If there were some theological reasons, then that needs to be demonstrated. So far, I don't know of any such reason. What aspect of the Dawn-breakers is theological to you? It simply portrays the Babi Faith as a precursor to Baha'u'llah's appearance, but that line of argument was available in lots of other places, such as A Traveler's Narrative.
Dear Ahang,
If that was all there was to it, then Traveler's Narrative should have been enough. But besides length I think there is a different agenda involved. Abdu'l-Baha seems mostly concerned to vindicate the Babi-Bahai Faiths in relationship to the government. But Nabil goes out of his way to make the Bab appear as Christlike as possible. The Farewell Sermon to the Letters of the Living is virtually identical to the one Jesus gave when He sent out the seventy. Likewise, the sky darkens at the Bab's martyrdom just as it is said to have done during the crucifixtion (and as you know there is no other account which substantiates this.) This made Dawnbreakers an ideal book to present the Bab to Western believers.
I think the main reason that Shoghi Effendi translated an edited version of Nabil's Narrative was to remove the effect of E.G. Browne as the main Babi/Baha'i storyteller. That is, if anyone wanted to know the history of the Babis, they had to read something by Browne, who had an agenda of his own and didn't believe in the Babis being the proto-Baha'is, and worried about Azal's role, etc.
He could have solved that problem merely by retranslating Traveler's Narrative. That's what he did when Ahmad Sohrab translated Epistle to the Son of the Wolf.
So the easiest thing to do was to provide the Baha'i community with an elegantly translated narrative of the Babis (which effectively countered everything that Browne had published), which continued the line of thinking in A Traveler's Narrative, and declare that "the unchallengeable" history.
And you don't think that Shoghi Effendi referring to Nabil's Narrative that way gives it any "special significance"? You might argue the Guardian had reasons for doing this but you can hardly say he didn't do it!
To my knowledge, Prof Banani has not had the opportunity to examine the original of Nabil's, or engage in critical text analysis that Kavian Milani or I are doing.
You have access to the original Nabil's narrative?
I suspect what Prof Banani offered was an educated guess, but since the
time you heard him speak those words, which must have been some years ago,
Not many. Three or four.
we've done lot more analysis through Nabil's own text
And where are these copies of Nabil's text you are working with?
and through proxies,
such as, Zuhuru'l-Haqq. All of these were discussed in my Nayriz article. You should really read it some time ;-}
Did you add more material to it? I haven't gone through a lot of the postings on Tarikh because that looked to be repeats of what you had posted earlier on Bridges.
Academics has nothing to do with it. Any ethical person knows that one can't put words in someone else's mouth.
My understanding is he slashed rather than added.
warmest, Susan
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