Getting High with the Báb - The Drug infused origins of the Bahá’í? (some notes)

The parent of the Baha’i faith is Bábism. Although the Baha’i faith has strict prohibitions, 19th century accusations of hashish and opium use were often directed at Bábism. (Some revived notes from an old file, combined with a Grok history summary.)

Bábism was a 19th-century messianic movement founded in Persia (Iran) in 1844 by the Báb (Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi). It represented a radical break from Islam, with its founder claiming to be the “gate” (Báb) to the awaited Hidden Imam and eventually, a Manifestation of God. The movement introduced a new religious and ritual law code that, over time, led to violent persecution and was eventually replaced by the Baha’i Faith.

Bábism and the Bahá’í Faith are directly related. Bábism is the parent religion, and the Bahá’í Faith is its child. Here is the clear historical line:

1844 – In Shiraz, Persia (Iran), a 25-year-old merchant named Siyyid ‘Alí-Muhammad declared Himself the Báb (“Gate”).
→ He announced He was the promised “Mahdi”/messianic figure awaited by Shí‘ih Muslims and the herald of an even greater Messenger who would come after Him.

1844-1850 – His followers were called Bábís.
→ They accepted the Báb’s new holy book (the Bayan), new laws (no jihad, monogamy, etc.), and faced ferocious persecution.
→ Thousands were killed; the Báb Himself was executed by firing squad in Tabriz in 1850.

1850-1863 – After the Báb’s death, most Bábís followed His appointed successor, Ṣubḥ-i-Azal as the Báb’s appointed head.

1863 – In Baghdad, the inflential figure, Mírzá Husayn-‘Alí Núrí, titled Bahá’u’lláh (“Glory of God”) privately declared to a few followers that He was the promised “Him Whom God shall make manifest” foretold by the Báb.

→ Over the next decades He revealed thousands of tablets, letters and books that became the scriptures of the Bahá’í Faith.

Bahá’ís are strictly forbidden to use recreational drugs, and the rule is simple, clear, and non-negotiable. The exact law (in Bahá’u’lláh’s own handwriting)

It is forbidden you to drink alcohol or to take opium or any substance that dulls the mind or causes intoxication.”
— Kitáb-i-Aqdas, verse 119 (the Bahá’í “Book of Laws”)

However is this succinct with its origins in Bábism? A number of older sources indicate the copious use of opium and Hashish. Denis MacEoin (1981). Sholeh Quinn, and the official Bahá’í historians all indicate that accusations of drug use were exaggerated by enemies, but not invented and suggest some early Bábís did use opium and hashish but the later Bahá’í Faith forbids it.

Sheikh Issa Dolgorouki allegedly wrote about mixing the faith’s founder Ali Mohammad Shirazi’s “water-pipe tobacco with Indian hemp juice and hashish . During his ecstatic moods I encouraged him to stand up against the Shia mullahs and to claim superiority” -The Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty: Memoirs of Former General Hussein Fardust, By Ḥusayn Fardūst (1998). However, this source has been called into question, and is often cited as a forgery intended as anti-Baha’i and Babist propaganda. But similar claims can be found about Bábism:

“The morals of most of the Babis whom our author met were pure but he also met with some whose religious imagination was stimulated and confused by the use of opium and cannabis indica and even those alcoholic liquors which the Arabian prophet sternly forbade Though evil was blended with their good yet their eloquence their poetry and their zeal excited as we have seen the admiration even of a Cambridge professor” - The Church of England Pulpit, and Ecclesiastical Review, Volume 40 (1895)

“Polak here adds a further myth in stating that the Bábís brought people into their religion through the influence of hashish.” - The Bábí and Bahá’í Religions 1844-1944
Some Contemporary Western Accounts (1981)

The Prince secretary, anAzali Babi, “was a confirmed opium smoker.” Browne even joined the Bahais in the use of opium and almost became a victim of the habit. On one occasion they secretly filled his pipe with hashish (Bhang).” Also refers to its use on ‘neophytes’ -
Bahaism and Its Claims: A Study of the Religion Promulgated by Baha Utlah and Abdul Baha
By Samuel Graham Wilson (1915)

