The Reconciliation of Races and ReligionsCheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly)
Religion
The Reconciliation of Races and Religions
Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly)
Bahais
Among the Heroes of God was another glorious saint and martyr of the
new society, originally called Zarrin Taj ('Golden Crown'), but
afterwards better known as Ḳurratu'l 'Ayn ('Refreshment of the
Eyes') or Jenab-i-Tahira ('Her Excellency the Pure, Immaculate'). She
was the daughter of the 'sage of Kazwin,' Haji Mullā Salih, an
eminent jurist, who (as we shall see) eventually married her to her
cousin Mullā Muḥammad. Her father-in-law and uncle was also a
mullā, and also called Muḥammad; he was conspicuous for his bitter
hostility to the Sheykhi and the Bābī sects. Ḳurratu'l 'Ayn
herself had a flexible and progressive mind, and shrank from no
theological problem, old or new. She absorbed with avidity the latest
religious novelties, which were those of the Bāb, and though not
much sympathy could be expected from most of her family, yet there was
one of her cousins who was favourable like herself to the claims of
the Bāb. Her father, too, though he upbraided his daughter for her
wilful adhesion to 'this Shiraz lad,' confessed that he had not taken
offence at any claim which she advanced for herself, whether to be the
Bāb or _even more than that_.
Now I cannot indeed exonerate the 'sage of Kazwin' from all
responsibility for connecting his daughter so closely with a bitter
enemy of the Bāb, but I welcome his testimony to the manifold
capacities of his daughter, and his admission that there were not only
extraordinary men but extraordinary women qualified even to represent
God, and to lead their less gifted fellow-men or fellow-women up the
heights of sanctity. The idea of a woman-Bāb is so original that it
almost takes one's breath away, and still more perhaps does the
view--modestly veiled by the Haji--that certain men and even women are
of divine nature scandalize a Western till it becomes clear that the
two views are mutually complementary. Indeed, the only difference in
human beings is that some realize more, and some less, or even not at
all, the fact of the divine spark in their composition. Ḳurratu'l
'Ayn certainly did realize her divinity. On one occasion she even
reproved one of her companions for not at once discerning that she was
the _Ḳibla_ towards which he ought to pray. This is no poetical
conceit; it is meant as seriously as the phrase, 'the Gate,' is meant
when applied to Mirza 'Ali Muḥammad. We may compare it with another
honorific title of this great woman--'The Mother of the World.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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