There is, moreover, much evidence that Baha'u'llah and ‘Abdu'l-Baha's writings and views
were well known to the leading Iranian secular reformers. It has been suggested that Sayyid Jamal al-
Din Asadabadi (‘al-Afghani’) was in contact with Baha'u'llah in Baghdad in the 1850s.
31
Certainly he
was very familiar with the movement and provided the information on this subject that went into
Butrus al-Bustani's Arabic Encyclopaedia.
32
He appears to have wanted to remain in contact with the
Baha'i leaders in ‘Akka since he sent them copies of his newspaper, ‘
Urwat al-Wuthqa,
from Paris in
the 1880s.
33
It would appear from Asadabadi's writings that he felt some antipathy towards the
Baha'is, whom he saw as potentially breaking up the unity of the Islamic world, therefore his
continued contacts may well have been because he found the ideas emanating from this source useful
to him in formulating his own views.
34
The evidence for Mirza Malkam Khan's close association with
the Baha'is is much stronger. Malkam Khan was exiled from Iran to Baghdad in 1861 and came into
contact with Baha'u'llah there
35
before his further exile in April 1862 to Istanbul. Both at this time and
earlier in Tehran, Malkam Khan had had such close contact with the Babis that when Ernest Renan
met him in Istanbul in June 1865, Malkam Khan represented himself as being knowledgeable about
Babis and so we find Renan in 1866 encouraging Malkam Khan to write on the subject.
36
The
reformist Prime Minister Mirza Husayn Khan Mushir al-Dawlih Sipahsalar (1827–1881, Prime
Minister 1871–1873), while he was the Iranian Minister at the Sublime Porte, had been instrumental
in bringing about the various stages of Baha'u'llah's exile from Baghdad to Istanbul, to Edirne and
finally to ‘Akka, and he had used all his influence to restrict the activities of the Baha'is. But it is
reported that in 1870, after reading the petitions addressed to Baha'u'llah that had been confiscated
when Baha'u'llah's courier was arrested in Aleppo, he altered his attitude and, from that time on, he is
reported to have been sympathetic.
37
Certainly there were no persecutions of the Baha'is during the
time he was Prime Minister.
One of his close relatives, Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali Kadkhuda Qazvini,
was a Baha'i
38
and this may have been one way in which information about the Baha'is reached
Mushir al-Dawlih, but it may also have come from Malkam Khan with whom he was closely
associated both in Istanbul and Tehran.
31
Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din 'al-Afghani' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp.
20-22.
32
Da'irat al-Ma‘arif (Beirut, 1881), Vol. 5, s.v. 'Babis'; see also Keddie, Afghani, p. 20n.
33
See Baha'u'llah's reference to this in Lawh@-i Donyā, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 95.
34
His opposition is confirmed by Baha'u'llah in Lawh@-i Donyā (Tablets of Baha'u'llah, pp. 94-5).
There is some evidence of Afghani having been influenced by Baha'i teachings in the fact that he is said to have
considered Islam, Judaism and Christianity to be in perfect agreement, see Elie Kedourie, Afghani and ‘Abduh
(London: Cass, 1966), p. 15.
35
Hasan M. Balyuzi, Baha'u'llah, King of Glory (Oxford: George Ronald, 1980), pp. 151-153.
36
Ernest Renan, Oeuvres Completes, vol. 10 (ed. H. Paichari, Paris, n.d.), p. 453. In 1891, Rukn al-
Dawlih, then governor of Khurasan, reported that Mirza Malkam Khan had travelled to Akka and met with
Baha'u'llah and that they were planning something together; Ibrahim Safa'i, Panjah Namih-yi Tarikhi (Tehran:
Intisharat Babak, 2535 Shahanshahi/1976), pp. 120-21. This report would appear false in that it is unlikely that a
person as prominent as Malkam Khan could have done this without some report of it appearing in Baha'i
sources. It is also inherently unlikely as for the whole of this year, Malkam Khan was single-handedly producing
the Qanun newspaper in London monthly and he could scarcely have done this and also undertaken a journey to
Akka; see Hamid Algar, Mirza Malkum Khan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 192. A little
further on in the report Rukn al-Dawlih amends his initial statement to say that either Malkam Khan himself
went or he sent 'someone like himself'. It may be that this report is a reference to the visit to Akka of Mirza Aqa
Khan Kirmani (Balyuzi, Baha'u'llah, p. 385, 394-5) who was in close touch with Malkam Khan (Hamid Algar,
Mirza Malkum Khan, pp. 212-227; Ajudani,
Mashrutih, pp. 329-30).
