Dear Water,
You may be surprised to learn that my greatest and almost only ideal is a woman
whose name was Tahirih. She lived in Persia and was seventeen years old in 1834.
Persia in those days was ruled by the whim of an absolute monarch, and the masses were held in the grip of a fanatical Muslim clergy. Women remained veiled andsecluded, denied education, and dominated, first by fathers, and then by husbands. "She was born to the world of the Qur'an -- a Holy Book which grants more rights to women than does either the Old Testament or the New, but rights which the men have long perverted and usurped, (the women being unaware, and believing
their priests, who told them that women have no souls); but still a Holy Book which places the man above them." At that time the teachings of Christendom were
that according to it's own scripture inevitably must subjugate woman to man, as
man to God. My own new Baha'i Faith out of Iran is the only religion that grants equality to both. Tahirih was also a Baha'i.
Tahirih had to address the men from behind a curtain. She never lived to grow old, "murdered out beyond the enameled tile gates of Tihran, in a dark Persian garden by dead of night, thrown down in a lost well, her delicate bones under a heap of rocks."
During such a time it was that Tahirih boldly proclaimed to her native land the
advent of a new Day of God. She had "fidelity in searching for the truth." She
was a renowned poet, quick in argument and eloquent in speech. Uncompromising
in her demands for the emancipation of women. Tahirih became a legend in her own time and known all over the world.
"She was an acknowledged beauty, a man's woman, using cosmetics, scent, wearing
pretty clothes." When finally she was taken into the presence of his Imperial Majesty Nasiri-d-Din Shah after her return from Badasht, "on seeing her he said,
'I like her looks; leave her and let her be.'" It is related that His Imperial
Majesty sent her a letter to the Kalantar's house, (where she was being held a prisoner,) the gist of which was that he urged her to deny the Bab and again become a true Muslim. If she would do this, then he would give her an exalted position as the guardian of the ladies of his household: he would make her his bride.
She wrote a reply in verse on the back of his letter and had it returned to the shahanshah, (king of kings.) "The English translation, which cannot do justiceto the beauty of the original poem, is about as follows:
"Kingdom, wealth and ruling be for thee.
Wandering, becoming a poor dervish and calamity be for me.
If that station is good, let it be for thee.
And if this station is bad, I long for it; let it be for me!"
After the shah read this, he commented on her wonderful spirit and her courage.
His words were: "So far history has not shown such a woman to us."
A relative of Tahirih in Qazvin told Martha L. Root that the day before her martyrdom she was called to the presence of His Imperial Majesty Nasiri'd-Din Shah
. He said to her that day, "Why should you be a believer in the Bab?" She replied not with her own words, but from the Qur'an which was about as follows:
"I worship not that which ye worship,
And ye do not worship that which I worship:
I shall never worship that which ye worship,
Neither will ye worship that which I worship.
To you be your religion; to me my religion."
"His majesty bent his head in silence for some time and then arose and left the
room without saying anything. However I heard that the eunuch and others around
the shah were determined she should be killed, and the next day they had her murdered without the shah's knowledge; and he was very grieved when he learned of it." p. 95/6 from Tahirih the Pure by Martha L. Root.
In spite of fierce opposition from her own family, denunciations by the Muslim clergy, arrests and imprisonment, she traveled between Iran and Iraq teaching herrevolutionary Message. Finally she stunned the nation and challenged her fellow believers by discarding the symbol of the inequality of her sex, appearing before an assemblage of men unveiled.
In 1834 when Fath-'Ali Shah died (father of Nasiri'd-Din Shah,) she was 17. "Hewas the one with a long black beard, the one with a thousand wives and a carapace of priceless jewels" I have read. Tahirih's father was a prominent and very erudite man, and a remarkable father for those days. He allowed his brilliant daughter to sit behind a screen and listen and take part in deep discussions with
erudite men.
At that time women lived in harems and were not educated. "Her contemporaries lived in walled courtyards with their pools and fragrant plants, they could sew seed pearls on velvet, and peel a fruit so it looked like a carved flower. They could not read or write, but they could send for a magician to find a lost objector provide them with a spell to win their (shared) husband's love. (The marriage age was nine....") "They could buy cannily in the bazaars, have parties in the hammam or in other great houses, and give birth every year, each infant at once consigned to a servant's arms. They did not play music or dance -- you hired
that done. They could carry on feuds. Age set in early, and from then on they
mostly complained, until death.
"They haunt one still, those long-dead veiled and scented ladies with their whispering voices. They lived under stars so bright they could have read by them, if they they could have read. They breathed the clear, sweet air of Iran's high
plateau;. At dawn they would go out in the shadowy courtyard and pick the whitejasmine blossoms off a dew-laden bush. They lived in a great silence; could hear bird songs interrupting, or sudden, galloping hooves out in the lane, or frombeyond the city walls, some high-soprano shepherd boy wailing over never-attainable love. They would let the blue swallows fly in and out of their high-windowed rooms." --From the introduction by Marzieh Gale to the book Tahirih the Pureby Martha L. Root.
Tahirih became noted for her brilliant mind, her writings and poetry and her beauty. She was known best as Tahirih the Pure. She had a husband and two sons.
Unfortunately they were not of the same quality as Tahirih herself. Some day I
may tell more of her story here.
"Tahirih rose up and denounced the evils of her day. She dared to wear bright-coloured dresses during the Shi'ih days of mourning. She was bold and impetuous,
she dared to appear in that all-male (Babi) gathering at Badasht, to flout the reverence in which they had held her before -- with her charming face unveiled, and her voice upraised to proclaim the new day and the equality of men and women,
knowing she must, sooner or later, pay for it with her life. Tahirih, who said
to her captors: 'You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the
emancipation of women.'" Ibid
I was once asked by a wonderful old lady who my heroes were. I answered
"Elizabeth I of England. She was a queen who kept her people from war, caused them good reason to love her, ushered in the great age of England on the seven seas, and kept a court filled with the best in every field so that her whole realm
was stimulated. She found an empty treasury when she ascended to the throne andleft it full. She was a truly great monarch."
I recently came to realize that Tahirih is my truest hero because of all her
qualities and her bravery and her earliest assertion in the Middle East in such
a darkened time, of the equality of men and women.
Warmly, Mary
