# The Meaning of Baha'i History

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Moshe Sharon, The Meaning of Baha'i History, bahai-library.com.
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> The meaning of Bahá’í history *
> 
> Moshe Sharon
> 
> December 1999
> 
> When dealing with the history of religions and their founders one needs, first of all, to put
> aside piety and dogma. For the believer, the texts, which the historian uses, are holy writings,
> and as such their contents, being of a divine nature, can not be disputed. The historian must
> therefore insist on disregarding piety, and on using the tools of objective research, as much as
> humanly possible, to deal with all writings belonging to any given religion as literary texts
> and not as divine revelations. Texts are source material for attempting the reconstruction of
> the history of any religion and the biography of its founder or founders. Texts are open to
> critical evaluation when they are compared to each other in order to extract the information
> needed to build a historical picture. It is therefore clear that there are no “good texts” and
> “bad texts,” or “good sources” and “bad sources” even when it is clear that there are sources,
> which are nearer to the events than others. However, nearness to or remoteness from the
> happenings, though important considerations, cannot be the sole criterion for the quality of
> sources. Quantity rather is of crucial significance. The more source material available to the
> historian, the more he is able to arrive at conclusions based on comparing and confronting the
> texts with each other.
> Believers who bring their faith into historical research are not bad historians but the
> outcome of their work is a pious history. Pious history becomes in itself source material for
> the historian who, so to speak, leaves the divine out of history. In pious history, where God is
> always present, and His prophets, messengers, and holy men are the main actors, the story of
> the birth of the religion and its development, unfolds not necessarily as it was but rather as it
> should have been. The earliest examples of this kind of pious history are the Gospels and the
> Muslim biographies of the Prophet Muhammad and the reports about the birth of Islam.
> The Gospels, and other documents included in the New Testament, “were all written in
> the hither side of Easter;” – as Frank Peters succinctly puts it – “that is, their authors viewed
> their subject across the absolute conviction that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God, a
> conviction later rendered explicit in the Christian dogma.” (Peters 1991:291)
> In the case of Muhammad, the situation seems to be totally different. Here there is no
> Crucifixion and no Resurrection. There is “no paschal sunrise to cast its divinizing light on
> the prophet of Islam.” Muhammad seems to be a perfect subject of history. “A man born of a
> woman (and a man), who lived in a certain place at a certain time, and shared the fate of all
> mortals when his time came.” Therefore, no dogma is involved in the case of Islam; instead
> 
> *
> Originally housed at www.hum.huji.ac.il/english/units.php?cat=3666&incat=3479; retrieved from
> wayback.archive.org for posting to bahai-library.com/author/sharon
> 
> there is piety. The tremendous veneration of the person of the Prophet was so great already in
> his life-time, growing greater by the day after his death, that it coloured the works of the early
> historians of Islam. So much so that they composed, not the history of early Islam, but what
> this history ought to have been. It is not a coincidence that when an erudite scholar of early
> Islamic history wanted to write a book about Muhammad he called it “In the Eyes of the
> Beholder.” This name replaced the original name of the book, which Professor Rubin called
> “The Making of a Prophet.”
> The piety, which excited the medieval historians of Islam, continues to influence the
> Muslim writers of Islam to this very day. The veneration of the prophet has not subsided with
> the years, on the contrary, it seems to have grown even stronger and spread among the
> intellectuals as well as among the illiterate. To this very day, a critical study of the Prophet
> and his times can, literally speaking, jeopardize the life of any historian who attempts it. We
> have the history of the Ideal man Muhammad, and the ideal time of Muhammad, but we
> know almost nothing about the true story of the birth of Islam. The once-famous, optimistic
> saying of Ernest Renan that “Islam was born in the full view of history,” comparing it with
> the difficulty in reconstructing the life and times of Jesus, needed serious revision already 25
> years after it was pronounced, and now does not hold any ground at all.
