The Conversion of Religious Minorities
to the Bahá'í Faith in Iran

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Habib Levy suggests that the poor economic and social conditions under which Jews lived induced many of them to convert (Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-lran 781-82). If this were the case, we might expect the conversions to occur mostly among the poorer classes of Jews and in areas where the Jewish community was the most depressed. This does not seem to have been the case. Bahá'í biographies indicate that the Jews who first converted were often doctors or educated artisans.⁶ Poorer Jews seem to have converted somewhat later.

At the time Jewish conversions began in 1877 in Hamadan, the economic position of the Jews there had improved considerably due to a shift in trade routes. In 1862, the British established regular steamer service between Basrah and Baghdad. This placed Hamadan on the major artery linking Baghdad and Europe with Tehran. Jews were prominent in the trade of cotton textiles from England that were transported on this route. By the end of the century, eighty percent of that trade was in their hands (Issawi, Economic History 62). The Jews of Yazd, however, were dependent on the declining silk trade and experienced the greatest economic deprivation during this period. Yet, Yazd did not experience a significant number of Jewish conversions to the Bahá'í religion at that time.

However, the condition of the Zoroastrian community in Yazd began steadily improving in the latter half of the nineteenth century when representatives from the Parsi community in Bombay were sent to Iran to ameliorate the oppression and poverty under which the Zoroastrians lived. Besides establishing schools, influencing government regulations, and introducing internal reforms into the Zoroastrian community, the contacts with the Parsis of India led to the establishment of trade relations between Bombay and Yazd in which Zoroastrians played a prominent role. Out of this relationship arose a mercantile and professional class that had been hitherto absent among the Zoroastrian community of Iran. The early conversions to the Bahá'í Faith occurred among this group and again followed or accompanied economic improvement. The upwardly mobile were often the first to convert.

Habib Levy also suggests that Jews sometimes converted to the Bahá'í Faith to obtain relief from persecution (Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-lran 626-31). Evidence does not support this view. Bahá'ís lacked even the secondary legal status accorded to other religious minorities within the Islarnic state as "People of the Book." Attacks against Bahá'ís were usually the more virulent, and they could hardly offer anyone else protection. Converts to the Bahá'í Faith remained within their ancestral community as long as they were tolerated there and could avoid persecution by doing so. In the event of expulsion, they found themselves in the precarious position of belonging to no recognized religious community.

In Hamadan, many Jewish Bahá'ís pretended to convert to Protestantism in order to obtain the protection of the Presbyterian missionaries (Mihrabkhani, Sharh Ahval-i 130). In Yazd, Zoroastrian Bahá'ís had better success maintaining their position within the Zoroastrian community and thereby remained relatively immune to the persecutions that afflicted Bahá'ís of Muslim background (Stiles, "Early Zoroastrian").

Walter Fischel, another historian of Middle Eastern Jewry, sees the general ignorance that existed among the Jews of Iran regarding the basic tenets of their religion as a primary determinant of the conversions:

 Had Persian Jews possessed the spiritual leaders of a high cultural standing in the last century, had the rabbis and the schools taught and asserted a Judaism free from superstitious notions, empty formalism and medieval prejudices, had they shown a true sense for Judaism and its ethics, the conception of God, its ideas of the messiah, its national aspirations, its contributions to world culture, Bahaism would hardly have won any Jewish hearts. (Fischel, "Jews in Persia" 156)

Contemporary Western accounts of the Jewish community would tend to support Fischel's evaluation. Before the arrival of Christian missionaries the Bible was read in Hebrew, often without any understanding. The eariiest translations of the Bible into Persian and Judeo-Persian were made and distributed by the Christians. Even Hebrew Bibles were generally obtained through missionaries. The Talmud was virtually unknown, and the Jewish clergy had little education (Spector, "A History" 226-52). The converts, however, judging from their literature, had a good knowledge of scripture, as well as of rabbinical exegesis (cf. Arjumand, Gulshan Haqayiq). One Bahá'í of Jewish background stated that his father carefully taught all of his apprentices "the trade, the Torah, and the Bahá'í Faith" (personal interview with the author). But in none of these accounts have I found any reference to the Talmud.