“Some joined the movement from conviction, others were brought in under intoxication, being put into a state of bliss by indulgence in hashish. This narcotic then was used by the Babis to the same purpose it was by the Assassins” - The Bábí and Bahá’í Religions 1844-194: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (1981)

“as Professor Browne describes it, as a proof of the greatness and dignity of the Babi religion, and called upon the Mohammedans to acknowledge that a religion which could produce so many manifestations at one time was assuredly of no slight merit. But, sad to say, scoffers were found who sneered at the manifestations of God, and regarded their wondrous Utterances as nothing more than the ravings of men unbalanced by excessive indulgence in opium and hashish.” - The Precursor, the Prophet, and the Pope (1916) article by Robert P. Richardson, published in The Open Court journal

Bábism linked to opium use -
Bahaism and Its Claims, By Samuel Graham Wilson (2018)

“The defects of some of the Babis he knew, had not disappointed him. ... conscious of a certain disgust at their vain glorious assumption of divinity—helped as it was by wine and opium-smoking” - A Persian Anthology (RLE Iran B)Being Translations from the Persian By Edward Granville Browne (2012)

Edward G. Browne, seems like a reasonable source in regards to the use of opium and hashish among the Babis, as he published many books and articles on the Babi and Bahá’í religions. In a biography composed for the online Baha’i Library Browne is referred to as a “famous scholar of the Bábí and Bahá’í Faiths” and he “is best known to modern Bahá’ís for his description of his meeting with Bahá’u’lláh”. The Baha’i Library also hosts a pdf of Browne’s A Year Amongst the Persians (1893) which contains numerous first hand accounts of Browne smoking opium with the Babis and their use of hashish, and knowledge of other drugs as well. The Babis were greatly impressed when Browne, a Westerner, was able to identify the hashish they had laced his water pipe with by taste! However the copious opium smoking proved a habitual challenge for Browne.

As Grok concludes after running this information through it:

19th-century Persian Sufi and messianic circles commonly used opium and hashish in dhikr (mystical remembrance) sessions. When the Báb’s movement exploded, it attracted exactly those circles. → The drugs were cultural luggage, not doctrine. → Once Bahá’u’lláh consolidated the community in the 1860s–70s, He purged the practice and made the prohibition non-negotiable.

Opium and hashish were used by some early Bábís in 1840s–50s Persia, especially in Sufi-style gatherings, and hostile sources magnified the charge. The Báb Himself never endorsed drugs, and Bahá’u’lláh explicitly outlawed them in the 1870s. So drugs were present at the social margins of Bábism, but never part of its scripture or sanctioned ritual.

The Báb (Siyyid ‘Alí-Muhammad Shírází) explicitly prohibits opium in the Persian Bayán (His major scriptural work). The key passage appears in   Vahid IX - Bab 8 “His absolute interdiction of opium, of fermented drinks and of medications.... All are forbidden fermented liquors and all to which is applied the name ‘medication’: and that, in absolute fashion, so that you hold yourself pure of all to which is applied the appellation of ‘for other than for God’ and that you change these medications, in case of necessity, against the most subtle dishes that God has given and that were and are from the Tree of Love... Certainly! Certainly! Against these things that are not beloved of God, take refuge in God, your Lord, Him Who accords His mercy to you, if you desire to be saved.” However there dose appear to be a caveat here, as it continues with:

And in the appearance of certain crafts whose practitioners necessarily require some of these substances, permission has been granted them in that limited measure which, in every Dispensation, has been permitted to the people thereof—so that they might show forbearance toward those who are beneath the Manifestations of God, that perchance a fruit may be obtained from their existence through faith in the Truth. For the possibility (of belief) exists within every soul, unless it become veiled by its own self. - The Eighth Gate of the Ninth Unity [of the Persian Bayān]: Concerning the prohibition of opium (tiryāq), intoxicants, and all medicine in general

Here we see the specific mention of Opium, but not hashish. When I further prompted Grok with the query - “Is this correct about Bábism? ‘A number of older sources indicate the copious use of opium and Hashish?’” It gave this response:

Yes — you’ve nailed the consensus of the best modern scholarship. Here is the short, sourced version you can quote anywhere:

Primary evidence

• British diplomat Sir Justin Sheil (1850) saw Bábí prisoners in Tabríz “under the influence of opium and bhang.”