> Eight years ago Frank Peters of New York University, a deep thinker and great historian,
> wrote an article which he called “The search for the historical Muhammad”. The name of the
> article was more than reminiscent of what Albert Schweitzer had described back in 1906, as
> the “quest for the historical Jesus.” In this article Peters clearly defined the problem which is
> very well known to the historians of early Islam, namely that, in spite of the availability of a
> tremendous body of texts on early Islamic history we actually know nothing about
> Muhammad nor about his milieu. In fact Peters shows that we know more about Jesus than
> we know about Muhammad.
> At first sight such a statement seems strange, to say the least. All that we know about
> Jesus comes from the New Testament, and mainly from the Gospels, the earliest of the three
> synoptic gospels, which could not have been written before the year 70 AD and the
> independent Gospel according to St. John which might even have been composed a
> generation later. The Gospels, as I have already mentioned, represent the dogma. They serve
> a religious purpose and the professional eye can easily perceive many inconsistencies even in
> the Synoptic Gospels not to mention the independent tradition of St. John. What we can learn
> from the Gospels is not about the birth of Christianity but about the worship of Jesus as the
> Son of God, and the story of the Passion as it crystallized two generations after the actual
> events. However, in the last half a century a great progress has been made in the field of the
> history of early Christianity as can be learnt from the 1988 new edition of Bishop Stephan
> Neill’s book The interpretation of the New Testament. The progress was made not because
> there was new information about Jesus himself but because we are more and more familiar
> with his milieu. We know much better the environment in which he lived.. The time in which
> 
> he lived, the society in which he grew up, the religious atmosphere in his time, the politics of
> Judea under the Romans, all these are well known to us from a variety of Jewish, Greek and
> Roman sources. There is Josephus who provides us with the contemporary political context,
> the Apocrypha to supply a spiritual context, and the Dead Sea “scrolls to illuminate a
> Palestinian ‘sectarian milieu’ ” (Peters 292). These and other sources enable us to place Jesus
> certainly in his times even if his own person remains obscure.
> But when we come to Muhammad we still remain with the resounding statement of
> Maxim Rodinson: “There is nothing of which we can say for certain that incontestably dates
> to back to the time of the Prophet.”
> The first written document about the life of the Prophet is a papyrus fragment which dates
> back to the year 100 of the Hijrah namely some seventy years after the death of the Prophet
> and is already tinted with the Shî‘ite-Sunnî controversy. The first biography of the Prophet
> was written no less than a century after Muhammad’s death. Other sources about the early
> history of Islam were all written much later and they are all representative of the love,
> admiration and veneration of the infallible Messenger of God. But what is most important is
> the fact that we do not possess even one single source, not a glimpse of evidence, from non-
> Islamic sources not only about Muhammad but also about the historical context of his life and
> activity.
> We know about him and his time only what the late Muslin sources tell us. For him we
> have no Josephus and no apocrypha and no contemporary sources of any kind. We do not
> have even the little help of archeology.
> The historian of early Islam knows nothing about the social, economic, or political life in
> early Arabia, and most probably will never know. There is a mass of early Arab poetry the
> antiquity of which is very much contested, and from which very little can be learnt, out of
> which juts the Qur’an like a rock in a desolate ocean. The Qur’an, unlike the Bible contains
> no historical parts, and it has “only a few marks to suggest how and why it appeared in this
> watery desert.” Even if we accept every word in the Qur’an as representing Muhammad’s
> teachings we can learn very little from it about the man himself.
