The Social Protest of the Babis
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Social Protest of the Babis, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1974, bahai-library.com.
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The Social Protest of the Babis

Marshall G. S. Hodgson
published in The Venture of Islam, vol. 3: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times pp. 304-306, 310

Chicago: University of Chicago, 1974

[page 304]

The social protest of the Babis

The Iranian and neighbouring lands in the Iraq and the Caucasus, long so central to Islamicate
culture, were relatively isolated from the earlier impact of the new Europe. European trade,
indeed, had been vigorous in Safavi times (there had even been Catholic missions), but its
importance had been reduced in the eighteenth century, with the internal political
disruption; by the end of that century, European interests were represented largely
indirectly—by way of the more central parts of the Ottoman empire, or of India, or of the
Volga region. At the same time, the cultural tradition' of the area, heartland of the Persianate
literary tradition and given to Shi'i loyalties, was relatively independent of that in the areas
most immediately affected by the new Europe. The Iraq and Iran maintained well into the
nineteenth century a high level of philosophical and religious creativity almost unparalleled
in other Muslim areas. Even early in the. nineteenth century, though the position of the
commercial classes was being undermined, the 'ulama' were making serious developments in
jurisprudence, and the Persians honoured a major new philosopher (Mulla Hadi, 1797/8
1878) in the school of Mulla Sadra. It is only after the 1830S that, by subsequent

[page 305]

Shi'i reckoning, the writers must be relegated to the position of epigones.

We have taken note of one of the philosophical minds of the late eighteenth century' also
influenced by Mulla Sadra; that of Shaykh Ahsa'i. He developed a Shar'ism that differed
strikingly from that of the Wahhabis and Sanusis, his contemporaries, in that it was not only
deeply 'Alid-loyalist but also highly philosophical, looking to a long-term spiritual
improvement of mankind. But like theirs, it was reformist, and opposed to the Sufi tariqahs.
Indeed, it was explicitly chiliastic, and, like theirs, it took on great subsequent significance
under the impact of the Western Transmutation. It was in an atmosphere still relatively
uncorrupted by the Western presence, yet keenly aware of it as restricting the power of the
Islamic community and presenting new and unexamined possibilities of living, that many
Shi'is of the Shaykhi school in the 1830S were expecting, more insistently than ever, the
renewed presence of the Bab, the special spokesman of the Hidden Imam, who would order
society aright again. A young man of great theological and spiritual gifts, 'Ali-Mohammad of
Shiraz (1819-50), won considerable following among them and in the tradesmen classes of
the town population generally. 'Ali-Mohammad, as Bab, proclaimed (beginning in 1844) a
new and quite liberal Shari'ah, a new set of symbolisms to replace those of Shi'i Islam, and
the expectation of a new prophetic dispensation of social justice soon to be realized among his
followers.

The Babis, as his followers were called, were impatient to see the new justice realized. They
preached vigorously and soon came into open conflict with the Shi'i 'ulama' and then with the
Qajar government. 'Ali-Mohammad was arrested but in prison he continued to be the
inspiration of a devoted band of idealists. There were riots and finally extensive revolt; 'Ali-
Mohammad was executed; the movement was suppressed with much bloodshed in 1852.

After 'Ali-Mohammad's death, the majority of his followers gradually accepted the lead of
another young man, Baha'ullah (1817-92), who then, in 1863, proclaimed himself the new
prophet predicted by 'Ali-Mohammad; those Babis who accepted him were henceforth known
as Bahá'ís (the others, as Azali Babis). The Bahá'ís retained the social mission of the Babis,
which had favoured the town merchant and artisan classes and allowed women a much freer
role than had traditional Islam. (A Babi heroine publicly tore off her veil in 1848.) But
they abandoned the idea of immediate revolt within Iran, looking rather to a more general
conversion of the world by the disciples of the new order. Baha'ullah already had a
cosmopolitan outlook; on his exile from the Qajar realm, the Ottoman government detained
him, as potentially subversive, settling him finally at Acre in Syria; there he attracted
converts from beyond Iran itself, though the largest concentration of followers of the new
faith were always to be found in Iran. He was succeeded (in the Shi'i manner) by his son,
who won many converts from

