Authentic and non-Authentic Books on Babi History?

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Ahsan_al_Hadees
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Authentic and non-Authentic Books on Babi History?

Postby Ahsan_al_Hadees » Thu May 29, 2008 4:13 am

Dear Bahai Friends,

I have an interesting question. What are the books written on Babi History and which are authentic and which are not. Does anyone know?

Regards,
Ahsan

Sen McGlinn
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Re: Authentic and non-Authentic Books on Babi History?

Postby Sen McGlinn » Thu May 29, 2008 1:08 pm

Dear Ahsan,
no, nobody knows :D

There are more and less good sources, for different parts of history. The single best work on Babi history thus far is Abbas Amanat's "Resurrection and Renewal." I particularly like his chapter on Tahireh in Baghdad. Since then, more studies have been done on particular subjects. Moojan Momen has a brilliant article on Tahireh's family, which adds a lot to what Amanat has found.

Abdu'l-Baha wrote "A Traveller's Narrative of the Bab" which is partly history, and partly a defence of the Babi's against the accusations made against them.

EG Browne wrote and collected some good materials, and Momen has collected a lot of these in "Selections from the Writings of EG Browne."

Todd Lawson does brilliant work, more textual than historical. Stephen Lambden has some papers, but he tends to focus very much on one small incident, worked out in detail, rather than giving a broad history. Peter Smith's book "the Babi and Bahai religions" has an excellent section on Babi history, which here and there has been overtaken by more recent discoveries.

Ahsan_al_Hadees
Posts: 82
Joined: Sat Jun 05, 2004 12:46 am
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Re: Authentic and non-Authentic Books on Babi History?

Postby Ahsan_al_Hadees » Thu May 29, 2008 1:12 pm

Dear Sen,

Thanks for your participation. I came to know that maybe Nukta-tul-Kaaf ( something like that ) was or was not an authentic history of Babis. Do you have any idea?

Regards,
Ahsan

Sen McGlinn
Posts: 123
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 7:11 am
Location: Leiden, the Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Authentic and non-Authentic Books on Babi History?

Postby Sen McGlinn » Thu May 29, 2008 1:43 pm

It is authentic, in the sense of dating very early and being written by someone connected to the Babi religion. But there are many questions about it, and there are 6 early manuscripts which differ substantially, so one has to be careful about which Nuqtatu'l-kaf people are talking about. The best work on this to date has been done by Kavian Milani and Will McCants and is published in Iranian Studies. It is not my field of expertise: the impression I had from reading the article is that the more we find out about the history of the text, the more valuable it becomes: both because the accounts that said it was more or less a forgery have proved to be very much exaggerated, and because as we get an idea about who added what to the text when, we can use each piece as it should be used -- critically. Each piece reflects the knowledge and the agenda of a particular writer


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