> Modern research has done its best to develop scholarly tools to go through the maze of
> Islamic tradition, and has reached admirable achievements. But these achievements which
> naturally challenge the ideal picture of Islamic tradition have been termed hostile by the
> Muslims. The question is not a question about historical research but about enemies and
> friends. Enemies are the historians who question the picture extracted from the Muslim
> sources and apply to it the strict rules of modern scholarship, verifying facts and analyzing
> them, and friends are the historians who toe the line of Islamic tradition. In the last two
> decades or so, another element entered into the debate. The European and American
> historians, who have been moving Oriental studies forward since the 19th century and
> creating this rich field of research according to the strictest rules of linguistic and historical
> 
> scholarship, have been denounced as patronizing imperialists and colonialists. These two
> words in certain circles in the west mean, more or less, the advocates of the devil if not his
> actual allies. Edward Sa‘îd the darling of the American Left launched an all out attack on
> Western Orientalism from this frontline and discredited the great non-Arab and the non-
> Muslim scholars. He asserted that only Arabs could understand and study Arab history and
> cultures, and, following the same logic, only Muslims were capable of studying Islam. All
> European research, which obviously does not always agree with the Arab view of Arab
> history or the Islamic view of Islamic history, was thus made politically incorrect. The
> reaction of Bernard Lewis, one of the greatest historians and Orientalists of our time, and one
> of the chief targets of Sa‘îd’s vehement attack, remarked that applying Sa‘îd’s logic to the
> field of marine biology we would have to conclude that only fish should be allowed to study
> ichthyology. The book of Sa‘îd has become a bestseller, mainly because western liberals,
> most of whom have no idea what Oriental studies are all about, are in the process of
> repentance. But the truth of the matter is that if we had agreed to follow Sa‘îd’s logic we
> would have had to conclude that only the Romans (if some can still be found around) could
> study Roman history, only Greeks could indulge in Greek history, only the Jews would be
> allowed to study Jewish history, and only the Bahá’ís were capable of working in the field of
> Bahá’í studies. A list of this nature would be very long.
> The nearest example to this attack on western Oriental scholarship in Bahá’í history was
> the reaction to the publication of Nuqtatu’l-Kâf by Browne in 1910. The great Bahá’í scholar
> Abû ’l-Fadl Gulpaygânî set out to write the refutation of the book but he died after writing
> only its beginning and his nephew Aqâ Sayyid Mahdî Gulpaygânî completed it. The massive
> tome was called Kashf al-Ghitâ’ ‘an Hiyal al-a‘dâ’ (Uncovering the Schemes of the
> Enemies). Fortunately ‘Abd al-Bahâ’ was then on the spot to denounce the book and stop its
> distribution, using his authority to the utmost. The personal attacks on Browne could not have
> been endorsed by the leader of the Bahá’í Faith at the time, as much as he might have had his
> own reservations regarding that particular publication.
> The fashionable attack on Orientalism would have had broader implications if it were to
> be carried into the field of historical research in general. History means the involvement of
> the historian with his material. The historian is also the product of his time. His interpretation
> of the historical data that he collects must be influenced by his own cultural, political and
> social environment. One has to bear this fact in mind when reading any historical research. In
> his book, Edward Carr brings the example of the German historian Friedrich Meinecke
> (1862-1954) who lived to the ripe age of 92 and witnessed the dramatic vicissitudes of
> German history in the 19th and 20th centuries. He showed that Meinecke’s interpretation of
> history changed at least three times as an outcome of the sharp changes in the life of the
> German nation. At about the same time the great orientalist and Bible scholar Wellhausen,
> wrote his epoch-making book on the history of the first dynasty of Islam and having lived in
> the period of the triumph of nationalism in Europe interpreted the events of the 8th century in
> 
> terms belonging to the German nationalism of his time. The creator creates in his own image,
> this is the privilege of any creator whether divine or human.
> Judaism Christianity and Islam are religions with a particular sense of history and
> emphasis on the remembrance of the past. The Bahá’í religion belongs to the same religious
> tradition, and shares with the other three monotheistic religions the idea of pious history.
> Pious history, as I have already mentioned, represents the point of view of the believer who
> uses the scriptures, not only to extract details about the history of the faith itself, but also to
> learn universal history in general from them.
> The believer cannot enter into debate with his own faith and as such, pious history must
> remain outside the pure scholarly, secular, historical discussion, simply because the methods
> of historical research are inapplicable where the authority of the scriptures is concerned. One
> cannot argue with the prophet nor question what is accepted as the word of God.
> We are concerned here with the history of the Bahá’í faith as seen outside the realm of
> veneration, as a history of religion and the outline of a new culture. For the historian all the
> writings are texts to be examined and studied for the sole purpose of achieving the best
> knowledge possible of the events which brought about the creation of a new world religion.
