Ahang Rabbani's website

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Sunday, 04 February 2007 14:30

Published: Sunday, 04 February 2007 14:30

Written by Alison Marshall

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I suspect that not many people will know about Ahang Rabbani's website. He has given it the title: Studies in the Babi and Baha'i Faiths. Ahang Rabbani.

Ahang is a humble, and a great, Baha'i scholar. He has done some extraordinary research and writing for the faith. He can read Persian and Arabic and has dedicated his life to translating and researching the writings of those who interacted with the Bab, Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha, as well as other works. He writes up the fruits of his research in various documents. One great thing about these documents is that anyone can read them. You don't have to be a scholar or knowledgeable about the history of the faith to follow them. Ahang footnotes his work to help the lay reader understand what's going on.

As luck would have it, last year Ahang decided to put on a website a large collection of his documents. It is a mine of information about the history of the faith. If you look closely at what Ahang has produced, you can only marvel at the breadth and depth of it. For example: Do you know who or what the Afnan family is? Well, wonder no more because Ahang has written a 50-page genealogy of the family with biographical notes about each member, stretching back to before the Bab and forward to roughly the present day. By reading it, you get a really good picture of who the family was and the sort of lives its members lived. I know there has been controversy about whether members of the family traded in opium. The details about that are there.

Another of Ahang's achievements is his book, In the Land of Refuge: The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in Shiraz. As the title indicates, the book is a detailed account of the fortunes of the faith in the Bab's hometown. It's a real eye-opener. You begin to appreciate what life was like in those days and what it meant to be a believer. It also sheds light on the culture in which the faith originated.

So, if you're looking for some interesting reading, then I highly recommend Ahang's works. What little I have read has changed me and greatly increased my understanding of where the faith has come from.

Meditations on hope

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Saturday, 20 January 2007 20:37

Published: Saturday, 20 January 2007 20:37

Written by Alison Marshall

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The other day, I literally walked into the path of a person who had left the Baha'i community over 15 years ago. She was sitting at a small table in the mall, drinking coffee. Without realising it, I walked straight toward her and then focused on her and realised who she was. The incident was amazing because I often go to that coffee shop to read, but I have never seen her there before. We hadn't seen each other for over a decade, but met up again at Mark's funeral. I had been thinking about her just the day before and, voila, there she was in front of me.

We shared stories. She told me she was no longer a believer. I told her that I'd been thrown out of the community but that I was still a believer and, what's more, was even more of a believer than I ever was when I was a community member. I explained that Baha'u'llah was my life and that I lived and breathed the faith everyday. She had heard that 'something' had happened to me and, when I explained that I'd been tossed out when my views had become public on the Internet, she said things like, "What about the clash of differing opinions?" She heard herself and stopped and said, "Gee, I still can remember that stuff".

She commented that I must really believe, implying that to have remained a believer after all that indicated that the faith must have taken hold in me. This intrigued her because she had gone the opposite way. Tentatively, she indicated that she might be interested in talking some more about it. And then she made a comment that stuck in my mind afterwards but that didn't register at the time: 'I'm open to being convinced that there's hope'. I can't remember exactly how she put it, but that was the sentiment. She had to dash off, so I didn't get to ask her what she meant - hope about what, exactly?

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The verse from Ibn al-Farid

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Thursday, 11 January 2007 03:12

Published: Thursday, 11 January 2007 03:12

Written by Alison Marshall

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With regard to the verse from Ibn al-Farid that Baha'u'llah quotes in Gems of the Mysteries, I came across another translation of it. I'm referring to the verse that I quoted in my previous message.

I've discovered that the verse is very likely from Ibn al-Farid's Poem of the Mystic's Progress (Nazmu'l-suluk), verse 83 . (That is the poem that Baha'u'llah's Ode of the Dove is patterned on.) While I was reading a translation by Nicholson of the Poem of the Mystic's Progress, I came across the verse Baha'u'llah had quoted in Gems.

In my previous message, I gave Juan's translation and that of the World Centre:

"Till I chose your love as my religion,
I remained without an orthodoxy;
How surprised and shocked I should be afterward
If I were not completely bewildered at you."
(Juan Cole's translation)

"I knew not what amazement was
Until I made Thy love my cause.
O how amazing would it be
If I were not amazed by Thee!"
(World Centre translation, para 99)

Here is Nicholson's literal prose translation:

"And I never was bewildered until I chose love of thee as a religion.
Woe is me for my bewilderment, had it not been on account of thee!"
(RA Nicholson: Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge reprint 1967) p 208)

Nicholson explains in a footnote that the word he has translated as "bewilderment" is "hayra". I looked it up in my Arabic-English dictionary and the various definitions given are: confusion, perplexity, bewilderment, embarrassment, helplessness, uncertainty, lack of self-confidence, wavering between two things.

So, it doesn't look like Ibn al-Farid used a word meaning "orthodoxy", although I couldn't say for sure because I haven't got the original of the poem and don't know what Baha'u'llah quoted in Gems.

But the central idea that I was making in my previous message remains: love of Baha'u'llah is the key and not ticking boxes. And whether Ibn al-Farid said it or not, for me it is true that until I chose love of Baha'u'llah as my religion, I remained without an orthodoxy. In other words, I remained bewildered and confused over what his religion was actually about.

Tablet of Joseph

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Friday, 22 December 2006 13:47

Published: Friday, 22 December 2006 13:47

Written by Alison Marshall

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A translation of the Tablet of Joseph appears in a 1904 compilation of the writings. The details of the publication in which the translation appears and an approximate facsimile of the translation are at the Baha'i Library Online at http://bahai-library.com/?file=bahaullah_lawh_yusuf.

Because the translation is an early one and has been done by someone for whom English is a second language, it is difficult to pick out the meaning in places. Therefore, I have edited it a bit to make it easier to read. I have changed the paragraphing, spelling and punctuation and edited a few words. The English is still a bit odd in places.

Tablet of Joseph
by Baha'u'llah

Translated by Anton Haddad

[1] The Tongue of God utters (this) in Persian words: O Joseph! My demonstration was brought to its fullness and completion for all who are in heaven and on earth before I made Myself known, because it appeared in such a wonderful condition that no one could find a way to delay or oppose.

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Book review: The Succession to Muhammad

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Thursday, 14 December 2006 18:03

Published: Saturday, 09 December 2006 18:03

Written by Alison Marshall

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I have just finished reading the book The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate by Wilferd Madelung (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and highly recommend it. I found out about it from reading Sen's book Church and State. Sen refers to Madelung's book quite a bit in his discussion on the succession of Muhammad and how it bears on the church and state issue.

I'm not much of a reader; I am dyslexic to some extent, which means among other things that I read slowly. I have to choose my books wisely because I can read only a few of them. But I decided to give Madelung a go because I wanted to understand better the business of what happened after Muhammad died. I discovered that the book was compulsive reading. It is 350 pages long, crammed full of long Arabic names. Like with the Dawn Breakers, I had to bypass the names in order to keep abreast of the story. But I got the general idea and found it amazing.

In the Introduction, Madelung explains that he decided to write the book because he thought Western academics had followed the Sunni accounts too slavishly. He went back over the hadith and looked at it from as impartial a view as possible. Of course, he had to balance the accounts and decide what was most likely to have happened. But even given that, the book gives an extraordinary insight into the events after Muhammad's death and the cultural context in which they happened.

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