The First Recorded Bahá’í Fireside

Abstract

This article presents an episode recounted by Cambridge orientalist, Edward Granville Browne (7 February 1862–5 January 1926), as narrated in his travel classic, A Year Amongst the Persians, first published in 1893 (second edition published by Cambridge in 1927). This may be characterized, with some poetic licence as the first recorded ‘fireside’ in Bahá’í history. That is; the first-hand account given in the course of his historic contacts with the Bahá’ís in Persia (present-day Iran), during his stay in Shíráz, from Thursday 22 March 1888 to Saturday 6 April 1888 – at which time Browne, at long last, succeeded in his quest to discover further information on the Bábí religion which, by this time, had evolved into what is today known as the ‘Bahá’í Faith’ now an independent world religion established in all countries except for North Korea and the Vatican. Special focus is devoted to a meeting that took place in Shíráz on ‘Friday, March 30th’, 1888 – and which here is characterized as ‘the first recorded Bahá’í fireside’. Browne’s account – loosely compared, in the present study, to his original diary entries, digital scans of which are now made available by Pembroke College, Cambridge, as part of the ‘Browne Archive Project’ – is energized by his intense curiosity, which may fairly be described as a ‘passion’ for his research interest as a scholar. To ascertain the degree to which Browne’s narrative is a composite, reworked account – and not strictly sequential and chronological – it makes sense to draw some correspondences between Browne’s diary entries, and the Shíráz narrative in Chapter XI in A Year Amongst the Persians, as to both topics and dates. Briefly, the present article highlights Browne’s diary entries, folio by folio (page by page), from Vols. II and III of Browne’s diary, and offers some observations on corresponding passages in A Year Amongst the Persians.