A Bahá'í Perspective: Hussein Ahdieh

I have had the wonderful opportunity to interview Hussein Ahdieh a number of times whenever he produces a new work. And this is no exception. Hussein, in collaboration with Hilary Chapman, created the book href="http://nayriz.org/TahirihJYBook/ChosenPathAnnouncement.html" target="_blank"The Chosen Path: Tahirih of Persia and Her Search for God, targeted for young adults. We talk extensively about the history of Tahirih in Persia in the 19th century and her impact today. In the interview Hussein refers to a number of, what are referred to as, "orientalists". Some of them were scholarly historians in the 19th century that focused their endeavors in researching the Persian culture. And others had less academic credentials, but had directly experienced the Persian culture and wrote about it. These "orientalists" discovered the eventful history of the Babi Faith and its renowned heroine, Tahirih, and wrote about her, thus introducing the Babi movement to the western world. The orientalists Hussein refers to in the interview are: Alphonse Louis Marie Nicolas who was a Persian-born French historian and orientalist,nbsp;Edward Granville Browne who was a British orientalist and spent time in Peria,nbsp;Joseph Arthur de Gobineau - a French diplomat who lived in Persia, andnbsp;Lord George Curzon - a British statesman who had spent time and wrote about Persia.