# Browne and the Babis

*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: Arthur J. Arberry, Browne and the Babis, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Browne and the Babis
> 
> Arthur J. Arberry
> published in Shiraz: Persian City of Saints and Poets pp. xii, 24-28
> 
> Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960
> 
> 1. Text
> 
> [page xii]
> 
> ...
> The Persian genius has also expressed itself notably in
> the field of religion. Zoroaster was a Persian, and from Persia
> the Magi came to Bethlehem. Mani, a Persian, founded
> the Manichean heresy which long challenged Christian
> orthodoxy. Many of the greatest saints and mystics of
> Islam have been Persian. It has been argued that Alexander
> derived from Persia his essentially religious conception of
> a united humanity. Certainly Persia has been the birthplace
> of a succession of generally short-lived universal religions,
> last among them the preaching of the Bab, executed in 1850....
> 
> [page 24]
> 
> ...
> 
> Browne did full justice to the more obvious attractions
> of Shiraz, and has left us an admirable guide to the sights
> and sounds of the city in the last days before westernization
> assailed Persia. In Shiraz he met a Parsee from
> Bombay who "had chosen the overland route" to Europe
> "through Persia, because he desired to behold the ancient
> home of his ancestors. I asked him how he liked it. 'Not
> at all,' he replied; 'I think it is a horrible country: no railways,
> no hotels, no places of amusement - nothing. I have
> only been in Shiraz a couple of days, and I am tired of it
> already, and mean to leave it in a day or two more.'" Entertainment
> Browne experienced in abundance, albeit not
> on the princely scale described by Herbert. But his abiding
> memory of Shiraz differed very radically from Herbert's,
> as indeed befitted the great scholar that he was:
> "Hitherto I have spoken only of the lighter aspect of Persian
> life in Shiraz; of social gatherings where wine and
> music, dance and song, beguiled away the soft spring days,
> or the moonlit nights. It is time that I should turn to other
> memories - gatherings where no wine flowed and no music
> sounded; where grave faces, illumined with the light of
> inward conviction, and eyes gleaming with unquenchable
> faith, surrounded me; where the strains of the rebeck were
> replaced by low, earnest tones speaking of God, of the
> New Light, of pains resolutely endured, and of triumph
> confidently expected. The memory of those assemblies
> can never fade from my mind; the recollection of those
> faces and those tones no time can efface."
> 
> For Shiraz throughout its long history has been more
> than a city of great political power and material grandeur;
> 
> [page 25]
> 
> it has also been a city of saints and scholars, as will be told
> hereafter, and it was the saints and scholars of Shiraz, still
> faithful to a millenial tradition in the last decades of the
> nineteenth century, who engaged the youthful Browne's
> most lively and enduring admiration.
> 
> At Shiraz on October 20, 1819, had been born to a family
> of merchants Saiyid Ali Muhammad, proclaimed on
> the night of May 23, 1844, to be the Bab, gateway to the
> divine truth. Six years later, on July 9, 1850, by order of
> Nasir al-Din Shah he was executed by a firing squad at
> Tabriz. In the brief intervening years he had by fluent writing
> and fervent preaching founded a new religion, which,
> despite subsequent schisms and bitter sectarian quarrels,
> still claims many adherents - a religion with its own unhappy
> yet triumphant history of persecution and martyrdom.
> The fame of the Bab and his faithful followers had
> long since fired Browne's imagination, and "those who have
> followed me thus far on my journey will remember how,
> after long and fruitless search, a fortunate chance at length
> brought me into contact with the Babis at Isfahan. They
> will remember also that the Babi apostle to whom I was
> introduced promised to notify my desire for fuller instruction
> to his fellow-believers at Shiraz, and that he
> further communicated to me the name of one whose house
> formed one of their principal resorts. I had no sooner
> reached Shiraz than I began to consider how I should, without
> attracting attention or arousing comment, put myself
> in communication with the person so designated, who occupied
> a post of some importance in the public service
> which I will not more clearly specify. His name, too, I
> suppress for obvious reasons. Whenever I have occasion
> to allude to him, I shall speak of him as Mirza Muhammad."
> 
> In such an atmosphere of mystery and conspiracy, so
> 
> [page 26]
> 
> characteristic of the religious history of Persia, Browne
> very soon succeeded in meeting "Mirza Muhammad," to
> whose house he was taken by Mirza Ali, a young Babi and
> old friend from Europe. "He was not in when we arrived,
> but appeared shortly, and welcomed me very cordially.
