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The Babi Uprising in Zanjan: Causes and Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John Walbridge
John Walbridge*
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University—Bloomington
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Extract

On 5 May 1850 the Babis of Zanjan rose in arms against the Qajar governor of the town. Led by a charismatic cleric known as Hujjat-i Zanjani, two thousand Babi fighters with their families held part of the town against a much larger government army. Nine months later, when the army captured the last ruined houses held by the Babis, fewer than a hundred Babi fighters survived to face execution.

There is never a neat answer to the question of why a historical event occurred, and the question is that much harder to answer when the information is in fundamental ways incomplete and when the participants themselves differed deeply about the meaning of the event. There were two other major Babi revolts1— Mazandaran in 1848–49 and Nayriz in 1850—and at least four other instances where Babi uprisings might have been expected: Shiraz, Qazvin, and Isfahan in 1846, and Tehran in 1852.

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Iranian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3-4 , Summer Fall 1996, pp. 339 - 362
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Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1996

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References

1. I use the term “revolt” for convenience, though it does not exactly fit. See MacEoin, Denis, “The Babi Concept of Holy War,” Religion 12 (1982): 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The reader can in the end judge for himself what term fits best.

2. See, generally, Amanat, Abbas, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850 (Ithaca, 1988)Google Scholar.

3. Of the Babi primary sources, two stand out: Tārīkh-i vaqāyiᶜ-i Zanjān by Mirza Husayn Zanjani, a Baha'i commissioned by the Baha'i leader Bahaᵓ Allah in about 1880 to write an objective report on the siege (MS 1632, Baha'i World Center, Haifa, Israel), and the interpolation in the London manuscript of Hamadani's, Mirza Husayn The Táríkh-i-Jadíd, or New History of Mírzá ‘Alí Muḥammad the Báb, trans. Browne, E. G. (Cambridge, 1893), 139–68Google Scholar, containing an account of the fighting based on information from a certain Haydar Big, son of Din Muhammad, Hujjat's military commander. The other notable Babi and Baha'i accounts are Zarandi, Nabil, The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation, trans, and ed. Effendi, Shoghi (Wilmette, 1932)Google Scholar, a bowdlerized version of Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, with added information obtained from Zanjan Baha'is in the 1860s; Aqa ᶜAbd al-Ahad Zanjani, “Personal Reminiscences of the Babí Insurrection in Zanján in 1850,” trans. Browne, E. G., Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 29 (1897): 761–827Google Scholar, the memoirs of an Azali who had been a child during the siege; the narrative of ᶜAbd al-Ahad's brother, Aqa Naqd ᶜAli, quoted in Nicolas, A. L. M., Séyyèd Alí Mohammed dit le Báb (Paris, 1905), 332Google Scholar, 338–40, which seems now to be lost. Mirza Asad Allah Fadil Mazandarani's Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq (Tehran, n.d.), 3:175–85, contains biographies of the leading Babis of Zanjan, especially Hujjat, with information not available elsewhere.

The account in Sipihr, Mirza Muhammad Taqi Lisan al-Mulk, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh: dawra-yi kāmil-i tārīkh-i Qājārīya, ed. Jahangir Qaᵓim-Maqami (Tehran, 1344 Sh./1965)Google Scholar, the official history, seems to have been written from military dispatches. Hidayat, Rida-Quli Khan, Rawḍat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī (Tehran, 1339 Sh./1960), 10:447–56Google Scholar is unreliable. Accounts by Gobineau, Iᶜtidad al-Saltana, and most later Muslim writers are based on Sipihr. Contemporary diplomatic dispatches are quoted or summarized in Momen, Moojan, The Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 1844–1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (Oxford, 1981), 114–27Google Scholar. A petition against Hujjat is reproduced and edited in the Tehran daily newspaper Iṭṭilāᶜāt, 20 Azar 1354/11 December 1975, 10.

Two additional important sources exist to which I was refused access. The first are the papers of Sayyid Mirza Abu'l-Qasim Zanjani, known as “Sayyid-i Mujtahid,” a leader of the Zanjan clergy during this period, including several refutations of the Babis. These are in the hands of one of his descendants. The second is the chronicle of the siege in the second volume of Mazanadarani's Ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, held at the Baha'i World Center.

4. Babi and non-Babi sources agree about his character and position. See Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 3–4; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 529; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 770; Iṭṭilā'āt.

5. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 529; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:447–48; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:89.

6. Only Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 3, and Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 529–30, mention the interlude in Hamadan, which Nabil attributes to his father's warning of enemies in Zanjan. If the latter is the case, it must be due to their both being Akhbaris (see below).

7. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 4–5.

8. Hamadani, New History, 135; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 178; Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 3.

9. For a general discussion, see Momen, Moojan, An Introduction to Shiᶜite Islam (Oxford, 1985), 117–18Google Scholar, 222–25.

10. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 178. The abvāb-i arbaᶜah (the Four Gates) were the four men who for nearly seventy years after the disappearance of the last Imam in 874 had claimed to be in communication with him.

11. The Baha'i sources do not mention his denial of ijtihād and taqlīd, probably because they did not know the theological point at issue.

12. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 4–5; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 770, 786.

13. Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:89.

14. Iṭṭilāᶜāt; Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 8. The Shiᶜites believed that Jews and Christians were impure and that touching their clothing when it was raining transmitted this impurity to a Muslim. Another signer of the deposition said that he considered it allowable to eat with Christians and Jews—interesting in light of the later development of Babi and Baha'i thought on the matter.

15. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 5–6; cf. Iṭṭilāᶜāt.

16. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 8; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 779; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 530–31.

17. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 6–7. Hujjat's book, Rayḥānat al-ṣudūr, on the question of the duration of Ramadan, was written for Muhammad Shah in 1843, presumably during this stay in Tehran.. Two MSS exist: Tehran Milli 898 and Tehran Sipahsalar 2536, the latter an autograph.

18. The Babi accounts of Hujjat's conversion differ on details, but all mention the dramatic reception of the letter and his renunciation of the mulla's turban. See ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 771–73; Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 9–10; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 178–79; Hamadani, New History, 136–37. Non-Babi accounts agree that his conversion was effected through correspondence with the Bab but place it as late as 1848. See ᶜAli Quli Mirza Iᶜtidad al-Saltana, Fitna-yi Bāb, ed. ᶜAbd al-Husayn Navaᵓi (Tehran, 1351 Sh./1972), 61; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:89; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:448; Muhammad Sadiq Diyaᵓi, “Sanadī rājiᶜ ba shūrish-i Bābīyān-i Zanjān,” Yaghmā 20, no. 3 (1346 Sh./1967): 163.

19. ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 775–76; Hamadani, New History, 137.

20. Hamadani, New History, 136–37.

21. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 11.

22. ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 775; cf. Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:389; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:448; Iᶜtidad al-Saltana, Fitna, 61.

23. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 532–33. As he progressively claimed higher stations, the Bab sometimes gave his earlier titles to his prominent followers.

24. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 11–13. This and some of the other sermons attributed to Hujjat may be from the lost compilation of his writings entitled Sāᶜciqa (The Thunderbolt). See Iṭṭilāᶜāt; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 825–26.

25. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 11.

26. ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 775.

27. Hamadani, New History, 371–72; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 533. Nicolas, Alí Mohammad, 335, following Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 11, says that what happened was that Hujjat began leading the Friday form of prayer in place of the everyday prayer, following the law that the Friday prayer should supersede the daily prayer when the Imam returned.

28. All the Babi sources agree that a follower of Hujjat met the Bab in Shiraz, thus between early July 1845 and September 1846.

29. Hamadani, New History, 137–38, 219–20, based on the account of the journey given by the chief of the escort, Muhammad Big Chaparchi, who became a Babi soon after. See ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 775–76.

30. Another factor is that the Zanjanis expelled their governor at about this time. See below, p. 000 and n. 000. The relationship between the two incidents is not clear.

31. Iᶜtidad al-Saltana, Fitna, 61; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:447; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:89.

32. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 533–34. It should be noted that there is a different explanation of Hujjat's exile to Tehran. On 11 Shaᶜban 1263/25 July 1847 a riot broke out in Zanjan, occasioned by the governor's kidnapping and rape of a local woman (Sipihr, Nāsikh 2:206–7). According to Iṭṭilāᶜāt, which evidently uses an additional source unknown to me, the governor was taken out of the city by a mot)—face blackened, wearing a paper hat, and riding bareback and backwards on a donkey. Hujjat and his chief clerical rival both issued fatwās justifying the mob, and so both were brought to Tehran. There are chronological difficulties in associating Hujjat with this incident—although it is certainly his style.

33. Sipihr, Nāsikh, and other Muslim sources, certainly wrongly, date Hujjat's conversion to this exile in Tehran.

34. Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 72.

35. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 538–39.

36. Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:89–90; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:448; Iᶜtidad al-Saltana, Fitna, 61.

37. Shaykhis were followers of Shaykh Ahmad Ahsaᵓi. The Bab himself had been a student of Ahsaᵓi's successor. Their esoteric interpretations of Shiᶜite tradition and their expectation of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam had made them receptive to the Bab's message. Prior to his conversion Hujjat had been opposed to the Shaykhis. See Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 42-43, 45–46; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 178.

38. Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 114.

39. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 17–18; Hamadani, New History, 142; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 539; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:448. Muhammad ᶜAli Malik-Khusravi, Tārīkh-i shuhadā-yi amr (Tehran, 130 B.E./1973)Google Scholar, lists ten Zanjan Babis who are said in one source or another to have died at Tabarsi.

40. ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 779–80.

41. Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:90; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:448. Oddly enough, though they accuse Hujjat of political ambition, Muslim sources say that the government, specifically the prime minister, Amir Kabir, had already decided to arrest Hujjat before the first clash between the Babis and the authorities. The Babi and Baha'i sources assume the decision to arrest Hujjat was due to these clashes.

42. Hamadani, New History, 140–42. This agreement is reported only by the wellinformed Haydar Big, but it makes sense of the events that followed. Its absence from the official Muslim accounts is probably explained by the fact that the governor would have kept the extra taxes for himself.

43. Nicolas, Alí Mohammad, 338–40, contains an eyewitness account by the Babi youth who escaped. See also Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 18–19; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:90; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 781–83; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 540–41; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:448.

44. The Babi and Baha'i sources for the events of this day differ in many details, but agree on the general course of events. See Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 541–43; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 783–84, 791–95. The casualty figures are from Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:90; Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 22–23.

45. Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:90; Hamadani, New History, 141; Diyaᵓi, “Sanadīi,” 163–64.

46. Hamadani, New History, 142; Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 17–18.

47. See MacEoin, “Holy War,” esp. 98–101, 118–20, though his account of Zanjan is misleading. There is no evidence for the declaration of a “defensive jihād” at Zanjan. The Babi accounts agree that the Zanjan Babis did not declare holy war but considered themselves to be acting simply in self-defense. See Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 28, 36–37; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 546, 553; Hamadani, New History, 137–38, 145; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 791, 810–11. Throughout most of Shiᶜite history scholars had considered the obligation of holy war to be in abeyance in the absence of the Imam, though in the first half of the nineteenth century the ulama had declared holy war several times, Zanjan being one of the occasions. See Diyaᵓi, “Sanadī,” 163–64, and Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 28. Hujjat, an Akhbari, evidently considered this to be an innovation.

48. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 60–62; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 800, 812.

49. Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:449–54; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:93; Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 116–19; Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 57–58; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 809–11; Hamadani, New History, 312–13; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 554–55.

50. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 23–24; Hamadani, New History, 143–44; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 787; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 543–44; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:90; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:449.

51. Hamadani, New History, 145—46; Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 36–31; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:91.

52. Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:91.

53. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 30–32, 38–39, 51–52, 62, 6; Hamadani, New History, 143–44; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:90–91, 93; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:449; Nicolas, Alí Mohammad, 343; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 774, 809, 818–19; Iᶜtidad al-Saltana, Fitna, 264–65; Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 117–18.

54. Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 115 (Sheil to Palmerston, no. 64, 25 May 1850, FO 60 151).

55. Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 115–16.

56. Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:91–92.

57. Hamadani, New History, 140–43, 157, 372; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 556–57; Hidayat, Rawḍat 10:449–50; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:93–94.

58. Hamadani, New History, 141–42, 157, 372.

59. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 49–50; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 563; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 769.

60. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 55–56. See also ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 802–3; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 549–52; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:94. One of the local mujtahids also ruled that the jihād in Zanjan was a farḍ ᶜayn—an obligation binding on the individual— that applied even to women. He held that a woman could participate in the fighting without permission of her husband. See Diya'i, “Sanadí.”

61. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 49–51, 60; Hamadani, New History, 158–59; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:95–96.

62. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 62–64.

63. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 60–62, 64–65, 71–73; Hamadani, New History, 161–68, 291–92, 373; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 573, 577–78; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 768–69, 812–13, 818–21; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:96–97; Diyaᵓi, “Sanadī,” 164; Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 122.

64. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 66–73; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 569–70. It is not absolutely clear whether the women were imprisoned there, had taken sanctuary there to escape the vengeance of the troops, or some combination of the two. There had been a scuffle between the townspeople and the troops over who should have custody of the Babi women. The townspeople were evidently unwilling to turn over to the soldiers women of the town, even if they were Babis. Nonetheless, the women were treated harshly, on the whole, and some of the children died.

65. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 73–76; Sipihr, Nāsikh 3:96–97; Momen, Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 123–24; Hamadani, New History, 165–68; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 813, 817, 819.

66. Mirjafari, Hossein, “The Ḥaydarī-Niᶜmatī Conflicts in Iran,” Iranian Studies 12 (1979): 135–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67. See n. 32 above

68. Cole, Juan and Momen, Moojan, “Mafia, Mob and Shiism in Iraq: The Rebellion of Ottoman Karbala, 1824–1843,” Past and Present 112 (1986): 112–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69. Zanjani, Vaqāyiᶜ, 24–25, 40–43; ᶜAbd al-Ahad, “Reminiscences,” 779; Amanat, Resurrection, 358.

70. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 502.

71. Ibid., 579.