Like the Jewish clergy, the Zoroastrian priests in Iran were poorly educated entrenched in ritualism, and unable to respond to social change. Parsi agents sent to assist the Iranian Zoroastrians often found their efforts frustrated by intransigent priests. When one Parsi agent, Kay-Khusraw Ji Sahib, established a body of elected laymen to oversee the activities of the Zoroastrian community including those previously regulated by the clergy, the Zoroastrian priests were said to have poisoned him (Sulaymani, Masabih-i 4:404-6).

Several other factors seem to have encouraged conversion. Fischel notes that the universality displayed by the Bahá'ís in contrast to the insularity of the Jewish community also provided a strong inducement to conversion ("Jews in Persia" 154). Levy also noted the profound impression Baba'is made upon the Jews by their kindness and tolerance:

The Jews observed that the very Muslims [Baba'is] who yesterday had regarded Jews as unclean and infidels and who tormented them even unto death, today, with the utmost affection, showed respect to them. If a Jew went to a Bahá'ís' place of worship there was no danger, the Bahá'í would even invite him and regard him as having the same rank as hirmself; for the leader of the new religion [Bahá'u'lláh] had said that all humanity are the servants of God and there is no difference between them. (Levy, Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-lran 627)

The biographies of Bahá'í converts confirm this factor. Sulaymani tells the story of a Zoroastrian youth named Ardishir who visited the home of a prominent Bahá'í Mulla 'Abdu'l-Qani. The host graciously received him, serving him tea with his own hand, then, deliberately ignoring the strictures of ritual uncleanliness, drank out of the same glass after him without washing it. Turning to his surprised guest, Mulla 'Abdu'l-Qani remarked, "You must have heard how, in the days of the advent of the Promised Lord, the lamb and the wolf will drink from the same stream and graze in the same meadow. Do you still doubt that we are living in that Day?" (Sulaymani, Masabih-i 3:79).

While these factors seem to have been important to the Jewish and Zoroastrian conversions, Christian conversions were nearly nonexistent. I will now examine the communal experience and identity of each minority to determine what factors might account for the differences in response to the Bahá'í revelation.

Communal Experience and Identity
Christian missionaries noted a profound difference between the way in which Armenians were perceived and perceived themselves in contrast to the Jews. Samuel Wilson, a Presbyterian missionary writing in 1896, described the Armenians as highly westernized, materialistic, and with strong nationalistic attachment to the Gregorian Church despite their skepticism in matters of faith.⁷ At the same time, he describes the Jews as despised and persecuted, forced to submit to the vilest insults on the part of both Muslims and Christians.⁸ Zoroastrians seemed to have experienced mistreatment similar to the Jews. Napier Malcolm, a missionary living in Yazd at the turn of the century, noted how Zoroastrians were subjected to petty humiliations and previously had been excluded from trade and education.⁹

Two major groups of Christians reside in Iran, the Nestorians or Assyrians, who in the nineteenth century resided principally in parts of Kurdistan and Urumiyyih, and the Armenians, many of whom were settled in New Julfa just outside of Isfahan. The areas in which the Nestorians resided were largely rural and forrmed a part of what they believed to be their national homeland. They possessed a glorious past and a strong identity based on their language and liturgy. In the missionary schools they learned Assyrian and European languages but remained ignorant of Persian. They saw themselves as the remnant of Assyrian as well as Christian glory. So strong was their sense of ethnic pride that they sought independence at the Versailles Peace Conference. Their rural status and relative isolation allowed them greater autonomy than other minorities; they remained aloof from Iranian Muslims. From the 1840s on they cultivated close relations with the American Presbyterians and other missionaries who offered economic aid and political protection. While Nestorians had experienced little outside interference, from the 1870s on Kurdish incursions into their territory became more frequent. Through the missionaries, Nestorians made frequent appeals to the central government which was afraid to offend Western powers by not acceding totheir demands.^l0 Although the efforts of the missionaries did not result in the reform of that church as they had envisioned, they reinforced the positive self-image and pride of the Assyrian Christians. Their ethnic identity as Assyrians prevailed over Iranian nationalism.

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