The Messiah of Shiraz Studies in Early and Middle Babism by Denis MacEoin (Leiden: Brill, 2009. 738 pages.)

Abstract

The book under consideration deals with Babism and Shaykhism, two religiousmovements
of nineteenth-century Iran.According toMacEoin, they are
principally of note in that they were the precursors of the Baha’i faith. The
book consists of the author’s Ph.D. thesis on the emergence of Babism from Shaykhism (completed in 1979, 250 pages); nine articles subsequently published
in various journals and books, mainly on different aspects of Babism;
seven articles written for the Encyclopedia Iranica; a conference paper; and
the author’s translation of the first one-and-a-half chapters of the Bab’s
Persian-language Bayan. Almost all of this material is available on-line (for
the Ph.D. thesis, see www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/books/K-O/M/maceoin/
FROMSHAYKHISMTOBABISM.pdf). As such, this book does not constitute
new research and must be regarded more as a retrospective on one scholar’s
work. This leads to two questions: For whom is this work intended and
how should one review such a book – should one evaluate it on the basis of
these works’ value at the time they were published or now? ...