Bibliography 2: #BIB29851

Key	BIB29851
Reference type	Unpublished Work
Short title	'Abdu'l-Bahá's Treatise on Persecution of Bahá’ís in 1903
Title of work	'Abdu'l-Bahá's Treatise on Persecution of Bahá’ís in 1903
Author	'Abdu'l-Bahá and Rabbani, Ahang
Year	2005
Date	May 2005
Place published	Houston, Texas
Abstract	In the summer of 1903, the Bahá’í community of Iran faced a series of brutal campaigns of attempted genocide in several cities, including Rasht, Isfahán and Yazd. When these persecutions reached their peak in the midsummer of that year, `Abdu’l-Bahá wrote a treatise outlining events leading to these pogroms, the motives and actions of the principle persecutors, and the intense sufferings of the Bahá’í community. Like all His communications on such subjects, `Abdu’l-Bahá was full of praise for the patience, forbearance and the conduct of the Bahá’ís, young and old. In retrospect, it appears that `Abdu’l-Bahá intended this Tablet to be published in the West, galvanizing the support of prominent Bahá’ís, and Bahá’í communities in general, in the United States and Europe. Towards this, He instructed one of His secretaries, Dr. Younis Khan Afroukhtih, to translate this Tablet, which presumably was done in collaboration with some Englishspeaking Bahá’ís visiting `Akká at the time. This work was further assisted by an English-speaking pilgrim of Jewish-descent from Hamadan, Dr. Arastoo Hakim, and was completed on 19 September 1903. The translated treatise was then sent to the United States to be published there under the title “Bahai Martyrdoms in Persia in the Year 1903 AD”. It was received in Chicago on 29 October 1903 and its publication took place through the work of Bahá’í Publishing Society in 1904. However, for reasons not clear to the present translator, it was published as a document prepared by Hájí Mírzá Haydar-`Alí, a prominent Bahá’í residing in Haifa at that time. The following notation was included: “In compliance to the holy command of Abdul-Baha, the following account of the recent martyrdoms in Persia, up to the present time, is herein written and submitted for the perusal of the beloved of God.” (Signed) Hadji Mirza Heider Ali. In preparation for its publication, the Bahá’í Publishing Society only slightly edited the English for a smoother reading and revised a quotation from New Testament to bring it in line with copies of the Bible available to the general public. In the spring of 2004, the present translator coordinated a typing effort of the 1904 publication to be posted on Internet for the use of researchers in the Bábí-Bahá’í histories. In April 2005, Dr. Khazeh Fananapazir brought to my attention that this document was indeed a published treatise by `Abdu’l-Bahá in Makátíb `Abdu’l-Bahá, vol. 3, pages 122-47. This important discovery facilitated a re-translation of the treatise, which appears below. In the course of the present effort, it was further discovered that the original translation considerably differed from `Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablet: sections were moved around, segments from the original were missing in the translation, various additions were made in the translation that were not in the original text, and a number of other deficiencies were noted. And while the present translation, undoubtedly, also suffers from important shortcomings, it is more aligned with the original text and hopefully offers a basis for more befitting renderings in the future.
Language	English
Keywords	PERSECUTION; IRAN; 1903
Pages	27
File attachments	internal-pdf://3381555778/Abdul-Baha - Treatise-persecution-bahais-1903.pdf

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