Tahirih
Táhirih, religious title of Fatima Baraghani (1814-1820, died 1852 - birth date uncertain. Birth records were destroyed at her execution.) An influential poet and theologian of the Bábí faith and a revered example of courage in the struggle for women's rights.
The daughter of a mulla, Tahirih 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," or "Comfort of the Eyes", given her by the second Shaykhi leader, Sayid Kazim of Rasht. After his death in 1844, she became the seventeenth disciple or "Letter of the Living" of Ali Muhammad of Shiraz (called the "Bab" or "gateway" after a Shi'i theological concept), the eventual Babi founder. Upon returning to Iran at her family's order, she separated informally (Enc. of Islam says "divorced") from her husband, whose family was hostile to the Bab and his mission, as well as her four children.
After the Bab's arrest in 1848, Tahirih attended a conference of Babi leaders in Badasht, largely persuading its participants of her radical view (relative to the Babi movement) that the Bab's revelation superseded previous provisions of Islamic law. She is perhaps best remembered for appearing in public without her veil in the course of this conference. Besides the obvious feminist interpretation, her act also suggests the abrogation of Islamic law for which she argued (and which its enemies thus came to describe as antinomian in character); and may also allude to a mystical "unveiling" of the godhead.
It was at the Badasht conference that she acquired the title Tahirih, which means "the Pure One," as a rebuke to her critics. The Bab later endorsed her use of it.
One of her most notable quotes is her deathbed utterance, "You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women." This is widely described as apocryphal; a thorough study of the sources for her life has yet to appear.
With the collapse of the Babi movement in the early 1850's, Tahirih was martyred in her early to mid 30's in 1852 in the garden of Ilkhani in Tehran, possibly by being strangled with her own veil.
Tahirih's life is of special interest to progressive Iranians, for whom she is a national hero; to Baha'is, who see her life as exemplifying their religion's teaching of gender equality; and to feminists. With the exception of an entry in the Encyclopedia of Islam (under "Kurrat al-'Ayn"), English-language sources are almost exclusively Baha'i, or reliant on Baha'i material. These consist of narrative accounts of her life (typically devotional in character) and, in a few cases, translations of poetry selections. None of her prose theological writings have yet been translated.
