The messiah of Shiraz : : studies in early and middle Babism / / by Denis Martin MacEoin.

• Author: MacEoin, Denis, 1949-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 2009.
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Series: Iran Studies 3.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (780 p.)
• Notes: Based on author's 1979 thesis.
• Other title: Preliminary Material /; Introduction /; Chapter One. The religious background /; Chapter Two. Shaykh aḥmad Al-AḥsaʾĪ /; Chapter Three. Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī /; Chapter Four. From Shaykhism to Babism /; Chapter Five. Some aspects of early Bābi doctrine /; Chapter Six. The Bābī DaʿWa among the shaykhis and the break with Shaykhism /; Changes in charismatic authority in Qajar Shiʿism /; Early Shaykhī reactions to the Bāb and his claims /; Hierarchy, authority and eschatology in early Bābī thought /; Divisions and authority claims in Babism (1850–1866) /; Trial of the Bāb: Shiʿite orthodoxy confronts its mirror image /; The Babi concept of Holy War /; From Babism to Bahaʾism: Problems of militancy, quietism, and conflation in the construction of a religion /; Nineteenth-century Bābī talismans /; Bāb, sayyed ʿAlī Moḥammad Shīrāzī (1235/1819–1266/1850), the founder of Babism (Q.V.) /; Babism /; BābĪ executions and uprisings /; Azalī Babism /; Bābī Schisms /; Bayān (declaration, elucidation) /; AḥsāʾĪ, Shaikh Aḥmad B. Zayn-Al-Dīn, 1166–1241/1753–1826, ShiʿiteʿĀlem and philosopher and unintending originator of the Shaykhī School of Shiʿism in Iran and Iraq /; Cosmogony and cosmology, theories of the origins and structure of the Universe /; Bālāsarī /; Bibliography /; Orthodoxy and heterodoxy in nineteenth-century Shiʿism: The cases of Shaykhism and Babism /; Deconstructing and reconstructing the Sharīʿa: The Bābī and Bahāʾī solutions to the problem of immutability /; Bayān-i Fārsī exordium. Translation /; Index /
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (p. [705]-732) and index.
• ISBN: 128239987X; 9786612399879; 9047443071
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: by Denis Martin MacEoin.

The 19th century saw an enormous shift in the authority structure of Iranian and Iraqi Twelver Shiʿism, with the victory of a theological school (Usulism) that stressed the power of the clergy. This is well known. What is less well known is that there was a parallel development of authority in the Shaykhi school and its offshoot, the Babi sect. Here, especially in later forms of Babism, the Shiʿite claim to charismatic authority reached its limits in hyperbolic attestations of divinity. The present text is in two parts: a study of how Shaykhism bifurcated into a form close to orthodoxy next to the highly unorthodox Babi movement. Part two examines how Babism changed after the death in 1850 of its founder, the Bāb.