When 'Abdu'l-Bah- 'Abb s, the son of the founder of the Baha'i faith, travelled to Europe and North America in 1911-1913, many of his father's followers, from both 'East' and 'West' showered him with devotion befitting the current head of their religion. At the same time, several other prominent Iranian travelers who had a history ranging from negative attitudes towards Baha'is to all-out opposition also sought audiences with him. The accounts of these visits describe mutually respectful interactions. His famous Iranian visitors included scholars and Qnjlr princes. Among them were Munammad Qazv nh, a well-know scholar who had collaborated with British Orientalist, Edward Browne, to publish materials that undermined the claims of Baha'u'llah and supported those of his rival brother Mirza Yahy ; Mhrz Mahd Khtn Za'im al-Dawlah Tabrzz?, the author of a major anti-Bah 'a polemical work who visited 'Abdu'l-Baha on his return from Europe in 1913; and Mas'ld Mhrz Zill al-Sult n, the son of N1sir al-Din Shah, and his own son Jalul al-Dawlah, both of whom had persecuted and ordered the execution of Baha'is back in Iran. Investigating primary sources, including memoirs (e.g. those of Mutammad Qazvina in the periodical Yadigmr), chronicles (mainly Maymmd ZarqznZ's two-volume Baddyi' al-dsg'r), and newspaper clippings (Star of the West from the years 1911-1913), this paper posits explanations for the noticeable change in attitude evinced by these formerly antagonistic visitors toward 'Abdu'l-Bah . These Iranian travelers observed the admiration showered upon him by his 'Western' followers, and refashioned their own attitudes towards him accordingly, while they struggled with their perceived inferiority in 'the West.' Futhermore, 'Abdu'l-Bah 's charisma and his way of conduct seemingly effaced the sense of alterity in face to face encounters. Such coming together of Orientals and Occidntals was unusual, if not unprecedented. This study therefore sheds light on significant aspects of Iranian modernity that have not been properly studied by scholars

This paper examines the significant connections between an American woman, Laura Barney (1879-1974), and Abdu'l-Baha, an Eastern spiritual leader. Her role in his trips to Europe (1911 and 1913) and to the United States (1912) will be examined. The paper will discuss some of the important meetings of Abdu'l-Baha at which Laura and her husband, Hippolyte Dreyfus, were present. It will indicate Laura and Hippolyte's role during certain of these visits and the Iranian dignitaries they met through him. Her role in facilitating the plans for his visit to the Western world will also be presented. Laura Barney was born to an affluent American family. Her mother, Alice Pike Barney, was a noted artist and prominent civic and social leader; her father was a wealthy financier. Laura and her older sister, Natalie, were educated principally in Paris. Laura was introduced to the Baha'i Faith in 1900 and soon after, visited Akka, Palestine, where Abdu'l-Baha was still living as a prisoner. On her many subsequent visits there, she learned Persian and became close to him and to his family. At the time of Abdu'l-Baha's first visit to the West, she lived in Paris with her husband, who had given up his legal career to devote himself to Oriental studies and religions. He had learned Arabic and Persian and translated many Baha'i scriptures into French. Laura and her husband acted as interpreters or took notes at many of Abdu'l-Baha's talks in the West. They were present, or accompanied him, to, London, Geneva, Thonon-les-Bains and Paris. They were also with him in New York and Washington D.C. Based on various published books, diaries, articles, obituaries, biographies and original archival materials in English, Persian and French, this research highlights a new dimension of Laura Dreyfus-Barney's life, piecing together fragmentary information to uncover the role of this remarkable early Western Baha'i during the Western visits of Abdu'l-Baha.

Abdu'l Baha, head of the Baha'i Faith from 1892 to 1921, visited North America for the first and only time in 1912. He addressed audiences large and small during a nine month whirlwind tour which would take him across the continent from Montreal to Los Angeles and back. Few other Iranian figures during this period could have 'translated' as well as Abdu'l Baha did, especially among African American communities. His message of equality, unity, and spiritual transformation seemed almost tailor made for African Americans still under the heavy yoke of legal segregation, disenfranchisement, and violent racist attacks. By refusing to speak to segregated audiences and directly addressing the concerns of African Americans both at Howard University and at the 4th Annual NAACP Convention, Abdu'l Baha offered a sweeping transnational vision of racial justice that resonated profoundly within African American intellectual circles. Alain Locke, the "Father of the Harlem Renaissance", and Robert Abbott, the founder of the Chicago Defender, were both directly influenced by Abdu'l Baha's visit. Both men eventually embraced the Baha'i Faith as their own and called upon its teachings to aid in the ongoing struggle for African American freedom. This paper will explore the various African American accounts of Abdu'l Baha's visit as recorded in the popular black press while attempting to map Abdu'l Baha's ideological impact as it worked its way into the later writings of Locke and Abbott. Underlying this study is the important question of what direct role, if any, did Abdu'l Baha have upon the evolution of the American Civil Rights Movement during first half of the 20th Century. If a direct correlation can be traced and his influence is found to be significant, then the Baha'i Faith should be viewed as having preceded the Nation of Islam as the first "Eastern" religious tradition to have directly contributed to the advancement of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Following R. Laurence Moore's concept of religious outsiders as central to the shaping of American religious debates, this study should help expose the various ways in which the African American 'church' would continue to advance as a site of progressive 'grassroots' political activism while developing a liberation discourse that accelerated though the first half of the 20th Century while largely under the influence of a borrowed Middle Eastern religious tradition.

Written in 1875 and published anonymously in Bombay in 1882, `Abdu'l-Baha's Secret of Divine Civilization is considered one of the early modernist texts of the 19th century directed at reform in Iran and in the wider Middle Eastern society. In a language that is reminiscent of the universal discourses of modernity in his time, `Abdu'l-Baha discusses in this text, the educational, artistic, scientific, governmental and technological advances in Europe, encouraging their adoption and denouncing simultaneously the fears and "antagonisms" of Iranian Shi'ites against Western influence, calling these anxieties, "ensnarements". Dichotomies between Western modernity and Iranian modernity are by no means clear in this text. "The West", and more generally "Europe", often function as the site of material progress and technological advance worthy of simulation. Yet this material "civilization" is described as a temporary "external lustre without inner perfection" and "a confused medley of dreams", "a vapor in the desert which the thirsty dreameth to be water". In tracing the concept of "the West" in texts by `Abdu'l-Baha, this paper notes some of the differences that appear in both his descriptions and his language as he discusses London, Paris and New York in his Western talks, interviews and informal interactions. Striking is the manner in which these latter texts begin with a reflection on the material settings that contextualize his speech: the weather, the news, this building, that event etc., and culminate with a contrast with the "spiritual civilization" he envisions for the West. `Abdu'l-Baha thus focuses his address to the West on what he sees as the base terms for a moral and just civilization in which both material and spiritual "civilization" are advanced in support of each other. Using photographs and film still from his visit to the three capitals of modernity, this paper situates `Abdu'l-Baha's addresses to "the West" in the specific social and material conditions of his visits, to describe how the concept of an "advanced moral civilization" is reconfigured from the reflective surfaces of modernity, that is, the material settings and landscapes of his Western travels and talks. We should should remember that in 1875, these were mere "dream landscapes" of presumed "Western" modernity which `Abdu'l-Baha's Secret of Divine Civilization encouraged the Middle East to adopt. In his travels to "the West" in 1911 and 1912, these landscapes become the material ground from which the Iranian modernist finally mined a "Divine Civilization".