Momen constitutional movement bahais
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[Baha'u'llah] had promised his people. Did they not realise that everything they did to promote this matter brought upon them the curse of God and His Messenger? 56
Therefore, despite the major—one might almost say decisive—role of the Azalis in the Constitutional Revolution, the thesis of this article is that it was, in fact, the Baha'is that the anti- constitutionalist clerics and writers had in mind when they attacked the constitutionalist and social reformers as ‘Babis’. It was being claimed that these reformers were promoting the same concepts and were therefore indistinguishable from the Baha'is.
The second point to be examined in this article is the reason that the Baha'is, despite the fact that they were so much aligned with the aims and ideology of the constitutionalists, are reported to have played only a small role in the Revolution itself? Indeed, why did they become considered by many of the constitutionalists as their enemies and thus become considered by both sides (the constitutionalists and anti-constitutionalists) as their enemies? During the early stages of the Constitutional Revolution, the Baha'i leader ‘Abdu'l-Baha encouraged the Baha'is to support the constitutional movement, although his instructions to the Baha'is were to refrain from participating in public disorder and opposing Mozaffar al-Din Shah, this being in accordance with the Baha'i teaching that religion should be a source of order and unity in the world: ‘Let not the means of order be made the cause of confusion and the instrument of union an occasion for discord.' 57
above-mentioned Haj Aqa Muhammad ‘Alaqihband, a prominent merchant, a number of other Baha'is were closely involved in the reform and constitutionalist movement. Haji ‘Abdul-Husayn, known as Haj Navvab, who was one of the notables of Ardekan and a Baha'i, came to Tehran after the anti- Baha'i pogrom in Yazd in 1903 and became a supporter of the constitutionalist cause. 58 Four of the prominent owners or editors of reformist newspapers were also Baha'is: Sayyid Farajullah Kashani, a Baha'i who took over as proprietor of the Surayya newspaper in Egypt in 1900 and transferred it to Tehran in 1903 and to Kashan in about 1910; 59 Muhammad ‘Ali Hidayat founded the Bisharat newspaper in Mashhad in 1906; Sayyid Ahmad Khavari Kashani (who had the titles Lisan ul-Islam and Fakhr ul-Va‘izin), the owner of the Mizan newspaper in Tehran; 60 and from an earlier period 56 Habibullah Afnan, Tarikh Amri Shiraz (photocopy of the manuscript provided by the son of the author), pp. 537-41. Further examples can be given, for example, the conversation in a Tehran coffee shop translated above from Yaghma'i, Sayyid Jamal, p. 283. The two episodes in Tehran and Shiraz need not have been coincidences. There had been a meeting in Tehran of supporters of the shah to decide strategies in the summer of 1907 and Nuri was frequently writing to these supporters of the shah with advice on actions to take, see note 9 above. 57 Baha'u'llah, Tablets, p. 222. 58 Mazandarani, Zuhur al-Haqq, vol. 8, part 2, pp. 920-21. 59 Asadullah Fadil Mazandarani, Asrar al-Athar (5 vols., Tehran: Mu'assisih Milli Matbu‘at Amri, 124- 129 B.E./1967-1972) vol. 2, pp. 190-1; idem, Amr va Khalq (repr., 4 vols. In 2, Langenhain, Germany: Bahā’ī- Verlag, 1986), vol. 3, p. 346; Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (repr. Los Angeles: Kalimat, 1983), pp. 66-7. 60 Ni‘matullah Dhuka'i-Bayda'i, Tadhkirih-ye Shu'ara Baha'i Qarn Avval Badi‘ (4 vols., Tehran: Mu'assisih Milli Matbu‘at Amri, 122-27 B.E./1965-70), vol. 1, pp. 315-23. According to this source, although Khavari tried to conceal being a Baha'i, it became well-known in Kashan and even his anti-Baha'i son referred Mirza Mahmud Khan (d. 1313/1895), the proprietor of the Farhang newspaper of Isfahan (published 1879–1890, although at first under a different proprietor). 61 Tayirih Khanum, in a later period, wrote articles in the Iran-i Naw newspaper advocating women's rights. 62 With a few exceptions, 63 most of the Baha'is around Iran were also supporters of the constitution. In Sari, for example, the head and most of the founders of the Anjuman Haqiqat, an association which was formed to support the constitution and established a modern school in the town, were Baha'is and so was at least one of the leading consititutionalists in Barfurush. 64
population as supporters or even the instigators of the Constitutional Revolution. The French Baha'i, Hippolyte Dreyfus, who was in Tehran in the summer of 1906 at the time of the bast in the British Legation, writes: Some, looking at the altogether progressive tendency of this distinctively peaceful revolution, have not hesitated for an instant in seeing the hand of the Baha'is at work. I recall, last July, in Tehran, while the people had ensconced themselves in the English Legation in order to lean more heavily on the goodwill of the shah's ministers, having heard some merchants (among those, it is understood who had not followed the movement and who lamented the losses inflicted on their businesses by the closure of the bazaars) say that the faithful Muslims had nothing to do with this movement, and that the Baha'is alone must bear the responsibility for all the disorders and for the troubles cast into the affairs of the country. 65
It was not only Western Baha'is who thought this, moreover. Editorials in the French magazine, Revue du Monde Musulmane, credited the Baha'is with a leading role and referred to articles in British newspapers confirming this. 66 The British-Indian writer Bernard Temple, who was in Iran for a year during the Revolution, went even further and credited the Baha'i teachings with being the inspiration and motivating force behind the constitutional movement. 67
1906, the disparate leadership of the constitutional movement remained more or less united and had ranged almost the whole of the people of Iran behind it. With the death of Muzaffar al-Din Shah on 8 January 1907 and the accession to the throne of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, the leadership of the constitutional movement rapidly fell apart. The main factions emerging included those who wished to press forward with further democratic reforms, those seeking to reverse some of the gains made and
to this from the pulpit. 61 Asadullah Fazil Mazandarani, Tarikh Zuhur al-Haqq vol. 5 (mss in Afnan Library), p. 365n; vol. 6 (mss. in Afnan Library), p. 192; vol. 8, part 1, (Tehran: Mu'assisih Milli Matbu‘at Amri, 131 B.E./1974), p. 136; Browne, Press and Poetry, pp. 121-2. 62 Tayirih, 'Namih-ha'. 63 The only notable Baha'i supporter of the royalist cause was Muhammad Husayn Mirza Mu'ayyad al- Saltanih (later Mu'yyad al-Dawlih) who was a Qajar prince and became head of the royal cabinet under Muhammad ‘Ali Shah; Mazandarani, Zuhur al-Haqq, vol. 8, part 2, p. 832; ‘Azizullah Sulaymani, Masabih-i Hidayat, vol. 2, pp. 266-71. A number of other Baha'is such as ‘Azizullah and Valiyullah Varqa were closely associated with Muhammad ‘Ali Shah's court but they had positioned themselves there on ‘Abdu'l-Baha's instructions so that they could act as intermediaries for ‘Abdu'l-Baha's communications with the shah. 64 Momen, ‘The Baha'is and the Constitutional Revolution’. 65 Revue du Monde Musulman, vol. 1, no. 2 (December 1906), p. 199 (trans. Ismael Velasco). 66 Revue du Monde Musulmane, vol. 1, no. 1 (November 1906) pp. 115-6. 67 Bernard Temple, 'Persia and the Regeneration of Islam', Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 58 (27 May 1910), pp. 652-5.
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