Treatise on Leadership, Risalih-i Siyasiyyih: Treatise on Leadership
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`Abdu'l-Bahá's *Risalih-'i Siyasiyyih* or Treatise on
Leadership (as I think it should be translated) was written in 1891-92
during the Tobacco Revolt in Iran. The Tobacco Revolt, 1890-92, was a
popular insurrection against Nasiru'd-Din Shah
 for his having granted a monopoly on the marketing of Iranian tobacco to
a British carpetbagger. It was among the first truly national protest
movements, uniting merchants, money lenders, tobacco farmers and the
Shi`ite religious leadership in opposition
 to this give-away of Iranian resources.

The Treatise was published in
Bombay in 1892 and was the first policy statement of `Abdu'l-Bahá upon
taking the reins of the leadership of the Bahá'í community. It shows his
alarm at the increasing involvement of religious leaders and communities
in this populist movement against the civil Iranian state, and cites the
way past such religious populist movements have led to foreign
intervention or increased absolutism (i.e. the `Urabi Revolt in Egypt and
the 1876
 Constitutional Revolution in Istanbul). `Abdu'l-Bahá argues forcefully
for a separation of religion and state as a basis for Bahá'í
non-involvement in such anti-state violence.

I myself see the Treatise
as, in many ways, a reversal of the stances adopted by Bahá'u'lláh in his
1891 Tablet to the World (also a response to the Tobacco Revolt), which
denounced Qajar tyranny and severely counselled the Shah that only calling
a parliament on the British model could hope to save him from such popular
turmoil, which was provoked by his high-handed authoritarian approach to
rule. `Abdu'l-Bahá, on the contrary, seems to have had (provisionally) a
more Prussian than a British model of ideal governance in mind (as did
many Ottoman thinkers of the 1890s), and for
 him strengthening the civil state against the encroachments of groups
like the radical clergy took precedence over any democratic imperative,
for the time being. Decisive was his view that democratic movements in the
Middle East of the time tended to weaken the indigenous state so fatally
that they opened the way to European colonization--something he was
desperate to see Iran avoid. It appears to me that this shift to the Right
in `Abdu'l-Bahá's thinking resulted from the disappointments in Istanbul
and
 Egypt of 1878-1882. (A movement for parliamentary democracy in Egypt
1878-1882 had led to turmoil and finally to British invasion and
occupation). `Abdu'l-Bahá indirectly refers to these events in the
Treatise.
-- Treatise on Leadership, Risalih-i Siyasiyyih: Treatise on Leadership (Used by permission of the curator)