Baba'i ben Lotf
Baba'i ben Lotf · Arts & Literature
Judeo-Persian poet and author of the Book of a Forced Convert, the first known chronicle of Iranian Jewry
XVIIe siècle, Kashan, Perse safavide (Iran) — après 1662, Kashan, Perse (Iran)
Kashan
Baba'i ben Lotf is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Judeo-Persian poet and author of the Book of a Forced Convert, the first known chronicle of Iranian Jewry
Origins and early life
Baba'i ben Lotf lived in Kashan, in Safavid Persia, in the seventeenth century, a Jew of a community that traced itself to the Babylonian exile.
Work and career
His life was broken and remade by persecution: under Shah Abbas II the Jews of Kashan were forced to embrace Islam, and Baba'i, as the Encyclopaedia Iranica records, 'remained outwardly a Muslim for several years while secretly keeping his Jewish faith' — an anusi, a forced convert, which is the title of his book. For he turned his ordeal into literature: the Ketab-e Anusi, the Book of a Forced Convert, some five thousand three hundred verses in Judeo-Persian — Persian written in Hebrew letters — chronicles the persecutions of the Jews of Persia from 1613 to 1662, city by city, decree by decree, the forced conversions and the returns.
It is the first known historical work to come out of an Iranian Jewish community, and its account is corroborated by outside witnesses: the Safavid chronicler Eskandar Beg, the Italian traveler Pietro della Valle, the Armenian priest Arakel of Tabriz. He died after 1662, the last year his chronicle covers; his grandson Baba'i ben Farhad would take up the pen after him.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/babai-ben-lotf
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Judeo-Persian poet and author of the Book of a Forced Convert, the first known chronicle of Iranian Jewry
Source: https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/babai-ben-lotf
