Bahaipedia:WikiProject Mentions/Research

A collection of press clippings about persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran.

Want to help? The following is a rough guide to doing research on mentions of the Bábí and Bahá'í Faiths in the media.

The history of the Cause has a large amount of detail. Starting at least in 1973 Baha'i publications began to take note of early accounts of the events of the Babi period that had been covered in newspapers. The fact that the original accounts were sometimes reprinted was also known. The breadth of the reprinting was only partially known even as late as 1997 and later. Additionally at the time this meant looking at originals in libraries or private collections and the requirements of those forms of access. Changing technology since then changes the requirements of access - in many respects the originals are now online and open to non-registered users who have the proper computer technology - a thing mostly unknown in the 1970s when the first computers were arriving at the World Center.

Using computers and scanned texts for searches is a fairly new technique as computers themselves are fairly young in the annals of humanity. And there are limitations - the validity of OCR rendering is limited and searches will not find every instance of a word, not all newspapers have been scanned, and OCR rendering in other languages is limited. Some work in French has been noted, less so in German. Work beyond the western alphabets is unknown? Russian?? The whole area is under scholarly review - if you can reach it consider reading ‘The Digitization of Newspaper Archives: Opportunities and Challenges for Historians’. See also Accessing Literature on the Baha'i Faith: Emerging Search Technologies, by Graham Hassall.

Much of this work is ongoing but much has also already occurred. Consider reviewing and where you see something relevant please contribute (it is a wiki after all!)

Resources

The following are some resources that point out or give access to newspaper archives online. Note that the particulars of technology vary and sometimes links can be probed by adding a site search operator when using a search engine (e.g. searching Baha'i site:example.com will return all results matching "Baha'i" on the website example.com).

1. International list at wikipedia
2. Electronic Newspaper resources: by title and resource type - "freely available"
   
   1. Trove: Digitised newspapers and more
   2. BC Historical Newspapers
   3. Chronicling America - Historical American Newspapers
   4. Gallica – La presse quotidienne - the Revue de l'Orient : bulletin de la Société orientale is somewhere in here
   5. The National Library of Singapore
   6. The Nineteenth Century Serials Edition (ncse)
   7. Papers Past - The National Library of New Zealand
   8. Review of African/South African newspaper resources
3. The Orient Mediterranee website - lists some free resources
4. Open Directory Project, Museums and Archives - with links to German and French
5. Possible list of Russian language sources

The whole area is under scholarly review - if you can reach it consider reading ‘The Digitization of Newspaper Archives: Opportunities and Challenges for Historians’.

Special Mention

In India?

The first is a question - the news of Nov 1845 went through India - could it have been mentioned in the newspapers in India first? See "Persia - or - Mahometan Schism".

1849 -> 1848?

Two journals in French have some evidence of being online one way or another but will seem to require tinkering or more careful reading to find references to the Babi/Baha'i Faiths.

The first is the French journal Revue de l'Orient which has known entries from April 1849 but is not posted in fully searchable text. See Revue de l'Orient : bulletin de la Société orientale where some are posted as "image only".

The second is Journal de Constantinople, (a French newspaper in Turkey) which is known to have entries at least from "some months earlier" than April 1849, seems to have been scanned. This appears to be a listing... and it says "open access" but....not working - listing of Journal de Constantinople

Hovhannes Hisarrian noted it is " the French language newspaper of the town mainly catering to Levantine Pera, covering not only cultural and political events of the Ottoman capital, but also newsworthy developments in Europe, political as well as cultural." - and more about related papers iike L’Impartial de Smyrne.

For both of these in context see "name of Bab".

1850

In 1850 a short news story began to circulate. Where did it come from ? Why was it printed? See A new religious sect.

Army of women?

And an "army of women"? Really? See Newspaper coverage of the Zanjan Upheaval.

German newspaper

Another is by Oct 1852 there are English papers citing German sources. Specific newspapers are rarely mentions but one includes "Kölner Zeitung". See On the Attempt on the life of the Shah

Cahagnet

Then there is a "Cahagnet" - who is he and did he write his book? See Bahá'í Period of Historical mentions

Bibliographical work

In 1976 Robert Cadwalader on "Persia, an early mention of the Bab in the London Times", November 1, 1845.

MacEoin, Denis. "Babi history". The Babi and Baha'i Religions: An Annotated Bibliography. Greenwood Press's ongoing series of Bibliographies and Indexes in Religious Studies. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) It noted several early newspaper accounts and other publications to a total of 231 entries to 1995 just on the Babi period. However of the 19th century it noted 9 stories repeated a total of 16 times. As of Feb 2013 new finds documented here raise this total considerably. Just the first story and its echoes now count at least 12 instances.

In mid-1996 Amín E. Egea began a project of collecting spanish language references to the Bábí-Bahá'í Faith covering 1844 to 1947. He says he has "unearthed over 180 references in the daily press, in more than thirty books, and in assorted journals and manuscripts."

Previous scholarly work

"European Language Bibliography: Babi Religion, Chronological, 1844 - current". Babi-Baha'i Bibliographies. Association of Baha'i Studies, New Zealand chapter. May 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Ghadimi, Riaz (2009) [1984]. The Báb - The King of Messengers (PDF) (3rd ed.). www.juxta.com. ISBN 978­0­9698024­0­2. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); soft hyphen character in |isbn= at position 4 (help)

MacEoin, Denis (2009). The Messiah of Shiraz: Studies in Early and Middle Babism. Iran Studies. Vol. 3 (illustrated ed.). BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-17035-3. - note "In order to distance this work from the thought processes of true believers, I have deliberately written in a style designed to force a dislocation from the sort of pious veneration that closes the mind and leads to knee-jerk responses… the Bab was just a human being…" (from page xx)

Warrick, David. "Declaration of the Báb" (pdf). Research. self.

"Mirza Malkam : L'inspirateur de la République Islamo-Maçonnique en Iran" (in French). iran-resist.org. 3-20-2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)(has several citations of works in 1850s.)

Momen, Moojan (9-8-2000). "Premiers récits occidentaux sur les religions Babies et Baha'ies de 1844 à 1944" (in French). Médiathèque - Centre de Resources Baha'ies Francophones. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)

Momen, Moojan (1999). "Early Western Accounts of the Babi and Baha'i Faiths". Draft for The Baha'i Encyclopedia. bahai-library.com.

Amanat, Abbas (1989). Resurrection and renewal: the making of the Babi movement in Iran, 1844-1850. G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series. Cornell University Press.

Moojan Momen (1981) [1977]. The Bábí and Bahá'í religions 1844-1944: some contemporary western accounts. G. Ronald. ISBN 978-0-85398-102-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

Smith, Peter (1987). The Babi and Bahaʼi Religions: From Messianic Shiʻism to a World Religion (illustrated ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521301282.