It is also important to realise that the Baha'i Faith was going through a phase of rapid expansion at this
time and much of this expansion was among the emerging middle class of educated government
officials, merchants (tujjār) and the new modern professional classes that were becoming important
(school-teachers, physicians, journalists). There is independent evidence for this rapid expansion. For
example, by 1884, the increasing conversions had even begun to affect relatively small communities
such as Asadabad in central Iran, from where Mirza Sharif Mustawfi wrote to his uncle Sayyid Jamal
al-Din Asadabadi (‘al-Afghani’), urging him to write something against the Baha'is. He writes: ‘In all
of the provinces of Iran, a large number of people are now following Mirza Husayn ‘Ali ‘Akkāwī [i.e.
Baha'u'llah], such that there is no counting or describing them. They have some books of his such as
the Bayan and the Iqan and many others, and night and day they are thinking and speaking of him. He
has taken the title Baha'.'
44
In 1887, the Christian missionary agent Benjamin Badall reported: ‘the
religion of Baha increases daily, and one of them said that since our last visit more than four hundred
men have become Baabis in Yezd alone, besides those in the surrounding villages.'
45
Accounts from this period even speak of the possibility of the Baha'i Faith replacing Islam as
the predominant religion of Iran (see statements to this effect
by Napier Malcolm, a British
missionary in Yazd, 1898–1904;
46
and reported by Professor E.G. Browne in 1903
47
and Arthur
Hardinge, the British Minister in Tehran 1900–1905
48
). It is not surprising, therefore, that Western
estimates of the total number of Baha'is in Iran at this time are very high. Some careful observers
estimated as many as 500,000–1 million in 1892
49
and 3 million Baha'is by the turn of the century (i.e.
a third of the estimated total population of 9 million).
50
This estimate of one-third of the population is
also found in the second volume of the
Gazetteer of Persia, compiled by the Intelligence Branch of
the Indian Government and published in 1905.
51
Although these numbers are, of course, gross
overestimates, there can be no doubt that the Baha'i Faith was making great strides among the more
educated classes in the cities and it seems likely that these overestimates were the result of European
observers, who interacted only with these classes, extrapolating what they observed there to the whole
country. Thus we may be safe in concluding from these accounts that, at the very least, the Baha'i
teachings were being actively discussed and considered by about one-third of the educated and
professional classes in Iran—exactly the same group of people who were also the main supporters and
drivers of constitutionalism and the social reform movement. Ideas were filtering through from the
Baha'i teachings into the discourse of the reformers.
52
There is even evidence that the secular
44
Asghar Mahdavi and Iraj Afshar, Documents Inedit concernant Seyyed Jamāl-al-Din Afghānī
(Tehran: Danishgah Tehran, 1342/1963) document 86, photograph 57, letter dated 15 Ramadan 1301/29 June
1884.
45
Bible Society Monthly Reporter, April 1887, 55-6, cited in Moojan Momen, 'Early Relations between
Christian Missionaries and the Bahā'ī Faith' in Moojan Momen (ed.), Studies in Bābī and Bahā'ī History, vol. 1
(Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982, pp. 49-82), p. 66.
46
Napier Malcom, Five Years in a Persian Town (London: John Murray, 1908), pp. 61, 87.
47
Browne in Introduction to Myron H. Phelps, The Master in ‘Akkā (Los Angeles: Kalimāt Press,
1985), p. xiv.
48
Arthur Hardinge, A Diplomat in the East (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928), p. 298.
49
George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question (2 vols., 2nd imp., London: Frank Cass, 1966),
vol. 1, p. 499.
50
T. Greenfield, Die Verfassung von persischen Staates (Berlin: Franz Vahlen, 1904) p. 31, based on
an article by H. Arakelian published in Tiflis in 1898.
51
Vol. 2, p. 74; see also the statement by Valentine Chirol that Baha'is number 1.5 million or 20 per
cent of the population of Iran;
The Middle Eastern Question (London: John Murray, 1903), p. 123.
52
Thus for example in December 1905 - January 1906, when a large number of ‘ulama’, merchants and
others took sanctuary (
bast) in the shrine of Shah ‘Abdul-‘Azim, their demands crystallised around the call for
an ‘adalat-khanih (a house of justice). Various suggestions have been made as to the origins of this word and
reformers, as they planned their campaign to bring about the Constitution, modelled themselves on the
Baha'is in terms of strategies that they saw were being successfully used by them.
