RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Babcock
Babism
by the hundred when the news that the Bab had appeared was spread abroad, as it soon was in the manner peculiar to the East. To the personal attractiveness of the young leader and the agreement of his pantheistic teachings with the mysticism held by most Shiites there was added as a compelling force driving to association with his following the great evils of a tyrannous civil and religious administration, so that the Babis soon became a large and important body.
The next year (1843) the Bab made the pilgrimage to Mecca, returning confirmed in his opposition to the mullahs or clergy. He attacked them in his preaching, and when they sent their 3. Persecu- ablest debaters to confute him and his tion and claims, these partizans were either si- Death of lenced or convinced. They then sethe Bab. cured his arrest and attempted to assassinate him, but were prevented since he was under the protection of the governor. When the latter died (1847), Mirza Ali was thrown into prison in Maku and finally taken to Tabriz, where his confinement was daily made more rigorous. All the time he was exceedingly prolific in a literary way, claiming indeed as evidence of his inspiration the ability to produce 1,000 lines of poetry a day. His mildness and gentleness won the hearts even of his jailers, and converts were increased as accounts of his sufferings were made public. The most notable conversion was that of a famous, learned, and very beautiful woman to whom the Bab gave the name Jenab-i-Tahira, " Her Excellency the Pure." She was permeated with mysticism, and by her devotion and persuasiveness during her life and still more by her martyrdom (1852), she gained large numbers as adherents of the faith. Meanwhile in 1848 the late Shah was crowned, and selected as his prime minister a violent opponent of Babism. Under the persecution immediately instituted, some of the Babis seized arms and proclaimed the Bab sovereign, a proceeding which he discountenanced. The prime minister then had the Bab executed, July 8, 1850, expecting that his death would cause the dissolution of the sect. But Mirza Ali had nominated Mirza Yahya his successor and head of the nineteen councilors, and continuity was secured. On assuming leadership, the latter took the names of Sub-i-Ezel and Hazrat-i-Ezel, " Dawn and Holiness of Eternity."
The execution of the Bab exasperated his followers, and some of them attempted to assassinate the Shah. This involved the sect in new persecutions and in wholesale executions in public in which the most execrable atrocities were perpetrated (Count Gobineau has described some of the scenes in Les Religions et les philosophies, pp. 301-303, quoted in Renan, Les Apotres, p. 378, Eng. transl., p. 201). As a result there was a great exodus of the adherents of the sect to Bagdad, whence, upon Persian official protest against their continued residence so near to the Persian territory, the Turkish government removed them to Adrianople. The leader secluded himself very persistently, conducting affairs through his half-brother Beha. The latter
suddenly proclaimed himself the one foretold by the Bab as " the one whom God shall manifest," drew after himself most of the following, and split the sect into the " Ezelites " and the " Behaites." Between the two parties hostilities so bitter broke out that the Turks sent Beha to Acre, which became the headquarters of the Behaites and the center of their propaganda. Ezel was removed to Cyprus, and his following has become almost extinct. Beha was almost as prolific a writer as the Bab, and his works are extant in a Bombay edition. He died in 1892, and his son Abbas Effendi took his place and is the present leader. The number of Babis is estimated at over 1,000,000, and they carry on a propaganda in the United States (described in AJT, Jan., 1902). See Behaism.
The doctrines of the Babis rest on two bases:
(1) The general system of Shiah in its pantheistic
and mystical phases; and (2) the as-
4. Doc- sumption that no revelation is final,
trines. but represents only the measure of
truth the stage of human progress has rendered man capable of receiving. Hence, as the revelation of Moses was superseded by that of Jesus, and his by Mohammed's, and his in turn by the Bab's, so the latter's is superseded by Beha's. But Abbas Effendi has tried to throw a log under the car of progress by declaring that " whoever lays claim to a revelation before 1,000 full years have passed is a lying impostor." The explicit teachings are (1) the veneration of the Imams;
(2) the fact of their concealment and the doctrine of intermediaries; (3) the reappearance of the Imam as a reincarnation; (4) the non-finality of any revelation; (5) the incarnation of deity as an avatar from time to time to give instruction (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Mohammed, and the Bab were such avatars, alike rejected by their hearers); (6) the possibility of an achievement, like that of the Buddhist Nirvana, of unity of the individual with True Being; (7) the fact of a final judgment; (8) the system of numbers based on nineteen: the year consists of nineteen months, of nineteen days, of nineteen hours, of nineteen minutes; the Bab had eighteen associates, he making the nineteenth and being the point of unity; the square of nineteen is the symbol of the universe; the Bab and his disciples represent God and, each of these having nineteen under him, make up the square which represents perfection. Commended for practise by the Babis are: abolition of religious warfare, friendly intercourse with all sects and people, obedience to the ruler, submission to law, confession of sin to God, acquisition of all knowledge which contributes to human good, and mastery of some trade or profession. Prayer is three times (not five times) a day, and the believer turns his face toward Acre, not toward Mecca. The Babi fast is not the month of Ramadhan, but the last month of the Babi year and lasts nineteen days. There is evident in all this a determination to mark the separation of the sect from Mohammedanism.
The Bab's dictum on worship is worthy of quotation: " So worship God that if the recompense of thy worship of him were to be the fire, no altera-
Babylonia