Customer Reviews

Black Pearls: Servants in the Household of the Bab and Baha'U'Llah

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This little book contains the most complete biographies of African slaves in nineteenth-century Iran that have yet been published. As a primary source for slave history in Iran and in the Middle East it is invaluable. It has been cited many times in recent scholarship.

The book gives short biographies of the lives of the slaves and free servants of the central figures and founders of the Baha'i Faith, the Bab, Baha'u'llah, and 'Abdu'l-Baha. The treatments are hagiographic, and focus a lot of attention on Baha'i principles of abolition of slavery and racial equality.

These biographies document the important role that Africans played at the genesis of the history of the Babi and Baha'i religions. They are based on the records and oral histories of the Bab's descendants. The introduction to the book attempts to place these events in historical context.

This racist text glorifies slavery and acts as an appology for the role of Islam in African slaving, trying to gloss over a hurendous 1400 year period by pretending that all slaves played pivotal role in Islam and that they manifested quick conversions and therefor were happy and loved, and treated as equals. The fact remains despite all the pretending is that these people were slaves, to be bought and sold as meat and used as the masters pleased, frequently being raped and beaten. But you wont find these stories here.

Seth J. Frantzman