[page 306]

among Europeans (especially in the United States), whose tastes he pleased with a
universalist liberalism in religion (he discouraged killing, either of humans for political
reasons, as in war, or of animals for food). He in turn was succeeded by his grandson,
trained at Oxford, who organized the faith on a world-wide basis with institutions designed to
expand, with persistent missionary effort, into a world political order founded on faith.

The Shaykhi religious vision continued to be the starting-point for that of the Bahá'ís, whose
demand for a universalist moral outlook and a liberal social order reflects a Sufi-type
emphasis on the imponderables of the spiritual life as combined, by such movements as the
Shaykhi, with the 'Alid-loyalist concern for a spiritual organization of just social order. But
by the later part of the century the movement had become deeply tinged with the liberalism
of nineteenth-century Europe and came to form, in some measure, an instrument for
introducing the moral sides of technicalistic Modernity into western Iran. Eventually Bahá'í
schools, partly staffed with American converts, shared with those of the Western
missionaries (and of Zoroastrians, staffed from India) the education of a new liberal
generation, attracting many non-Bahá'í students.

Jamaluddin Afghani and the concessions to Europeans

For the period in which insurrectionary Babism was being superseded by education-minded
Bahá'ísm was that in which accommodation with the West was becoming fashionable even in
the Qajar realm. In 1848, Nasiruddin, the new shah (1848-96), launched an effort at
ministerial responsibility and generally tried to Europeanize the forms of his regime. In
1852 was founded what was intended to be a government institute of higher education on
Western lines; from 1840 on, the various Western-sponsored schools began to multiply,
and, from 1858, local students were sent to Europe in far greater numbers than in the
Napoleonic period. Already after 1823, printing had become widespread and after 1851
there were rudimentary newspapers; by and large, the Westernization of the surface of
urban life proceeded in Tehran rather as in Istanbul or Cairo, if somewhat less intensely.
The shah himself made extensive tours through Europe and wrote with amusement, respect,
and a certain amount of admiration of what he had seen, using a simple literary style which
the reading of French was commending to fashionable circles.

Yet not only had the Islamicate cultural tradition retained greater vitality in the Qajar state
than elsewhere. Those Persians and Azeris who were not under direct Russian rule did, even
late in the century, remain more nearly untouched by the new international forces than
either the inhabitants of the Ottoman empire or those of India. Meanwhile, older forms of
land tenure remained more nearly in the condition they had reached after the end of Safavi
times...

[page 310]

...To get out of the tobacco concession without destroying his credit in the European capital
market, the shah had to pay compensation to the tobacco monopoly. To this end he felt it
necessary to take out a British loan secured on the southern customs—an expedient less
evidently obnoxious, but in fact perhaps even more dangerous, as the Egyptians had
discovered in the time of Khediv Isma'il. But the alliance endured, of the 'ulama' with the new
intellectuals; the shah's continued policy of mortgaging the realm became increasingly
unendurable. Afghani had been invited to Istanbul and there found himself almost silenced as
an involuntary guest of 'Abdulhamid. But a close disciple of Afgham, after a trip to Istanbul
where he consulted with the master, assassinated the shah in 1896 and, after some initial
shock, was acclaimed as a tyrannicide by the Bazar, whose viewpoint the 'ulama' did not
discourage. The Qajar government requested extradition from the Ottomans of certain others
of Afghani's followers, who happened to be (Azali) Babis (though Afghani was presumably
hostile to the Babi faith as such, as disrupting Islam); they were executed. Afghani himself
was not yielded up, but died the next year in circumstances which led the Iranians to believe
Sultan 'Abdulhamid had had him done away with...

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-- The Social Protest of the Babis (Used by permission of the curator)