Tahirih in East and West

Within the first decade of the Babi-Bahai Faiths, the birth of the new religion was proclaimed in several notable instances by a female figure. One of these is found in the Bab’s exegesis of the Surah of Joseph in 1844, another in the apocalyptic gesture of Tahirih’s public removal of her veil in the hamlet of Badasht in 1848, and yet another in Baha’u’llah’s vision in the prison of Tihran in 1852, as recorded in his Surah al-Haykal. Whereas in the first and last instance the female figure is a symbol representing a mystico-prophetic experience, the second instance features a woman of flesh and blood. This historical proclamation by a female apostle, unknown in the annals of previous monotheistic dispensations, did not escape the attention of observers. Leading European orientalists, such as E.G. Browne, Carl Friedrich Andreas and Theodor Nöldeke, analyzed Tahirih’s life and texts, while European artists and novelists, such as Marie von Najmajer, Isabella Grinevskaya and Sarah Bernhardt, paid tribute to the life of the Persian poet and martyr in fictional form. In the Islamic world, however, reaction was not always so sympathetic. Whereas an outstanding Muslim reformer such as Muhammad Iqbal allocated Tahirih a place of honor in his Javidnamih--his Persianized version of Dante’s Divina Commedia--the Qajar chronicler Muhammad Taqi ‘Sipihr’ chose to present Tahirih as the incarnation of immorality and seduction. Nevertheless, whether positive or negative, the range of reactions to Tahirih's life can be read as attestation of the decisive role she played in the genesis of a new religion.