Táhirih: Encyclopedia II - Táhirih - Prior to becoming a Bábí

Táhirih - Prior to becoming a Bábí

The daughter of Mulla Muhammad Salih Baraghani, a mulla, Táhirih grew up in Qazvin (near Tehran), where she married her cousin Muhammad ibn Muhammad Taqi at the age of thirteen (?). Having acquired a religious education from her father, she began a correspondence with leaders of the Shaykhi movement which flourished in the Shi'i shrine cities in Iraq. Ultimately she traveled there herself.

She is equally well-known under an alternate religious title "Qurrat al-Ayn," given to her by the second Shaykhi leader, Siyyid Kázim of Rasht. After his death in 1844, she, through correspondence, found and accepted Ali Muhammad of Shiraz (called the Báb or "gateway" after a Shi'i theological concept), the founder of the Bábi Faith, as the Mahdi. She was the seventeenth disciple or "Letter of the Living" of the Báb, and the only woman in that group. Unlike the other Letters of the Living, Qurrat al-'Ayn never met the Báb.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Prior to becoming a Bábí", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki