Introduction

In the history of Persian poetry, there are few women poets, and even fewer known for their conviction of “heresy,” who have left as indelible a mark as Fātimah Baraghānī, famously known as Tāhirah Qurrat al-ʿAyn (The Pure One, Solace of the Eyes). Born in Qazvin, Iran in AH 1229/1814 or AH 1232/1817 and raised there, Tāhirah was the daughter of a well-known Usūlī Twelver Shiʿi mujtahid, Muhammad Sālih Baraghānī (d. AH 1271/1855). She was a woman gifted with exceptional curiosity, intelligence, and intellectual devotion nurtured by her father’s well-stocked library in the house where she grew up. Known as “the woman who read too much,”¹Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, The Woman Who Read Too Much: A Novel (Stanford: Redwood Press, 2015). Tāhirah grew up to be counted among the highest ranks of theologians, poets, and mystics, many of whom were men. She was executed in AH 1268/1852 in Tehran.  

While significant attention has been devoted to her role as one of the first disciples (“Letters of the Living”) of the Bābī faith and to the subtle but forceful ways in which she overturned the generations-long legacy of her family’s theological certainties,²The “Letters of the Living” (Arabic: Hurūf al-Hayy) is the title given by the Bāb to the first eighteen disciples of the Bābī religion. They were believed to be the first to recognize and spread the Bāb’s message, each symbolically representing a letter through which the divine word was made manifest. little has been written about how she became a literary exemplar par excellence, and one worthy of unprecedented adulation in the Islamicate literary worlds of the Indian subcontinent.³For various aspects of Tāhirah’s historical character, see Sabir Afaqi and Jan T Jasion, Tahirih in History: Perspectives on Qurratu’l-ʿAyn from East and West (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004). For an attempted biography of the poet, see Sabir Afaqi, Khātūn-i ʿajam (Lahore: Maqbul Ikaidamī, 1995). It is this particular dimension of her legacy that this article addresses.

Drawing on a key insight from Reception Studies—that a literary or cultural figure’s legacy is shaped not merely by their canonical status but by the texts engaging with their work—the article examines Tāhirah’s distinctive impact on the literary and cultural imagination of the twentieth-century Indian subcontinent.⁴Aqsa Ijaz, “Beyond Imitation: A Case for the Hermeneutic Agency of Persianate Literary Retellings,” Postmedieval, A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 15, no. 3 (2024): 783–817. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-024-00333-2. The texts analyzed in this article––Muhammad Iqbal’s Jāvīd′nāmah (Book of eternity) and Jamila Hashmi’s novella, Chihrah-bi-chihrah, rū-bi-rū (Countenance to countenance, Face to face)––are literary; that is, they make no claim to offer a strictly factual or objective account of events. Rather, in poetry and prose respectively, they explore various dimensions of Tāhirah’s persona by employing creative narrative techniques to reimagine and recontextualize her legacy for their specific horizons of experience. This article employs a blend of literary history and close reading to highlight open space for further research into the specific aspects of Tāhirah’s life that resonated with the struggles of Indo-Muslim literary figures writing in the context of the Indian freedom movement and its aftermath. By situating Tāhirah within these intertwined histories, this analysis seeks to bridge her legacy with the literary and political concerns of later Muslim writers, demonstrating how her defiance and spiritual vision continued to reverberate in times of colonial resistance and postcolonial reimaginings of faith and identity.   

Tāhirah’s life, and her freedom to express the overarching ideal of higher love that she embodied throughout her life, open four fundamental questions, which Osama Siddique articulates poignantly:

What distinguishes heresy from faith, apostasy from honest belief, infidelity from religious ardour, and blasphemy from true awakening? How does it feel to undergo an intense mystical experience or a deep spiritual crisis that persuades one to cast off long-held beliefs and relinquish the comforting solace of home and hearth? Is the capacity to look beyond what is invisible to all, to be extraordinary and deeply insightful, a blessing or a curse? What is this passionate, overwhelming desire that some of us have always had to gaze upon Divinity – face to face?⁵Osama Siddique, “Facing the Divine: A Brilliant Testament to an Extraordinary Poet,” The Friday Times (August 15, 2023).

