The Baha'i Studies Listserv > What are arabic/persian letters like in trying to figure out handwriting? I > have heard that The Will & Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha is fraudulent.
Dear Stephen, The person who suggested that the Will and Testament was fraudulent had no familiarity with either Persian or Arabic. I have > also heard that Some Answered Questions is also fraudulent, but from a > different source. The first, Free Baha'i Faith of Zimmer Hermann and Ruth > White and Mirza Ahmad Sorhab and Frederick Glaysher (also the Caravan of > East and West, the New Historic Society, the Reform Baha'i Faith), and the > second, Daheshism of Doctor Dahesh aka Salim/Saleem Musa/Moosa > Al-Awshi/El-Awshee. It was Ruth White who originally hired a handwriting expert to look over Abdu'l-Baha's Will. As I mentioned earlier the expert in question did not know Persian and was in no position to evaluate handwriting in that language, but Ruth White paid him so he took the money. The document which this handwriting expert looked at was not even the original Will, it was a facsimile. He made what he himself admitted was a very tentative evaluation based on this facsimile stating that without the original document he really couldn't be sure. I might add he couldn't be sure because of his unfamiliarity the script as well. The Will and Testament was written during three different periods of Abdu'l-Baha's life and reflected the variations we would expect to see as someone grows older. Also, there are various types of script used in writing Persian and the same person is more than capable of mastering several of them. I doubt if the person doing the handwriting analysis was at all aware of it. As for Ahmad Sohrab, despite his disobedience to Shoghi Effendi, he never challenged the authenticity, he never challenged the authenticity of the Will and Testament, the reason being that unlike Ruth White, Hermann Zimmer, Fred Glaysher or this handwriting expert, Ahmad Sohrab *knew* Abdu'l-Baha's handwriting and this was no forgery. As for Hermann Zimmer and Fred Glaysher, these two have merely stolen Ruth White's assertion and added nothing knew to the discussion. Their motives are pretty obvious. They don't like the Administrative Order and are willing to use any means, fare or foul to discredit it. I was not aware that the Daheshites were challenging the authenticity of the Some Answered Questions. I'm not sure on what grounds they could do so. As far as I know this is a movement. which has simply stolen a lot of Baha'i ideas. warmest, Susan __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:arch...@mail-archive.com Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:leave-483251-274...@list.jccc.edu Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to ly...@list.jccc.edu Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai...@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
