews, who have otherwise been active and entrenched in many parts of Iran, are identified there officially as Dönmeh.[31] Bahai authors trace Bahaullah’s ancestry to Abraham, to the Zoroaster, to King David’s father Jesse, and to Yazdegerd III (624 – 651), the last king of the Sasanian Empire. Referring to himself, Bahaullah stated, “The Most Great Law is come, and the Ancient Beauty ruleth upon the throne of David. Thus hath My Pen spoken that which the histories of bygone ages have related.”[32]

Mirroring the fundamental mission of Freemasonry, Bahaullah preached his religion as the solution to a Universal Religion. Bahaullah founded the Bahai faith, which drew on a mix of Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, but claimed to supersede all other religions in a “one world faith.” Bahaullah first announced his claim to a revelation from God in 1863, in Iraq, and spent the rest of his life imprisoned in the Ottoman Empire. Bahaullah saw himself as a universal Messiah, the same promised one of the Jews, the symbolic return of Christ for Christians and Muslims, and the Shah-Bahram of the Zoroastrians. The principal Bahai tenets are the essential unity of all religions and the unity of humanity. Bahais believe that all the founders of the world’s great religions have been manifestations of God and agents of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race. Therefore, according to the Bahais, despite their differences, the world’s great religions teach an identical truth. Bahaism claims to be the fulfilment of that which was but partially revealed in previous dispensations, and looks upon Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mohammed, and Confucius, as merely preparing the world for the advent of the “Most Great Peace” and the “Mighty World Educator,” which was Bahaullah.

In 1852, angry Babis made a failed attempt to kill Nasser ad-Din Shah, who retaliated by imprisoning Bahaullah and executing several thousands of Babis. While imprisoned in the Siyah-Chal dungeon, Bahaullah claimed to receive revelations from God marking the beginning of his divine mission. The following year, he was exiled from Tehran to Baghdad. Bahaullah entrusted his family to the care of his brother Mirza Musa and without notice left Baghdad in 1854 for the mountains in the north near Sulaymaniyyih in Kurdistan. In Sulaymaniyah, as Bahaullah’s reputation for learning and wisdom grew, he was visited by  Shaykh Uthman, Shaykh Abdur Rahman, and Shaykh Ismail, leaders of the Naqshbandi, Qadiriyya, and Khalidiyya Sufi orders.[33] It was to Shaykh Abdur Rahman that Bahaullah’s book the Four Valleys was written.[34] Throughout this time, as reports Dreyfuss, the Bahai leaders maintained close ties to both Scottish Rite Freemasonry and various movements that began to proliferate throughout India, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and even Africa.[35]

When rumors of a “saint” living in Sulaymaniyyih reached Babis in Baghdad, and suspecting it was Bahaullah, they beg him to return to help the community.[36] After settling in Iraq, concerned at Bahaullah’s growing influence, the Persian ambassador requested that the Ottomans move the Babis farther from Persia. Bahaullah spent months in Istanbul where the authorities became hostile to his religious claims and put him under house arrest for four years in Edirne, then referred to as Adrianople, a stronghold of the Dönmeh,[37] followed by two years confinement in the penal colony of Akka, Palestine, now Acre in Israel.

Bahaullah wrote a series of letters, or “tablets,” addressed to political and religious leaders, in which he claimed to be the Promised One of the Torah, the Gospels, and the Quran. The first of these letters was written in 1863 in Istanbul to Sultan Abdul Aziz, upon receipt of his order banishing him to Edirne. Others were written in Edirne, and in Acre. In all, the following were addressed: Czar Alexander II of Russia, Francis Joseph I of Austria-Hungary, Napoleon III of France, Nasser ad-Din Shah of Persia, Pope Pius IX, Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland, Wilhelm I of Prussia, the rulers and presidents of the republics of America, elected representatives and leaders of religion in every land. Bahaullah advised world leaders to accept his revelation, renounce their material possessions, rule with justice, protect the rights of the downtrodden, reduce their armaments, reconcile their differences, and collectively strive for the betterment of the world and the unification of its peoples. He warned that the world of that period was ending and that a global civilization was being born. Bahaullah further asserted that impending historical forces were in motion and that rulers should make use of the powers entrusted to them by God to serve humanity and bring about justice, peace, and unity. As E.G. Browne recorded Bahaullah proclaiming in an interview:

 

Praise be to God that thou hast attained! … Thou hast come to see a prisoner and an exile… We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; yet they deem us a stirrer up of strife and sedition worthy of bondage and banishment… That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled—what harm is there in this?... Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the 'Most great Peace' shall come… Is not this that which Christ foretold?… Yet do We see your kings and rulers lavishing their treasures more freely on means for the destruction of the human race than on that which would conduce to the happiness of mankind… These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family… Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.[38]

 

In a long letter from Edirne to Nasser ad-Din Shah in 1868, Bahaullah made public his complete break with Babi radicalism and violent activism, when he proclaimed that the subversion of certain ignorant Babis had not been approved by him and that in becoming Bahais the community had ceased to be responsible for unrest in Iran.[39] Rather, several of Afghani’s co-conspirators were associated with the Azali sect of Babism. The Azali were followers of the Bab who embraced the leadership of Subh-i-Azal (1831 – 1912), Bahaullah’s half-brother. However, in the 1860s, in the Bahai–Azali split, the vast majority of Babis followed as Bahaullah, while some among the remaining Babis continued to follow Subh-i-Azal, appointed as head of the Babi community, just before the Bab’s execution in 1850, and thus came to be called Azalis. The Babis, then, explains Keddie, developed two distinct messianic streams. One comprised the Bahais, who renounced political opposition and sought gradual Westernization through conventional and outward means, and the Azalis, a small, underground and little-known sect who pursued subversion of the Ulema and the ruling dynasty.[40] The pressure of persecution, as Keddie further notes, led Azalis to adopt the Shiah practice of Taqiyya (“dissimulation”), claiming to be Muslims outwardly, even joining the ranks of the Ulema.[41]

Bahaullah’s restrictions were gradually eased until his final years were spent in relative freedom in the area surrounding Acre, in the Mansion of Bahji. The Bahai community was mostly confined to the Iranian and Ottoman empires until after Bahaullah’s death in 1892, at which time he had accumulated followers in thirteen countries of Asia and Africa.[42] In his will, Bahaullah entrusted leadership of the Bahai Faith to his eldest son Abdul Baha, by naming him his successor, the sole authorized interpreter of his writings, and the perfect exemplar of his teachings.[43] Under Abdul Baha’s leadership, the Bahai religion gained a foothold in Europe and America, and was consolidated in Iran, where it continues to suffer from persecution.[44] Letters and epistles by Bahaullah, along with writings and talks by his son Abdul Baha, have been collected and assembled into a canon of Bahai scriptures. This collection includes works by the Bab. Prominent among the works of Bahai literature are The Most Holy Book, The Book of Certitude, Some Answered Questions, and The Dawn-Breakers.

Bahais continue to annually elect local, regional and national Spiritual Assemblies that govern the religion’s affairs, and every five years an election is held for the Universal House of Justice, the nine-member governing institution of the worldwide Bahai community. The Universal House of Justice is located in Haifa, Israel, near the Shrine of the Bab in Acre (Akka), which is expected to provide the nucleus and pattern of what will eventually become a “new world order” for organizing the affairs of humanity envisioned by Bahaullah.[45] Isaiah, Micah and Jesus all appear to identify Mt. Carmel as the place to which the “Glory of God” would come. According to Isaiah 35, “The excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord… [when] the ransomed of the Lord [the Jews] shall return.” Also in Isaiah, verse 65, repeats this same promise: “Sharon shall be a fold of flocks and the valley of Achor (Acre) a place for the herds to lie down in for my people that have sought me.” In the Book of Revelation, the great conflict which will rage around the Messiah in the “Last Days,” will take place at Armageddon, referring to the city of Megiddo, located just a few of miles inland from the city of Acre. The mountain which is located right next to Megiddo is Mt. Carmel.[46]

 


[1] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 121.

[2] Sohail H. Hashimi. “Afghani, Jamal Al-Din.” Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (Thomson Gale, 2004).

[3] Z.A. Arabadzhyan. “Shiite clergy among Iranian Masons.” Islamic Studies, 13:1 (2020).

[4] Jean Calmard. “Mohammad Shah Qajar.” In: Ehsan Yarshater (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, online ed. (Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation, 2004).

[5] Moojan Momen. “Jamál Effendi and the early history of the Bahá'í Faith in South Asia.” Bahá'í Studies Review, 9 (1999/2000). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20050316214941/http://www.breacais.demon.co.uk/abs/bsr09/9B2_momen_jamal.htm

[6] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 118.

[7] Nikki R. Keddie. An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

[8] William R. Polk. Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), p. 154.

[9] Nikki R. Keddie. “Afghani in Afghanistan.” Middle Eastern Studies, 1: 4 (1965).

[10] (C.S.B.) Report of D.E. McCracken, dated 14 August 1897, in file Foreign: Secret E, Sept. 1898, no. 100, pp. 13-14; national archives of the government of India, New Delhi. Retrieved from http://www.breacais.demon.co.uk/abs/bsr09/9B2a_momen_jamal.htm

[11] Nikki R. Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 4: 3 (1962),”, p. 116.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” p. 279.