The intense and overwhelming desire to behold divinity is what catalyzed Tāhirah’s spiritual crisis, prompting her to abandon long-held beliefs and venture down an uncharted path that ultimately led to her martyrdom. Paradoxically, this same fervent longing also ensured her immortality in the cultural imagination of the Indian subcontinent. While there is little documentation on how her appeal historically influenced the discourses surrounding the freedom movement and women’s emancipation in British India—and later in the modern nation-states of India and Pakistan—the spaces of literary writing and popular expression prove to be fertile ground for examining how she continued to captivate and inspire reimagined narratives of resistance and transcendence. This article, therefore, does not focus on the historical readership of Tāhirah’s work. Instead, it examines Iqbal’s and Hashmi’s literary texts, which we argue serve as responses to her figure. As responses, they form an archive that engages her historical persona in what can be described as politics of cultural fantasy—an imaginative process in which historical figures are reinterpreted by merging factual history with creative storytelling to articulate and make sense of evolving cultural identities and political aspirations.

Tāhirah’s Afterlife in Iqbal’s Poetic Cosmos

Stories about Tāhirah and her unorthodox teachings circulated in South Asia long before Iqbal repeated her famous ghazal, “gar bih tū uftadam nazar,” verbatim in Jāvīd′nāmah. Iqbal’s use of the literary technique of tazmīn—incorporating Tāhirah’s ghazal directly into the ongoing verses of the book without quotation marks—suggests that his intended readers were already familiar with the verses and would not mistake them for Iqbal’s own work.⁶Annemarie Schimmel, “Iqbál and the Bábí-Baháʾí Faith,” in The Baháʾí Faith and Islam: Proceedings of a Symposium, McGill University, March 23–25, 1984, ed. Heshmat Moayyad, 111–119 (Ottawa: Association for Baháʾí Studies, 1990). This literary gesture of making the bygone poet speak in her own words in the work of a new poet indicates that Tāhirah’s poetry was already part of the Indian literary ecosystem and would hit the right note of resonance when read as part of the poem’s larger context.

A more historical trace of Tāhirah’s presence in South Asia can be found in the account of American-Bahāʾī evangelist Martha Root (1872–1939), who visited India in 1915 and marvelled at how India’s “cultured classes” knew Tāhirah’s poems by heart, a state of affairs on which Iqbal doubtless relied in his incorporation of her verses.⁷Adhiraj Parthasarathy, “The Legend of Persia’s Qurrat Al-Ayn Tahirih, Who Publicly Unveiled and Inspired a Long Revolution,” Scroll.in, accessed July 15, 2024, https://scroll.in/article/1057215/the-legend-of-persias-qurrat-al-ayn-tahirih-who-publicly-unveiled-and-inspired-a-long-revolution. As Adhiraj Parthasarathy notes, as high-profile requests––from figures as diverse as the famous Sarojni Naidu (1879-1949), the first Governor of the United Provinces, and the courtiers of the Nizam of Hyderabad––piled up, Root and a fellow Karachi-based Bahāʾī, Esfandyar Bakhtiari, published and distributed an edited selection of her poems, Tuhfah-ʾi Tāhirah (Tāhirah’s gift), making her work a thriving presence in 1930s Indian circles.⁸Parthasarathy, “The Legend of Persia’s Qurrat Al-Ayn Tahirih.”

Iqbal’s acquaintance with Tāhirah, as Schimmel notes, must have occurred during his doctoral dissertation project, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, in Munich in 1907, where one can detect a palpable fascination with the Bahāʾī faith.⁹Muhammad Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (Lahore: Bazm-i Iqbāl, 2005), 144–45. His engagement with Bābism, particularly his exploration of its metaphysical underpinnings, reveals his interest in alternative modes of understanding reality beyond traditional Islamic scholasticism. He interprets the Bāb’s conception of existence as an unfolding of the Ultimate Essence through knowledge, will, and love, drawing connections to Mullā Sadrā’s identity of the Known and the Knower while expanding it into a dynamic, self-generating force. This notion of Primal Love as the source of cosmic manifestation must have resonated with Iqbal’s own evolving ideas on divine self-expression and the creative energy of the Real, themes that later shaped his poetic and philosophical contributions to modern Islamic thought. His engagement with Tāhirah, as a figure of profound spiritual and revolutionary significance within Bābism, thus reflects his broader intellectual inquiry into movements that sought to redefine authority, revelation, and human agency in the modern world.

