A Traveller's Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Báb

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    Edward Granville Browne was born in Gloucestershire in 1862 and passed his youth in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was educated at Eton (where he found the classical curriculum then in force boring and impossible), Glenalmond and Pembroke College Cambridge. His interest in Oriental matters was first aroused by the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 and at Cambridge he read Oriental languages as well as medicine. His father, a successful engineer, insisted that Oriental languages was too hazardous as a profession and that he must qualify as a doctor; this he did between going down from Cambridge in 1884 and undertaking his only long visit to Persia in 1887-8.

    It is this visit which was the subject of A Year amongst the Persians and, as appears from that book, one of his main purposes was to make contact with the Bábís and to obtain any of their books which he could; the present volume is one of those he obtained.

    He returned to Cambridge to take up a fellowship at Pembroke and, except for comparatively short visits to Turkey, Egypt and North Africa, never left Cambridge again.

    However, he remained in very close touch with Persia through a host of friends and correspondents, and not only produced the Literary History of Persia but was also closely concerned in the events following the Persian revolution of 1905. There was a real threat that Persia might be partitioned between Great Britain and Russia, and it was widely believed that his Persian Committee was the decisive factor in the preservation of Persian independence. His private fortune enabled him to help many Persian and other political exiles.

    He married in 1906 and died in 1926, leaving two sons. His memory is still green in Persia, and within the last decade one of his granddaughters who spent a year there received much kindness, not only from his old friends and pupils, but also from strangers who felt for him the same kind of affection that the Greeks feel (or till recently felt) for Lord Byron. His statue in Teheran is said to have been the only statue of a European which was spared during the rule of Dr Mossadeg.

    London 1974.                     MICHAEL BROWNE.

                                                             PAGE
INTRODUCTION..................................................vii
ADDENDA.......................................................liv
CORRIGENDA.....................................................lv 
  
TRANSLATION.....................................................1
  
NOTE A.   Persian and European accounts of the 
               Báb and his religion...........................173
NOTE B.   The Seven Martyrs...................................211
NOTE C.   Proofs of the Báb's age from the Persian Beyán......218
NOTE D.   The meaning of the title "Báb"......................226
NOTE E.   The Sheykhís, and their doctrine of the 
               "Fourth Support"...............................234
NOTE F.   Supplementary notices of certain persons 
               mentioned in the text..........................245
NOTE G.   The Báb's Pilgrimage to Mecca and return to Shíráz..249
NOTE H.   Seyyid Yahyá of Dáráb and the Níríz Insurrection....253
NOTE I.   The Báb's escape from Shíráz to Isfahán.............262
NOTE J.   The Conference at Isfahán...........................264
NOTE K.   Mullá Sadrá and his Philosophy......................268
NOTE L.   The Báb at Mákú and Chihrík.........................271
NOTE M.   The first examination of the Báb at Tabríz..........277
NOTE N.   The Báb's claim to be the Imám Mahdí................290
NOTE O.   Certain points of Shi'ite doctrine referred 
               to in the text.................................296
NOTE P.   The Execution of Mullá Muhammad 'Alí of Bárfurúsh...306
NOTE Q.   Kurratu'l-'Ayn......................................309
NOTE R.   Derivative Attributes...............................317
NOTE S.   The Báb's last moments..............................319
NOTE T.   The attempt on the Sháh's life and the 
               Massacre of Teherán............................323 
   
[page vi]

                                                             PAGE
NOTE U.   Writings of the Báb and Subh-i-Ezel.................335
NOTE V.   Texts from the Persian Beyán concerning the high
               estate of "Him whom God shall manifest"........347
NOTE W.   Mírzá Yahyá "Subh-i-Ezel" and the Cyprus exiles.....349
NOTE X.   Translation of the Superscription and Exordium 
               of Behá'u'lláh's Epistle to the King of Persia.390
NOTE Y.   The Martyrs of Isfahán, the martyrdom of Áuá 
               Mírzá Ashraf of Ábádé, and the persecutions 
               of Si-dih and Najafábád........................400
NOTE Z.   Zeynu'l-Mukarrabín the Scribe, and the light thrown
               by his colophons on the Bábí calendar..........412 
   
INDEX     ....................................................427

See this section at bahai-library.com/browne_travellers_narrative_introduction.

    On p. 132 add the following note to the first sentence of the last paragraph:- In K. the word ~~~ has been inserted above the line before the words ~~~. If we accept this reading (which is, however, unsupported by Rosen's as by the present text) the sentence will translate as follows:- "They have misrepresented matters before the presence of the King in such a way that if any ill deed proceed from anyone not of this sect they account him as [a follower] of the religion of these servants."

    On p. 138, l. 5, add the following note after "Book":- K., supported by Rosen's text, inserts a sentence whereof this is the translation:- "Some men, when they are unable to answer their opponent, lay hold of the rope of textual corruption; whereas mention of textual corruption occurs [only] in special passages." This Persian sentence, if admitted, would seem to come more naturally at the end of the passage in Persian (omitted in the present text, translated in the foot-notes on pp. 137-138) than where it stands at present in the midst of a piece of Arabic. As regards sequence of ideas, too, it would be much more appropriately placed there than in its present position, where it has no obvious connection with the context.

    On p. 141, ll. 5-6, add the following note:- K., as well as Rosen's text, reads "we have sprinkled" instead of "we have made manifest."

    On p. 142, l. 20, add the following note:- Rosen's text agrees with K. in reading ~~~ (celebrated, notorious) instead of ~~~ (apparent, evident).

    Passages of which the original is in Arabic are printed in italics in the translation. Words supplied to complete the sense are enclosed in square brackets.

    Baron Rosen has kindly called my attention to the following errors:-

    On p. 69, n. 1, and again, in a yet more definite manner, on pp. 208 and 211, I have committed the inexcusable blunder of confounding Behá'u'lláh's earlier Súratu'l-Mulúk with his later Alwáh-i-Salátín. The former only is described by Baron Rosen in the first volume of the Collections Scientifiques, and what is there written bears no reference whatever to the Súra-i-Heykal or the Alwáh-i- Salátín comprised in it. The MS. described by Baron Rosen on pp. 145-243 of the forthcoming sixth volume of the Collections Scientifiques contains a series of Behá'u'lláh's writings. The first of these pieces is the Súratu'l-Mulúk (previously described in the first volume of the Collections Scientifiques) concerning the authorship of which I expressed my doubts on pp. 954-8 of my second article in the J.R.A.S. for 1889. In reply to my objections Baron Rosen proves quite conclusively (Collections Scientifiques, vol. vi, pp. 145-8) that the Súratu'l-Mulúk was written by Behá'u'lláh, and that it was, moreover, written at an earlier date than the Alwáh-i- Salátín. The same MS. contains also the Súra-i- Heykal (including, of course, the Alwáh-i- Salátín), and it is of this that the full text will appear in vol. vi of the Collections Scientifiques. The Súratu'l- Mulúk appears to have been written about the end of the Baghdad period, i.e. about A.D. 1864; the Alwáh-i- Salátín (or at least the Epistle to the King of Persia, which is the longest and most important of them) during the latter days of the Adrianople period (cf. pp. 102, and 119, n. 1 supra), i.e. about July 1868. The reader is therefore requested to make the following corrections. On p. 69, n. 1, l. 4, for "~~~" read "[Persian text]." On p. 208, l. 27, for "a copy of Behá's Súra-i- Heykal" read "a copy of Behá's Súratu'l-Mulúk," and delete what follows down to the end of l. 2 on p. 209, as well as n. 2 on p. 208. On p. 211, l. 5, for "(or ~~~)" read "(and the ~~~."

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