Browne and 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: 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....

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-- Browne and the Babis (Used by permission of the curator)