The Baha'i Studies Listserv Manakji Limji Hataria was Parsi Zoroastrian who gave up a lucrative career as a merchant to serve as the agent for the Persian Amelioration Society that was established by Parsis in 1854 to assist their Zoroastrian brethren in Iran. It has been suggested that Manakji met Baha’u’llah en route to Iran,1 but this appears unlikely. Manakji departed from Bombay on March 31, 1854 while Baha’u’llah left Baghdad for Kurdistan on April 10 of that year. Manakji took the sea route to Hormuz and there is no mention of him passing through Baghdad on his way to Iran. Manakji does mention traveling to Baghdad for an urgent but unspecified purpose soon after October 1860. He remained there for over a year and it is likely that he met Baha’u’llah at that time. Baha’u’llah Himself mentions that meeting as follows: Thy letter hath reached this captive of the world in His prison. It brought joy, strengthened the ties of friendship, and renewed the memory of bygone days. Praise be to the Lord of creation Who granted us the favour of meeting in the Arabian land, wherein we visited and held converse. It is Our hope that our encounter may never be forgotten nor effaced from the heart by the passage of time, but rather that, out of the seeds thus sown, the sweet herbs of friendship may spring forth and remain forever fresh and verdant for all to behold. 3
In 1864 Manakji returned to India for a short period where he presented the plight of the Iranian Zoroastrians to their sister community in Bombay. He returned in 1865 with additional funds to establish schools for Zoroastrian children on the western model. The first school establish by Manakji was an orphanage in Tehran which served some forty students. Manakji and his wife initially tried to run the school on their own with the assistance of some volunteers. However, their knowledge of Persian proved to be inadequate to the task and other educated Zoroastrians were not available for this purpose. Around 1876 Mirza Abu’l-Fadl Gulpaygani was expelled from his position as a teacher in a Muslim seminary in Tehran after it was discovered that he was a Baha’i. Manakji heard of his predicament and of his skill in writing Farsi-sade or Persian without any Arabic root words. Being well-disposed towards the Baha’is, Manakji offered Mirza Abu’l-Fadl a position teaching Persian literature in his new school and ask him to serve as his personal secretary as well.4 Several other Baha’is came to work for Manakji as well, among them Mirza Husayn Hamadani who was commissioned by Manakji to compose the Tarikh-i Jadid, an early history of the Faith.5 Manakji worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of the Zoroastrians of Iran. Besides establishing educational institutions, he renovated fire temples and dakhmas or towers of silence for the disposal of the dead. He made every effort to prosecute those who illegally harassed Zoroastrians and lobbied for the removal of all legal disabilities. His primary goal was to abolish the jizya or discriminatory poll tax placed on Zoroastrians in Iran, something that was not finally accomplished until 1882, although he succeeded in progressively lowering it much earlier. It has been suggested that it was Baha’u’llah’s advice which enabled Manakji to persuade the Shah to abolish the jizya. I’ve yet to find any evidence that Baha’u’llah ever gave him direct advice on this matter, however Baha’u’llah’s second letter to Manakji appears to allude to the fact that Manakji would soon succeed in this endeavor, for speaking in the voice of Haji Aqa Jan, this letter reads, “One day the Tongue of Glory uttered a word in regard to the Sahib indicating that he may erelong be aided to perform a deed that would immortalize his name.”6 The period of time in which Manakji employed Mirza Abu’l-Fadl is also the period in which Zoroastrians began to become interested in the Baha’i Faith and convert in sizable numbers. While this distressed the dasturs or Zoroastrian high priests, it did not seem to bother Manakji or the agents of the Amelioration Society which followed until around 1930. In fact, the Parsis argued that one could be both a Zoroastrian and a Baha’i just as one could be a Zoroastrian and a theosopher or freemason. When Manakji established lay councils (arjuman) to administer the affairs of the Zoroastrian community, Zoroastrian Baha’is often played prominent roles in these councils especially in Yazd. __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:arch...@mail-archive.com Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:leave-549517-27401.54f46e81b66496c9909bcdc2f7987...@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-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