> After a brief interval we were joined by another guest,
> whose open countenance and frank greeting greatly predisposed
> me in his favour. This was the scribe and missionary,
> Haji Mirza Hasan .... He was shortly followed by the
> young Seyyid who had visited me on the previous day,
> and another much older Seyyid of very quiet, gentle appearance,
> who, as I afterwards learned, was related to the
> Bab, and was therefore one of the Afnan ('Branches') - a
> title given by the Babis to all related, within certain degrees
> of affinity, to the founder of their faith." Browne
> relates how he was "at first somewhat at a loss how to begin,
> especially as several servants were standing about outside,
> watching and listening. I enquired of Mirza Ali if I
> might speak freely before these, whereupon he signified
> to Mirza Muhammad that they should be dismissed .... I
> then proceeded to set forth what I had heard of the Bab,
> his gentleness and patience, the cruel fate which had overtaken
> him, and the unflinching courage wherewith he and
> his followers, from the greatest to the least, had endured
> the merciless torments inflicted on them by their enemies.
> 'It is this,' I concluded, 'which has made me so desirous to
> know what you believe; for a faith which can inspire a
> fortitude so admirable must surely contain some noble
> principle.'"
> 
> Long and intricate discussions followed, fully reported
> by a memory retentive far beyond the common run. "This
> is the special character of the prophetic word; it fulfils
> itself; it creates; it triumphs. Kings and rulers strove to
> 
> [page 27]
> 
> extinguish the word of Christ, but they could not; and now
> kings and rulers make it their pride that they are Christ's
> servants. Against all opposition, against all persecution, unsupported
> by human might, what the prophet says comes
> to pass. This is the true miracle, the greatest possible miracle,
> and indeed the only miracle which is a proof to future
> ages and distant peoples. Those who are privileged to meet
> the prophet may indeed be convinced in other ways, but
> for those who have not seen him his word is the evidence
> on which conviction must rest. If Christ raised the dead,
> you were not a witness of it; if Muhammad cleft the moon
> asunder, I was not there to see. No one can really believe
> a religion merely because miracles are ascribed to its
> founder, for are they not ascribed to the founder of every
> religion by its votaries? But when a man arises amongst a
> people, untaught and unsupported, yet speaking a word
> which causes empires to change, hierarchies to fall, and
> thousands to die willingly in obedience to it, that is a proof
> absolute and positive that the word spoken is from God.
> This is the proof to which we point in support of our
> religion."
> 
> Browne, having argued many points back and forth,
> suddenly realized that "it was now past sunset, and dusk
> was drawing on, so I was reluctantly compelled to depart
> homewards. On the whole, I was well satisfied with my
> first meeting with the Babis of Shiraz, and looked forward
> to many similar conferences during my stay in Persia.
> They had talked freely and without restraint, had received
> me with every kindness, and appeared desirous of affording
> me every facility for comprehending their doctrines;
> and although some of my enquiries had not met with
> answers as clear as I could have desired, I was agreeably
> impressed with the fairness, courtesy, and freedom from
> 
> [page 28]
> 
> prejudice of my new acquaintances. Especially it struck
> me that their knowledge of Christ's teaching and the gospels
> was much greater than that commonly possessed by
> the Musulmans, and I observed with pleasure that they regarded
> the Christians with a friendliness very gratifying
> to behold." Many further conversations followed, the upshot
> of which was that Browne not only wrote voluminously
> on the Babis through the remainder of his life and
> published many of their fundamental writings, but also
> put together a collection of Babi scriptures and documents,
> bequeathed on his death in 1926 to Cambridge University
> Library, which will prove invaluable to all future
> researchers.
> 
> "The memory of those assemblies can never fade from
> my mind; the recollection of those faces and those tones
> no time can efface. I have gazed with awe on the workings
> of a mighty Spirit, and I marvel whereunto it tends. O
> people of the Bab! Sorely persecuted, compelled to silence,
> but steadfast now as at Sheykh Tabarsi and Zanjan, what
> destiny is concealed for you behind the veil of the Future?"
> In Shiraz, Browne had witnessed manifestations of
> the human psyche which persuaded him that a great new
> religion had been born. He lived long enough to realize
> that Babism, and Behaism its offshoot, for all their gloriously
> tragic beginnings were little likely in the end to
> "cause empires to change, hierarchies to fall." Yet he had
> seen, and was endowed with the power to describe, the
> laying bare of the very soul of Persia, in those secret rendezvous
> in Shiraz. Century after century, Persia had been
> shaken by the mysterious forces of religious enthusiasm.
> Generation after generation had produced its saints, its
> ecstatics, its heresiarchs, its passionate defenders of the
> faith, its quietistic devotees, its obscure anchorites, its
> 
> [page 29]
> 
> ardent martyrs. Perhaps - who can tell? - he saw all these wonders
> for the last time, so great a change has been wrought
> by materialist influences penetrating from without. It is
> because the things Browne witnessed in 1887 were so closely
> akin to the Shiraz of Sa'di and Hafiz, and so far removed
> from the Shiraz of today, that his story truly belongs to
> the great age of Persia, and makes a fit frontispiece to the
> narrative now to be related....
> 
> 2. Image scans (click image for full-size version)
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views8713 views since posted 2013-06-28; last edit 2025-01-20 14:13 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../arberry_shiraz_persian_city
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> Scanned 2001 by Dan Povey.
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> Citation: ris/2144
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> — *Browne and the Babis (Used by permission of the curator)*