Iqbal published Jāvīd′nāmah in 1932, intending it to come out, as it did, as “a kind of the Divine Comedy” (a reference to Dante’s La Divina Commedia) written in the style of Rūmī’s Masnavī.¹⁰Muhammad Iqbal, Maktūbāt-i Iqbāl, ed. Sayyid Nazir Niazi (Karachi: Iqbal Academy, 1956), 300. A Persian epic spanning about 4000 verses, Iqbal’s Jāvīd′nāmah is a story of the poet’s mystical ascension (miʿrāj′nāmah) and later transformation into the spirit named Zindah Rūd (lit. “living stream”) who, in a Dante-esque manner, is guided through various spheres of heaven by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī. The poem is both mythical and historical, as Iqbal draws on the deep past of his ancient Persian heritage and seamlessly conjugates it with the revolutionary forces of modern philosophy and twentieth-century literary and political developments in both the East and the West. 

Iqbal states in his prologue that Zurvan, the old Iranian god of Time and Space, has exhorted him to free himself from earthly limitations and take the celestial journey that will enable him to hear the song of the stars and know the secrets that those who are enchanted by Time cannot know in this earthly existence.

Dar tilism-i man asīr ast īn jahān                                                

Az damam har lahzah pīr ast īn jahān

“Lī maʿa Allāh” har kih-rā dar dil nishast

Ān javānmardī tilism-i man shikast

Gar tu khvāhī man nabāsham dar miyān

“Lī maʿa Allāh” bāz khvān az ʿayn-i jān

In the spell of my being, this world is captive;

Through my breath, this world ages every moment.

Whoever holds “I am with God” in their heart,

That noble person has broken out of my spell.

If you wish for me not to be in between,

Recite “I am with God” from the depths of your soul.¹¹Muhammad Iqbal, Sharh Jāvīd′nāmah: Farhang, tarjamah aur tashrīh, ed. Khvājah Hamīd Yazdānī (Lahore: Sang-i Mīl, 2005), 44. Translation by Aqsa Ijaz.

In this journey of self-transcendence, Iqbal powerfully reenacts an experience reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey, confronting a kind of knowledge accessible only to those who break through the limits of human intellect. These individuals are able to “open the eyes of their heart, so that hidden phenomena may begin to emerge,” allowing them to witness what lies beyond the boundaries of ordinary sense perception and reason.¹²Iqbal, Sharh Jāvīd′nāmah, 44. In an exile from this worldly and egoic realm, Iqbal meets figures through which he finds true dimensions of the self.

Drawing on the long-established tradition of Sufi epistemology that he inherited from his predecessors such as Amīr Khusraw of Delhi (AH 651–725/1253-1325), Iqbal begins his journey through the stars in a manner that is very believable for his readership. He makes it clear that we must suspend all modes of literal comprehension and follow the genre code of “inner odyssey” on which he embarks as the personified living stream (Zindah Rūd) and not as Iqbal the historical man.

The spirit Zindah Rūd, guided by the commanding presence of Rūmī, embarks on this celestial journey through seven realms of outer space. Rūmī, as a spiritual guide, leads the way, offering wisdom and insight that transcends the physical world, while the spirit’s voyage mirrors the mystical journey toward divine knowledge and enlightenment. They begin with the sphere of the Moon (falak-i qamar) and go through the six major planets of the solar system, eventually traveling beyond the sky, where they witness God. The spirit’s experience in every sphere is consistent with the poet’s remarkable understanding of twentieth-century astronomy, as well as the significance of planetary conjunctions in the premodern tradition. For instance, we see that the spirits that hold the deepest truths of the human unconscious, such as the ancient Hindu saint Vishvamitra, the angel of light and inner wisdom Surūsh, and Buddha, the prophet of detachment, are all in the realm of the Moon, which in astrological terms, is known to represent the mystery of the unconscious and deeper truths. Similarly, the spirits of the reformers who used their language to bring about social change, such as Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Afghānī (1838-1897) and Saʿīd Halīm Pāshā (1865-1921), are in the realm of Mercury, a planet traditionally known as the planet of persuasive communication.

