ABSTRACT
Babism was the precursor of Baha’ísm, but unlike its now very widespread successor it began as a highly chiliastic and militant affair during Iran’s Qajar dynastic period, even bent on waging holy war to secure the abrogation of the Islamic order and bring in a new messianic (Mahdist) dispensation. Centered on Sayyid ‘Alī Muhammad Shīrāzī, the Bāb (1819–1850) or the “Gate” foreshadowing the coming of “He whom God shall make manifest” (The Twelfth Imam), the original core group of converts in his new dispensation from Spring, 1844, were all middle- or low-ranking ‘ulamā (clerics) recruited exclusively from the ranks of the semi-heterodox Shaykhi school of Shi’ism, to which the Bāb himself was affiliated. As the movement spread, converts were made outside the circle of Shaykhism, and the provincial Bābī leaders of the late 1840s included important local ‘ulamā, such as Sayyid Yahyā Dārābī in Nayrīz, and Mullā Muhammad ‘Alī Zanjånl in Zanjān. At the same time, Shīrāzī himself and some of his early converts, including members of his own family, were not ‘ulamā, but rather laymen with an intense interest in religious matters and a smattering of theological and philosophical knowledge (Amanat 1981). Although the leadership of the sect remained firmly in the hands of ‘ulamā, lay members played a greater role within it than they could have done in the wider context of official Shi‘ism, and as time passed an increasing number of merchants, urban workers, and peasants affiliated themselves in some degree to the movement (Momen 1983).
