The Bab and Bahaism
By CHRISTOPHER SYKES
FROM a multitude of Eastern prophets who arose in the nine- teenth century, two Persians stand out as men of abiding influence—Mirza Hussein Ali Baha'u'llah, the founder of Bahaism, and his forerunner, Mirza Ali Muhammad, better known as El Bab, whose judicial murder in Tabriz at the age of thirty occurred on July 9th a hundred years ago. When the outsider reads the extraordinary first chapters of Bahaism in Persia, he may be struck by some resemblances to the beginnings of Christianity, a relationship which, in all probability, was at moments intentional. From their early days the followtp of the new religion were familiar with the Evangelists, not remaining content with the some- what absurd records of Christ which Muhammad included in the Koran, which are all that most Moslems know of Him.
Ali Muhammad was the portent, the voice crying in the wilder- ness, though at first he appeared to others, and perhaps to himself, as one who played an even greater role when he set in motion the first stirrings of Bahaism in Shiraz. These came about as follows. During the night of May 23rd, 1844, Ali Muhammad was overcome by a mysterious intuition that he had been appointed by God to deliver a message to mankind, whereon he took an Arabic title. El Bab, meaning "The Gateway," whose significance was that only by attending to his teaching could men reach God. His spiritual pretensions were almost as bold as they could be. He gathered followers immediately.
The Persia of the early nineteenth century was an unhappy land ruled, in El Bab's time, first by Muhammad Shah and then by Nasr'u'Din Shah, oppressive tyrants both, though not markedly so by the standards of the glamorous bullies who have usually occupied the Peacock Throne. Throughout Asia an uneasy aware- ness was then growing of vast new powers which had sprung up unnoticed, and the rulers of Persia, like those of some other lands, were faced with an unpleasant choice between ruthless reform and violent escapism. As Governments often do in that fell situation, the Persian Shah and his Ministers tried both remedies by turns, that is to say half-hearted social refgrm ; and whole-hearted religious conservatism (by no means typical of the enterprising Persian spirit in happier periods) became the order of the day. In this dangerous ill-tempered atmosphere of the fading Empire of the Kajars, El Bab announced his mission, and he only survived six years of subsequent endeavour.
In October of 1848, Muhammad Shgb died, and Persia fell into the state of disorder which in those days usually marked the interval between one reign and the next. The occasion was seized by great numbers of Babists, who had already suffered gross persecution at the hands of the late sovereign, to stage fierce rebellions in many places. The prophet himself had been in prison for more than a year in the fortress of Mahku in Azerbaijan, and though he had had neither the means nor the disposition to inflame the risings, it was thought politic, in Government circles, that the new Emperor, Nasr'u'Din Shah, sho'tlld open his reign with the condemnation and execution of the new spiritual leader. So, in the presence of the despicable Crown Prince, the young visionary was tried in Tabriz by judges exclusively interested in the politics of the case, and he was ordered to be puBlicly shot for crimes of which no one believed him guilty. Sentence was pronounced not only on him but on two disciples. One of these recanted, not, according to Bahai tradition, out of pusillanimity, but in obedience to secret instructions from his leader.
The execution was to take place in the barrack square of Tabriz. The two victims were suspended from the ground by ropes. The firing party was drawn from an Armenian regiment, it being sup- posed that Moslems might quail before the order to kill one who claimed to be a resurrected spirit whose appearance they had been taught to expect. Bahai records state that as the two of them hung awaiting death during the delays which mark even executions in Persia, the head of the disciple reposed on the breast of the master, and once more we may remark a noble resemblance to a Christian episode which was perhaps not unconscious. Then, when the volley had been fired, and when the smoke had cleared away, the disciple's body alone was seen hanging dead ; the other had vanished. The bullets had severed the ropes suspending El Bab, and he had not been touched. He was discovered in a guard-room, and was horribly brought out once more to execution, though not before a new firing party had been assembled, the first refusing to act again after El Bab's escape, which they took to be -a sign from heaven of his innocence. At the second volley the young prophet was killed.
Thus terminated the first act in the drama of early Bahaism, but to grasp its significance we must remember what happened after, for though the number of followers of the new faith has increased enormously since 1850, and though Bahai teaching commences with the sayings of this courageous man, who received the eminence of martyrdom from his death, El Bab himself is no longer the central figure. Towards the end of his brief ministry he often referred to a successor who would be greater than himself, but his meaning was in doubt until April 21st, 1863. On that day a certain Mirza Hussein Ali, a nobleman of North Persia who was among the Babist exiles in Baghdad, and whose elder brother,was the appointed head of the community, declared that these utterances concerning a successor applied to himself. He assumed the title of Baha'u'llah, " Splendour of God," from which people who professed the new faith thenceforth took their name.
In character the new Saviour contrasted strongly with his fore- runner. El Bab had been a thoroughly traditional figure. In his utterance we hear the primitive crudeness, the violence, the reckless abandonment to an overmastering impulse which is typical of the Dervish schools, and it is this Dervish character, sincerely and powerfully manifested, that gave to his life so much of charm and pathos Bah'u'llah was of a wholly different stamp. He was a stately, sweet-natured personage of whom, in his long life of per- secution and imprisonment, no impatient word was recorded, and who gave expression to revolutionary ideas in a mellifluous tone which disarmed and overawed his persecutors. The major part of his life was spent in exile in Syria, where from the end of 1863 he was held as a prisoner of the Sultan. He died in 1892.
By that time Bahaism was already known throughout the Islamic East ; twenty years later it was world-wide. Dr. Henry Jessup, of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, was moved by Browne's work to introduce Bahaism to America, which he did with surprisingly immediate results, a fact which has given rise to a supposal that the ultimate success of Bahaism has been in America, while in the land of El Bab it has declined. This is legend, probably excited by the building of a spectacular Bahai temple at Wilmette on Lake Michigan. The American Bahais number under 5,000 ; the Persians over half a million. They form the central community as they have done from the beginning.
The faith itself, as it has emerged from El Bab, Baha'u'llah and the latter's son, Abdul Baha, may be roughly described as a call to unity for the glorification of God. It is openly eclectic. The Christian idea of Christ and the Moslem one of Muhammad are admitted with small reservations except one, namely, that these teachers are esteemed as of less importance than Baha'u'llah, who is declared to be the most perfect manifestation yet granted by God to man. The religion has a strong modernist trend, much stress being laid on " the new time " for which Baha'u'llah's revela- tion is said to be uniquely fitted ; and also a strong vein of pacifism, collective penance still being done for the bloody insurrections of the early Babists and Bahais by a -self-denying ordinance which prevents Bahais in Persia from taking any part in politics beyond voting. Much of this pacifism and modernism is probably a tem- porary feature. The essential Bahai aim is the praise of God by the unity and peace of mankind, which is envisaged as being accom- plished in a world which will ultimately have a single language, a single jurisdiction and a single religious faith.
Though the sincerity of El Bab and Baha'u'llah can never be in doubt, it is difficult to believe that many Christians will ever accept the enormous claims of either ; but for all that experience is likely to emphasise the pertinence of some Bahai teaching, certainly in one particular. The world is full of plans for federation and unity, as it always has been, and these usually fail because their objects are so paltry. El Bab and Baha'u'llah told the world a simple truth which it never remembers for long, namely, that peace and unity are only attainable if not pursued for themselves alone but for something higher.
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