The poet-persona encounters Tāhirah in the sphere of Jupiter (falak-i mushtarī), a fragmented planet that harbors the spirits of “constant wanderers.” Tāhirah, referred to by the persona of Rūmī as Khātūn-i ʿajam (The Persian lady), is accompanied by two other emblematic “heretics” of the Islamic tradition: Husayn ibn Mansūr al-Hallāj (d.  AH 309/922), the famed mystic martyr, and the nineteenth-century Indian poet Mīrzā Asad Allāh Khān Ghālib (1797–1869). This encounter represents one of the most charged moments in Zindah Rūd’s celestial journey, as the poet-persona of Iqbal is stirred by the unbridled passion of these rebellious spirits. Rūmī, ever the cautious guide, warns the poet to beware of these “red-clothed ones,” Hallāj and Tāhirah, who have spoken of the hidden truth and have given witness to the divine love through their martyrdom; whose insatiable cosmic fervor is both endless and unquenchable. This moment is critical, for it serves as a juncture where intellectual and spiritual excesses collide, symbolizing the tension between divine ecstasy and the limits of human understanding.¹³Iqbal, Sharh Jāvīd′nāmah, 190.

Tāhirah’s brief appearance in the poem, especially when paired with figures like Hallāj and Ghālib, carries significant weight when considered within the context of its readership in British India. At this time, Persian poetry remained highly esteemed among the educated elite, with figures such as Hallāj and Ghālib holding immense intellectual and spiritual authority.¹⁴For more on how the Indian poets writing in colonial India used Persianate aesthetic codes to resist the pressures of British modernization, see Aqsa Ijaz, “Retelling as Resistance: Translating Niz̤āmī’s Ḳhusrau o Shīrīn in Colonial India,” Journal of Urdu Studies 4, no. 2 (2024): 117–50. https://doi.org/10.1163/26659050-12340056. But the inclusion of Tāhirah alongside these towering figures transcends mere literary resonance; it injects a social and political charge into the narrative that would have resonated powerfully with the poem’s audience in colonial India. This juxtaposition highlights the interplay between gender, ethnicity, and spirituality in the face of colonialism, offering rich layers of meaning that would have struck a chord with contemporary readers engaged in the struggle for social and political change.

The resurrected spirits of Hallāj and Ghālib are invoked to recapture the potency of their “unorthodox” ideas: Hallāj’s radical Anā al-haqq (“I am the Truth”) and Ghālib’s dualistic theory of love as a force that can either invigorate the lover or consume them entirely. Tāhirah’s spirit, in contrast, embodies the passion that consumed these figures both internally and externally. Her fiery presence represents a force, a dynamic dimension of love that burns through the boundaries of convention, belief, and social norms. Iqbal’s use of tazmīn allows her voice to speak directly to the reader, evoking the intensity of her revolutionary spirit. In keeping with the premodern Persian epic tradition, Iqbal concludes this portrayal by having Tāhirah speak of love that “tears all veils”—a powerful metaphor that also highlights her own act of defiance in removing her veil:

Az gunāh-i bandah-ʾi sāhib junūn

Kāʾināt-i tāzah-ʾī āyad burūn

Shawq-i bī-hadd pardah’hā-rā bar darad

Kuhnigī-rā az tamāshā mī’barad

Ākhar az dār-u rasan gīrad nasīb

Bar nagardad zindah az kūy-i habīb

Jilvah-ʾi ū bingar andar shahr-u dasht

Tā napindārī kih az ʿālam guzasht

Dar zamīr-i ʿasr-i khvud pūshīdah ast

Andar īn khalvat chisān gunjīdah ast

From the sin of the mad servant,
A new creation comes forth.

Boundless longing tears away the veils,
It takes away the oldness from the sight.

Finally, it takes its share from the gallows and the rope;
It does not return from the Beloved’s alley alive.

Behold its manifestation in the city and the desert
So you do not think that it has departed from the world.

In the conscience of its age, one is concealed;
How did it fit into this solitude?¹⁵Iqbal, Sharh Jāvīdnāmah, 206-7.