[14] Elie Kedourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (New York: The Humanities Press, 1966), p. 45.

[15] Nikki R. Keddie. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani”: A Political Biography (University of California Press, 1972),, p. 19.

[16] Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” p. 268.

[17] Arabadzhyan. “Shiite clergy among Iranian Masons,” p. 15–16.

[18] Tamima Bayhom-Daou. “Bāb (in Shīʿism).” In: K. Fleet, G. Krämer, D. Matringe, J. Nawas and D. J. Stewart (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam Three Online (Brill, 2010).

[19] Ibid.

[20] Bernard Lewis. “Bāb.” In H. A. R.Gibb, J. H.Kramers, E. Lévi-Provençal, J.Schacht, B. Lewis & Ch. Pellat, (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Volume I: A–B (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), pp. 832–833. , p. 832.

[21] “CONVERSION v. To Babism and the Bahai faith.” Encyclopaedia Iranica. Retrieved from https://iranicaonline.org/articles/conversion-v

[22] Edward G. Browne. Religious Systems of the World: A Contribution to the Study of Comparative Religion (London: Swann Sonnenschein), p. 333; Isaac Adams. Darkness and Daybreak: Personal Experiences, Manners, Customs, Habits, Religious and Social Life in Persia (University of Michigan, 1898), p. 163; Reeva S. Simon, Michael M. Laskier & Sara Reguer. The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, Volume 1 (Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 2003), p. 371.

[23] “Anti-Bahaism in Iran.” Iran Press Watch (March 23, 2009). Retrieved from https://iranpresswatch.org/post/2003/anti-bahaism/

[24] Ibid.

[25] Dominic Parviz Brookshaw. “Explaining Jewish Conversions to the Baha'i Faith in Iran, circa 1870–1920.” Iranian Studies, 45:6 (2012), p. 821.

[26] Keddie. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani,” , p. 21.

[27] Margit Warburg. Citizens of the World: A History and Sociology of the Baha'is from a Globalisation Perspective (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006), pp. 131–132, 143.

[28] Cited in Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 121.

[29] Christopher Buck. Symbol and Secret: Qur'an Commentary in Bahá'u'lláh's Kitáb-i Íqán (Kalimat Press, 1995), pp. XLI.

[30] Cited in K. Paul Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 94.

[31] Behnam Gholipour. “Abdollah Shahbazi: The Rise and Fall of a Career Antisemite.” Iran Wire (January 14, 2022). Retrieved from https://iranwire.com/en/religious-minorities/71114/

[32] Proclamation of Bahá'u'lláh p. 29, http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/PB/pb-29.html; “Davidic Line”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidic_line

[33] Hassan Balyuzi. Baháʼu'lláh: King of Glory (Oxford, UK: George Ronald, 2000), p. 118.

[34] Peter Smith. A Concise Encyclopedia of the Baháʼí Faith (Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2000), p. 159.

[35] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 91

[36] William Hatcher & Douglas Martin. The Baháʼí Faith: The Emerging Global Religion (San Francisco, CA, 1984), pp. 36–37

[37] Jacob M. Landau. “The Dönme: Crytpo-Jews Under Turkish Rule” Jewish Political Studies Review, 19: 1/2 (Spring 2007), p. 110.

[38] Moojan Momen (ed.). The Bábí and Baháʼí Religions, 1844–1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (Oxford, UK: George Ronald, 1981), pp. 229–230.

[39] Juan R. I. Cole. “Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic Thought in the 19th Century.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 24: 1 (1992), p. 5.

[40] Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” p. 274.

[41] Ibid., p. 273.

[42] Adib Taherzadeh. “The Revelation of Baháʼu'lláh.” Volume 4: Mazra’ih & Bahji 1877–92 (Oxford, UK: George Ronald, 1987), p. 125.

[43] Necati Alkan. “Ch. 6: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá ‘Abbás.” In Robert H. Stockman (ed.). The World of the Bahá'í Faith (Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge, 2022), p. 72.

[44] Friedrich W. Affolter. “The Specter of Ideological Genocide: The Baháʼís of Iran.” War Crimes, Genocide, & Crimes Against Humanity, 1:1 (January 2005), pp. 75–114.

[45] Roshan Danesh. “Church and state in the Bahá'í Faith: An epistemic approach.” Journal of Law and Religion, 24: 1 (2008), pp. 21–63.

[46] Joel Smith. “Prophecies Fulfilled from Isaiah and Micah.” Retrieved from http://prophecy-fulfilled.com/isaiah.htm

Divide & Conquer