> Here the questions posed by Bishop Neill in his study of the New Testament almost 40 years
> ago and again some 12 years ago are valid for the Bahá’í religion too. Neill believed that he
> had found the answers to such questions as: “Who is Jesus of Nazareth? What was his
> message? Why was he put to death? Why did his few followers become, in effect, the nucleus
> of the powerful and widespread community called Christianity? (Peters 291)”
> One can pose each one of these questions when dealing with the history of the Bâb, and
> all except for one of them, when studying the history of Bahá’u’lláh.
> But unlike Christianity and Islam, to say nothing about the ancient beginnings of Judaism,
> the Bahá’í faith was really born in the full view of history. We know practically everything
> about the background of the activity of the Bâb and Bahá’u’lláh. The sources for
> reconstructing the political, social, cultural and religious environments of the two Prophets
> are practically all open to us. They are rich and of an unusual variety. Qajar Iran and the
> Ottoman Empire in the 19th century have been the subject of numerous studies, and although
> research never ends, there is practically nothing which we do not know about these two
> arenas where the major events surrounding the birth of the Bahá’í faith occurred. And as we
> approach the Faiths themselves and the lives of their Prophets, we are also in a good situation
> as far as the sources are concerned.
> We have the sources that come from within and those that come from without, the sources
> which represent the pious view, the view of the lover and the view of the foe, as well as the
> view of the indifferent and the view of the ignorant. The sources are a feast for the historian.
> On the lovers’ side there are, first of all, the scriptures themselves. True, Scriptures were
> not written, or revealed, depending on the point of view, in order to teach history, but they are
> 
> historical documents too. They were subjects of interpretation, and this interpretation was
> undertaken by ‘Abd al-Bahâ’ and Shoghi Effendi. ‘Abd al-Bahâ’ presented the official
> history of the faith in his Traveler’s Narrative and Shoghî Effendî mainly in God Passes By.
> These however are not ordinary historical books, they belong rather to the realm of scriptures,
> and represent the only inspired interpretations of the writings of the Prophets their lives and
> activities. They are not studies, but rather sources for study. But next to them we have the
> histories from both Bahá’í and Muslim sides and the evidence of the Europeans. We have
> enough material to form our opinion about the events and the personalities of the main actors.
> Yet there is another factor which makes Bahá’í history such a unique affair. It is all so
> new. We are in the heart of the events and this makes historical research more complicated
> because contemporary or near-contemporary history can be very tricky. If we were a couple
> of hundreds years away our life as historians would have been much easier. However since
> we are here at this time we must deal with a situation which is rather fluid. The Bahá’í
> religion, the organization of the Bahá’í institutions, the development of the components of
> religious life and religious practice and many other issues which are born out of the needs of
> a newly born culture are in the process of making.
> There are the schisms too; the internal breaches, the inevitability of internal oppositions;
> there are the diversity of cultures and the heterogeneous social environments all over the
> world which challenge the endurance of the fast spreading religion. In other words, things are
> still happening, and the history of the Bahá’í faith is a history in creation. In many ways the
> historian of the Bahá’í faith is inside the history not away from it. Whatever the historian
> writes is relevant to the actual events. The atmosphere is thick with the smoke of polemics,
> and there is hardly anything that has been written until now which has not been identified
> either as the work of a friend or the work of an enemy or at least the work of an unkindly
> scholar.
> The battles have been fought with various degrees of intensity since 1863 and definitely
> since 1866. They were not always battles fought only with pen and paper. However the place
> occupied by the historical battle was no less important than the other battles fought in courts
> and prisons.
> Ideally the objective historian cannot take sides. But somehow he might well find himself
> expected to take sides. This is not such a terrible thing. It is difficult to find a historian who
> did not take sides or shall we say didn’t have a soft spot for one of the sides featuring in his
> research. In modern history it is quite common to find historians who, when describing a
> conflict which involves two or more sides, favour one side. In daily journalism this is the
> norm .This is not a phenomenon relating only to modern or recent history. Even in the history
> of the wars between the Persians and the Greeks some 2500 years ago historians took sides.