While the verses reflect the profound intensity of spiritual longing and divine love, they also speak of the mystical notion of time: the resurrection and renewal of being and the moment of revelation of the hidden truth, which are central themes in the poetry of both Tāhirah and Iqbal. Iqbal’s choice of the Dante-esque style to speak of his inner self and his juxtaposition of Tāhirah and Hallāj with Ghālib, who wrote verses on the progression of prophethood after Muhammad, suggests a spiral pattern of time. In other words, resurrection is not a single, fixed experience or occurrence but happens progressively. The first two lines—“From the sin of the mad servant, / A new creation comes forth”—suggest a transformative process, where the soul, caught in the turmoil of earthly attachments, is reborn through divine love. The image of the “mad servant” evokes the lover who, driven by irrational devotion, transcends the boundaries of reason and societal norms. This transformation is amplified in the next line: “Boundless longing tears away the veils,” signaling the mystical unveiling that occurs when the lover’s heart is consumed by an intense, unrelenting passion for the Beloved. One is reminded in these verses of Rūmī’s own Masnavī, where in the opening song of the reed-flute, he states:

Har kih-rā jāmah zi ʿishqī chāk shud

Ū zi hirs va ʿayb kullī pāk shud

Whoever’s garment is torn by love

Is entirely cleansed of greed and fault.¹⁶Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Balkhī [Rūmī], Masnavī-i maʿnavī, Mujallad-i avval: Daftar-i avval va duvvum, based on Reynold Nicholson edition, collated with Konya manuscript, revised by Hasan Lāhūtī. 1st ed. (Tehran: Mīrās-i Maktūb, 2014 [Leiden: Brill 2019]), 1:38. Translation by Aqsa Ijaz.

This longing strips away all illusions, revealing a deeper, more profound reality. “It takes away the oldness from the sight” further implies that love is not only a spiritual rebirth but also a reawakening of perception, where the lover sees beyond the mundane and the material. The following lines, “Finally, it takes its share from the gallows and the rope, / It does not return from the Beloved’s alley alive,” poignantly capture the idea that true life and being lie in the absence of this-worldly life and that true devotion can lead to sacrifice; in Tāhirah’s case, it culminates in her martyrdom. The gallows and rope symbolize both physical and spiritual death, as the lover, in their ecstasy and surrender, cannot survive in a world that cannot comprehend their intensity. Yet, the lover does not “return from the Beloved’s alley alive,” indicating that the soul’s union with the divine transcends earthly existence, and death is merely a passage into a life that is eternal.¹⁷Iqbal, Sharh Jāvīd′nāmah, 198.

In these lines, Iqbal captures the lyrical intensity of Tāhirah’s devotion, emphasizing that it is not her doctrinal teachings he seeks to immortalize, but rather the purity and fierceness of her love and faith. To Iqbal, she is not merely a religious figure or reformist, but a manifestation of the unquenchable cosmic passion that drives mystics to transcend earthly confines, both in life and death. More significantly, she embodies the transformation of mystical insight into action, liberating spirituality from abstraction and making it a force for social change through lived experience.

While the exact number of prints in the first edition of Jāvīd′nāmah remains unclear, it is evident in its continuous publication and inclusion in university curricula that the work quickly became central to Iqbal’s legacy, significantly contributing to the development of modern Islamic thought in the subcontinent. The poem’s deep engagement with questions of individuality, autonomy, and spiritual freedom resonated within the broader nationalist discourse, particularly as the Indian independence movement gained momentum and the region struggled to carve its identity after a long period of British colonial rule in India. Iqbal’s appeal was especially strong among Muslims in British India, where he was seen as a leading intellectual figure advocating for the spiritual and political revival of the Muslim world as well as the reformation of Islam in the wake of British modernization in the subcontinent.