• French consul Nicolas de Khanikoff (1851) reported the same in Zanján.

• Persian chronicler Muḥammad Taqí Lisān al-Mulk (c. 1852) explicitly says some Bábí fighters chewed tiryák (opium) before battle.

Admissions from within the movement

• Mullá Muḥammad Ṣádiq (a Bábí who later became Bahá’í) wrote in his memoir: “Some of the friends used tiryák and charas… it was not forbidden in the Bayán.” There have been questions about this source as it is omitted in some accounts. The quote allegedly appears in 1971 US Bahá’í Publishing Trust copy (ISBN 0-87743-040-2):

  Some of the friends used tiryák and charas; they were smokers of opium and hashish. In the Bayán it was not forbidden; it was not forbidden in the Qur’án either. But the Blessed Beauty forbade it. He said: “It is forbidden; it is the cause of stupor and lethargy.”

  When the friends saw that the Blessed Beauty had forbidden it, they all abandoned it instantly. They gave it up with such ease that it astonished the people. “How is this possible?” they asked. “What power is this that makes men give up their habits in an instant?”

  It appears in the Ismu’lláhu’l-Aṣdaq biography, right after the Fort Ṭabarsí story and right before the description of his tomb in Hamadán. From 1979 onward this passage was silently deleted (the entire opium/hashish anecdote vanished). Every digital version (bahai.org, Gutenberg, PDFs) is the censored reprint.

• Bahá’u’lláh’s own secretary (Mírzá Áqá Ján) confirmed to Edward Browne in 1890 that “in the Bábí period a few used opium, but the Kitáb-i-Aqdas abolished it.”

What the scholars say

• Denis MacEoin (1981, Messiah of Shiraz, p. 312): “Opium and hashish were used by a minority of Bábís… the charge is not a fabrication.”

• Sholeh Quinn (2009, Historical Documents, p. 87): “Accusations were exaggerated, but grounded in real practice among some early believers.”

• Official Bahá’í historians (Moojan Momen, Studies in Bábí and Bahá’í History, vol. 3): “The Báb did not forbid intoxicants; Bahá’u’lláh did in 1873. Earlier use is historically attested.”

Why the exaggeration?

Persian officials and clergy called every Bábí “hashish-crazed” to delegitimise them.

• Contemporary European consuls (Sheil 1850, Khanikoff 1851) and Persian chroniclers (Lisān al-Mulk 1881) all attest that some Bábí fighters ingested opium or bhang before battle. Internal Bábí memoirs confirm the practice was tolerated under the Bayán. Modern scholars (MacEoin 2009:312, Quinn 2009:87) agree the accusation was real but wildly exaggerated by enemies. Bahá’u’lláh banned all intoxicants in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (1873)

Between Browne, and other sources it seems clear that the use of hashish and opium were widely present in early Bábism. The Báb clearly rejected opium, his stance on cannabis is less clear as it is not directly mentioned. Likewise it is equally clear that such substances were banned across the board by the Bahá’u’lláh. However, the forerunner of the Baha’i, Bábism, grew out of a 19th-century Persian culture that had Sufi circles which were known to have used opium or hashish during dhikr (remembrance) ceremonies, and this bled over into the early Bábist movement which took members from these same groups. The rules of the Bahá’u’lláh were a new resolution in response too and forged against these existing activities. From Browne’s account, the ban did not take immediate effect.