37
See Haji Mirza Haydar ‘Ali, trans. in Balyuzi, Baha'u'llah, pp. 441-4.
38
Shaykh Kazim Samandar, Tarikh Samandar (Tehran: Mu’assisih Milli Matbu‘at Amri, 131
B.E./1974), pp. 268–270.
Coming on to the period immediately before and during the Constitutional Revolution (i.e.
1895–1909), the Baha'is did not just have the above well-established discourse on social reform and
constitutionalism but they were instituting these social reforms in their own community, which
extended not only throughout the main cities of Iran but also to many rural areas. They were moving
away from a system of traditional leadership and towards a system of democratically elected Baha'i
councils to administer their affairs. Baha'u'llah had called in 1873 for the establishment of a House of
Justice (bayt al-‘adl) in every locality. Various councils were set up by the Iranian Baha'is and it is
not clear when these councils first became elected bodies but there are indications that, in 1897,
‘Abdu'l-Baha sent instructions that the Tehran council should become an elected body.
39
Baha'i
councils were then established in all of the major Baha'i communities of Iran during the first few
years of the twentieth century. The Baha'is were also at the forefront of establishing schools run
according to modern pedagogic principles and with a modern curriculum. The first such boys' school
was established in Tehran in about 1900 and gradually a network of some 80 such schools was
established throughout Iran in towns and villages where there were Baha'i communities.
40
The Baha'is
were also at the forefront of promoting the social role of women.
41
Thus in most places where a boys'
school was established, a girls' school was also set up. A Committee for the Advancement of Women
(Maḥfil-i Taraqqī-yi Nisvān) was established in 1909 and organised classes for women to learn public
speaking, general knowledge, knowledge about the Baha'i Faith, and literacy.
42
In light of the reforms that the Baha'is were promoting within their own community, an interesting
insight into the way that Iranian Muslims thought of the Baha'is at this time is given in a diary entry
reporting a conversation in a coffee shop in Tehran in July 1907 at the height of the crisis caused by
the attack on the Constitution by Muhammad ‘Ali Shah and Shaykh Fazlullah Nuri:
Today several people were speaking in the coffee shop. One of them Mirza Taqi and some
others were saying that Aqa Sayyid Jamal [Va‘iz Isfahani] is preaching from the pulpit
saying: ‘why do you go to Karbala thus both wasting your money and [suffering injury from]
falling from mules? It all comes to nothing. Come and spend your money on schools; put it in
the bank.’ This sort of talk is what the Baha'is say. They say: why do you go on pilgrimage to
visit a piece of wood and your wife and children only see the muleteer? Why is it that you are
spending perhaps ten or fifteen thousand tumans in holding a celebration of the majlis
[parliament]? Why is it that you do not say that you want to strengthen the foundations of the
majlis [by building schools etc.]?
43
39
On election of councils, see Siyavash Sefidvash, Yar Dirin (Tehran: Mu'assisih Milli Matbu‘at Amri,
132 B.E./1976), p. 55.
40
Moojan Momen, 'The Baha'i Schools in Iran', in Brookshaw and Fazel, The Baha'is of Iran, pp. 94-
121.
41
Moojan Momen, 'The Role of Women in the Iranian Baha'i Community' in Robert Gleave (ed.),
Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), pp. 346-69).
42
‘Azizullah Sulaymani, Masabih-i Hidayat (9 vols., Tehran: Mu'assisih Milli Matbu‘at Amri, 104-32
B.E./1947-1976), vol. 9, pp. 409-11. Although the text may appear to imply this committee was set up after the
return of Qudsiyyih Ashraf from USA in 1919, there are several clear indications in the text that the committee
was in fact set up before her departure in 1911. There is for example reference to the Tarbiyat school for girls
having just been established (which occurred in 1909).
43
Iqbal Yaghma'i, Shahid Rah-i Azadi: Sayyid Jamal Va‘iz Isfahani (Tehran: Tus, 2537
Shahanshahi/1977), p. 283.