> To this very day historians take sides when dealing with the history of the Second Temple
> period, the Crusades, the Napoleonic wars and, nearer to our time, the history of the
> American civil war. A good historian lives the events that he describes, otherwise he would
> 
> be a machine. He feels the need to make moral judgements of the historical happenings not
> merely to identify them.
> This brings me to the one historical issue which has been troubling the Bahá’í Faith
> almost from its very inception. The issue is that of Mirzâ Yahyâ – Subh-i-Azal. With the
> years, instead of subsiding, the issue has become more and more central to the historical
> research, and has gathered force until it has become almost a litmus test to differentiate
> between the acid enemy and alkaline friend.
> Already at the infancy of Bâbî research this was the main reason for Browne becoming a
> suspicious individual in spite of his tremendous contribution to the study of the Bâbî-Bahá’í
> religions. His publication of Nuqtatu l-Kâf and his meetings with Mîrzâ Yahyâ in Cyprus as
> well as his clear tendency to espouse the claims of Mîrzâ Yahyâ caused a negative attitude to
> develop towards him. This attitude was somewhat softened by the book of Balyûzî, who
> nevertheless could not offer complete clemency to Professor Browne.
> The issue was always on the agenda of historians and at the heart of an on-going
> polemical battle. Nowadays, I am told, there is a whole group of scholars who are regarded to
> be Neo-Azalists. I am not sure whether this is an official appellation or the invention of a
> good friend from Newcastle. Whichever is the case, this means that we are back to the
> question of no more or less than the integrity of Bahá’u’lláh.
> Here I wish to offer a different approach to this issue which I think is the right approach
> although it could be interpreted as taking sides. I shall repeat what I said two weeks ago to
> two members of the Universal House of Justice in Haifa. The occasion was a very happy one.
> I brought a gift from the Hebrew University - a large portrait of Bahá’u’lláh, one of the two
> existing photographs of the Prophet. I found the portrait in an archive at the University
> National Library consisting of very valuable material that had arrived at the Hebrew
> University from Cyprus almost forty years ago. I shall leave the detailed story about the
> circumstances of the appearance of these documents in Jerusalem for another occasion. I shall
> only add that full microfilm of this material has already been put at the disposal of the centre
> for the Study of the Texts in Haifa.
> I said to Mr. Dunbar and to Dr. Khan that, historically speaking, the issue has nothing to
> do with the integrity of Bahá’u’lláh, nor with the succession to the Bâb. The problem arose
> because of the unique nature of the birth of the Bahá’í religion. The religion has two
> beginnings, not one. Following this assertion it should be emphasized that Bahá’u’lláh never
> claimed to be the successor of the Bâb. He presented his revelation as a totally new revelation
> with new scriptures superceding those of the Bâb. The fact that the ministry of the Bâb was
> only 19 years long is immaterial to the issue under discussion. There is no other religion
> whose history shows so clearly two distinct beginnings. This presents a tremendous challenge
> to the historian, but instead of really concentrating on this unique historical phenomenon,
> 
> great effort has been exerted in the futile debate, regarding an issue, which in my mind is not
> an issue.
> Of course one cannot imagine the Bahá’í religion without the activity of the Bâb. He laid
> the foundations on which Bahá’u’lláh could build his colossal edifice. But for Bahá’u’lláh the
> issue of succession did not exist. This is the point that should interest the historian, for
> whether Subh-i-Azal was, or was not, the successor of the Bâb is a question connected with
> the mission of the Bâb. The Mission of Bahá’u’lláh is another book not merely another
> chapter.
> This does not mean that the story of Mîrzâ Yahyâ is not extremely interesting for the
> historian. The story of the Bâb’s movement has been left open-ended. Polemicists have made
> extensive use of it but not real historians.
> Having said that I want to raise the question of the responsibility of the historian. There
> are issues that a responsible historian must avoid, at least for a while. One of these is the topic
> of Azal. It is not because the Bahá’í religion is not strong enough to face a serious study of
> the material available now but because of the possible utilization of such a study by elements
> that could harm other people. History is full of examples of essentially harmless research that
> formed the basis for atrocious actions. A straight line leading from Comte de Gobineau
> toying with the idea of the superiority of the “Aryans” to the implementation of his ideas in
> Nazi Germany.
