The Bahá’í World
Volume 2 : 1926-1928
THE WORLD-WIDE INFLUENCE OF
QURRATU’L-‘AYN
By
Stanwood Cobb
(From Star of the West)
“Amongst the women of our own time is Qurratu’l-‘Ayn, the daughter of a Muḥammadan priest. At the time of the appearance of the Báb she showed such tremendous courage and power that all who heard her were astonished. She threw aside her veil, despite the immemorial custom of the Persians, and although it was considered impolite to speak with men, this heroic woman carried on controversies with the most learned men, and in every meeting she vanquished them. When imprisoned she said, ‘You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women’.”—‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
THE power of a great life to inspire other lives is vividly typified in the remarkable and dramatic influence of the great Persian feminist and poetess, Qurratu’l-‘Ayn, upon the New Woman Movement in Austria. The relation between this heroine of Persia, one of the greatest women the world has ever produced, and Marianne Hainisch, the greatest pioneer and leader in the Woman Movement of Austria for the last fifty years, is indeed dramatic. It came about in this way:
At the time when Mme. Hainisch, now the mother of the President of Austria, was turning toward work for the emancipation of womanhood, she was in the very closest friendship with Marie von Najmajer, who was also devoting herself to the work of womanhood and of humanity. Marie von Najmajer, the most gifted poetess of Austria in the last generation, never married. It was not that she did not have love for man, or that she had any antagonistic thoughts toward marriage, but because she wished to give her entire life to humanity.
Into the life of this poetess came, about 1870, a great inspiration from reading the career of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn-the story of whose life and martyrdom in the early days of the Bahá’í Movement is well known to the readers of the Bahá’í Magazine, Star of the West. Marie von Najmajer, as the result of this inspiration, did her greatest creative work—a long narrative poem entitled “Qurratu’l-‘Ayn”—based upon the life of this heroine. It is her greatest poem and one of the greatest pieces of poetic work Austria has produced, published in book form in 1874. From this beautiful poem a brief passage may be quoted in translation from the German in order to show both the poetic quality of this author and the character of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn in its power to inspire:
The news of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn’s approach
Was quickly spread to borders of the Caspian Sea,
And to Bedesht came many folk in pilgrimage
To meet her on the coming day.
And so one day upon the forest’s edge,
Where many tents were brightly stretched
Surrounded by gay carpet spread,
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