53
It is now appropriate to return to the question of the identity of the group that anti-
constitutionalist figures such as Shaykh Fazlullah Nuri had in mind when they accused the
constitutionalists of being ‘Babis’. Given the work of Bayat on the important role played by the Azalis
in the Constitutional Revolution, it would be tempting to reach the conclusion that it was the Azalis
who were intended. It must, however, be borne in mind that the Azalis routinely and continuously
practised taqiyya (dissimulation of their real beliefs). Not only did they conceal their beliefs but
several of the most important of the Azalis even dressed and passed themselves off as Shi‘i clerics. In
their writings they strictly avoided mentioning the Babi religion. It is not at all clear to what extent it
was realised by most people that these people were in fact Azalis. Of course, the anti-constitutionalists
accused them of being ‘Babis’, but this was a general accusation made against all constitutionalists
and therefore has no evidentiary value. One must ask the question: would orthodox clerics such as
Bihbihani and Tabataba'i have associated closely with these individuals and allied themselves with
their proposals if they had known that they were in fact Babis? It seems unlikely.
On the other hand, in the 1890s and early 1900s, the Baha'i community not only had a
discourse on constitutionalism and social reform, but they were also taking practical steps in
advancing this discourse by electing their ruling councils, building schools and advancing the social
role of women. As we have seen above, possibly as many as one-third of government officials and the
educated and professional classes were engaged with the Baha'i community to some degree. This
same social group was also the main group behind the drive for constitutionalism and social reform
that was just emerging at this time. It seems very likely, then, that one of the main sources of the ideas
emerging in the reformers' discourse was the teachings and practices of the Baha'i community.
Fortunately we also have a few instances in which prominent anti-constitutionalist figures
clearly identified whether it was in fact the Azalis or the Baha'is that they meant by their attacks on
‘Babis’. There were two episodes that were very similar except for the fact that one occurred in
Tehran and the other in Shiraz. Shaykh Fazlullah Nuri ascended a pulpit in front of the crowd
assembled in Maydan-i Tupkhanih (Artillery Square) in Tehran in December 1907 and read to the
crowd the passage in Baha'u'llah's Kitab Aqdas that addresses Tehran and predicts: ‘Erelong will the
state of affairs within thee be changed, and the reins of power fall into the hands of the people.'
54
He
then said that the leader of the ‘Babis’ urged this 40 years ago and now his followers were carrying
out his instructions.
55
Similarly in Shiraz the anti-constitutionalist Qavam al-Mulk summoned the
people of the town to the Masjid Naw and read to them the same passage of the Aqdas, asking them
whether they really wanted to bring about the constitutional government that Mirza Husayn ‘Ali
why it suddenly sprang forth at this time (see discussion in Martin, Islam and Modernism, pp. 76-80). It is
entirely possible, however, given the fact that many Baha'is were contributing to the debate as to the nature of
the reforms being sought, that the name came from the House of Justice (bayt al-‘adl) that is called for in the
Kitab Aqdas of Baha'u'llah (v. 30) and which the Baha'is were engaged in establishing in many cities of Iran at
this very time. Some of the confusion over what exactly was meant by the ‘adalat-khanih, whether it was to be a
court of appeal or an elected body, may be due to the fact that the Baha'i houses of justice were both.
53
Nazim ul-Islam Kirmani, Tarikh Bidari, vol. 1, pp. 29-30.
54
Baha’u’llah, Kitab-i-Aqdas, (Haifa: Baha'i World Centre, 1992), v. 93, p. 54.
55
‘Abdul-Husayn Avarih [Ayati], al-Kawakib al-Durriyyah (3 vols. in 2, Cairo: al-Sa‘adah, 1923), vol.
1, pp. 163-4; ‘Alaqihband, in one place (Tarikh, p. 58), states that it was a
rawzih-khan who did this in the
Madrassih Marvi after the crowd had repaired there from the Maydan Tupkhanih; on p. 203 however
‘Alaqihband attributes this action to Nuri, Sayyid ‘Ali Yazdi and others in both the Maydan Tupkhanih and
Madrassih Marvi.