> Without being asked, I gave a pledge to the House of Justice that I shall never publish the
> material from Famagusta found in the archives in Jerusalem. This is not because I do not
> have the natural urge of the historian to publish such documents, but because I believe that, at
> this time, this would be utterly irresponsible.
> However I wish to conclude by sharing a rare document with you. When examining the
> documents in the archives, I found a Tablet of Bahá’u’lláh that has never been published and
> whose existence was known to very few people.
> The tablet is most probably the swan song of the Prophet. It deals with the past and future
> and refers to yet another problem which was used to attack Baha’ullah. I read the Tablet and
> translated it. I am honoured to give publicity to it for the first time ever at this Academy.
> 
> O Creator of all Creation!
> This is that which revealed from the Heavens of preexistence in which is prescribed the
> station in which the Beauty of God resides on a Throne of a mighty Name. For surely He is
> the Promised One in all the Tablets in every Name if you be of those who co,prehend. In the
> Bayân He was named as “He who shall be made manifest,” and He shall manifest Himself in
> the mustaghâth in evident sovereignty (sultân).
> 
> Say: By God (this is a )day the like of which the eyes of concealment have not seen, how
> much more so the eyes of those who are veiled from seeing. Happy is he who will be present
> on that day before God in utmost humility, and read this Tablet facing the Throne in order
> that he should bring to the Hearing of God Its melodies, which manifested themselves in the
> past between the heavens and earth; and in this way, this Name will be mentioned in a
> dwelling place which God has exalted above the glorification of mankind. Our intention in
> that which is mentioned in this Tablet is none other than Mine own Self, that pervades all
> created things..
> He who anticipates a Manifestation after me is (surely) of those who have gone astray.
> And He who will appear after one thousand (years), He surely speaks in My Name. And in
> the mustaghâth will (surely) come He who will testify for me that I am the God the Lord of
> the heavens and earth. No one comprehended this Manifestation except according to his
> capacity; in truth God’s Knowledge embraces all things.
> O people! Hold fast after Me to the Branches that have stemmed from this ancient root. In
> them the fragrance of My raiment travels throughout the worlds, and only he who turns
> towards Him and is steadfast will find it. O People of the Bahâ’ it is beseems to you to be
> steadfast in the Cause of God in all circumstances. Beware of following every ignorant
> sinner.
> And after the Branches, an elevated place was ordained for the Servant who is present at
> the Throne. And it is behoves you to revere the clan among whom the Beloved of the Worlds
> manifested Himself; they are those who believed in God the Mighty the Glorious. This is
> what was revealed in the Bayân and in this illuminated Tablet. And he who repudiates them
> is a heretic and polytheist, nay he even is from those who are have gone astray unless he
> should repent, for He is the Forgiver the Compassionate.
> Two major messages are in this Tablet.
> One is the definition of the place of Bahá’u’lláh when he leaves this world into the
> spiritual existence in the Presence of the Divine Being.
> The other is His vision of the future.
> The second point is highly important because it contains the authoritative ruling of
> Bahá’u’lláh on the an issue which has been used by the opponents of to undermine his
> authority and his claim. This issue is connected with the word mustaghâth (He whose aid is
> sought, the greatest Name of God), the numerical equivalent of which is 2001. Bahá’u’lláh
> makes clear that there will be a prophet of God that will appear after 2001 years just as there
> will be one that will appear a thousand years earlier. Both of whom will speak in God’s name
> in total confirmation of Bahá’u’lláh’s mission.
> 
> Whether the opponents and critics accept this interpretation of the relevant passage in
> Bayân or not it is immaterial, the historian is bound by his sources and has the prerogative to
> decide if an issue is settled.
> I believe that we shared together a rare moment in historical research. I thank the rector of
> this Academy, my colleagues and students and all of you Ladies and Gentlemen for giving
> me the opportunity to touch for a second the shade of eternity. God Bless you all.
>
> — *The Meaning of Baha'i History (Used by permission of the curator)*