Antipodean Bahá’í Studies

Leading academic publishers EJ Brill have announced the forthcoming publication, The Messiah of Shiraz: Studies in Early and Middle Babism, in the series Iran Studies (edited Ali Gheissari (University of San Diego, CA), Roy P. Mottahedeh (Harvard University), Yann Richard (Sorbonne Nouvelle)) The 19th century saw an enormous shift in the authority structure of Iranian and Iraqi Twelver Shiʿism, with the victory of a theological school (Usulism) that stressed the power of the clergy. This is well known. What is less well known is that there was a parallel development of authority in the Shaykhi school and its offshoot, the Babi sect. Here, especially in later forms of Babism, the Shiʿite claim to charismatic authority reached its limits in hyperbolic attestations of divinity. The present text is in two parts: a study of how Shaykhism bifurcated into a form close to orthodoxy next to the highly unorthodox Babi movement. Part two examines how Babism changed after the death in 1850 of its founder, the Bab. Author Denis M. MacEoin, Ph.D. (1979) in Persian Studies, University of Cambridge has taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. His most recent work has been on radical Islam in the United Kingdom. His previous books include The Sources for Early Babi Doctrine and History. This volume joins the recently announced volume of translation and annotation by Ahang Rabbani from the same publisher The Genesis of the Babi-Bahá’í Faiths in Shiraz and Fars by Mírzá Hábíbu’lláh Afnán to be published as volume 122 in the series Numen Book Series ; Texts and Sources in the History of Religions (Editorial board: Steven Engler (Mount Royal College, Calgary, Canada), Richard King (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, U.S.A.), Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands). Also reccomended is the excellent study published by Brill in 2006, Margaret Warburg’s Citizens of the World A History and Sociology of the Baha’is from a Globalisation Perspective.