In this context, Iqbal’s inclusion of Tāhirah as a symbol of intellectual defiance, spiritual passion, and freedom very likely served to further underscore his poem’s call for radical social and cultural transformation. Tāhirah’s brief yet powerful appearance in Jāvīd′nāmah encapsulates the transformative potential of spiritual autonomy, especially for women, and highlights the importance of challenging orthodox structures in both religious and societal contexts. Jāvīd′nāmah inspired both admiration and critique, as it laid out a blueprint for the intellectual, moral, and spiritual development of Muslim societies while also advancing a vision of social change that resonated with the wider cultural and political upheavals of the time. In this way, Iqbal’s treatment of Tāhirah exemplifies a core idea from Reception Theory: that the power of a historical figure lies not solely in their past deeds but in the continual, imaginative reworking of their legacy. Her reimagined persona in Jāvīd′nāmah becomes a dynamic site where literary narrative and historical fact converge to inspire and challenge evolving cultural and political narratives.

Jamila Hashmi’s Chihrah-bi-chihrah: Facing Tāhirah, Facing History

Given the popularity of Iqbal’s Jāvīd′nāmah and its impact on audiences throughout the Persian-reading circles of British India and later in Pakistan, it is evident that Tāhirah’s passion and the sheer intensity of her desire to reach the Divine secured her a prominent place in the subcontinent’s literary and cultural imagination. Although, as Rūmī’s character notes in Jāvīd′nāmah, her unconventional methods of attaining God caused quite a stir, she nonetheless emerged as a formidable force—one worthy of emulation for the highest form of love she embodied. This enduring legacy is encapsulated not only in Iqbal’s strategic placement of her in Jāvīd′nāmah alongside two other disruptive figures, but also, and more significantly, in Jamila Hashmi’s Urdu novella Chihrah-bi-chihrah rū-bi-rū, where Tāhirah takes center stage as a psychological embodiment of unyielding spiritual passion and intellectual defiance against the status quo.¹⁸Jamila Hashmi, Chihrah-bi-chihrah rū-bi-rū (Lahore: Writers Book Club, 1978; Lahore: ʿAks, 2022). Citations refer to the ʿAks edition.

In 1978, about four decades after Iqbal’s epic poem, Hashmi published her novel with Writers Book Club in Lahore, a publishing house she herself owned. The first edition had approximately 1,200 copies published, with Tāhirah’s ghazal appearing on the back of the book cover, calligraphed by the famous Pakistani painter Sadequain Ahmed Naqvi (1930-1987). The novella is currently in its second edition, published in 2022 by ʿAks Publications in Lahore with 500 copies. According to Hashmi’s daughter, Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, at the time of its first publication, Chihrah-bi-chihrah quickly garnered attention in Urdu literary circles, where it was read with great interest for its thematic depth, narrative style, and psychological engagement with Tāhirah and her social and cultural milieu. Reviews of the novel appeared in a number of newspapers, reflecting its critical reception and widespread recognition within multiple literary communities.¹⁹We are grateful to Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa for her assistance in securing a copy of the novel and sending it from London, England, to Toronto, as well as for sharing her valuable knowledge of her mother’s life and writing. Its success was not just in terms of sales or reviews, but also in the way it sparked discussion about contemporary issues, particularly the role of women in society, literature, and more importantly, in religious life. Hashmi’s work offered an intellectual challenge and provoked thought about the ways in which literary tradition could intersect with the pressing socio-political issues of the time, especially women’s issues in Pakistan under the oppressive dictatorship of General Zia-ul Haq (1924–1988).

The year 1978 is pivotal in the context of Pakistan’s women’s movement because it marked the beginning of state-led Islamization policies that would profoundly curtail women’s rights for years to come. It was during this period that the groundwork was laid for the restrictive laws—most notably the Hudood Ordinances, which were enacted in 1979—that would later spark widespread outrage.²⁰For more on the religious debate and the struggle for women’s emancipation in Pakistan, see Farida Shaheed, Pakistan: Women, Islam and the State (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002). These ordinances aimed to align Pakistan’s legal system with Shariʿah principles by introducing severe punishments for offenses such as theft, adultery, and fornication. The Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, in particular, criminalized extramarital relations and prescribed harsh penalties, including public flogging and stoning.²¹Zinā is a term used in Islamic legal and literary traditions to refer to unlawful sexual intercourse, typically outside the bounds of marriage. In Arabic, Persian, and Urdu contexts, it carries strong moral and legal implications, often associated with notions of transgression, shame, and social dishonor. Critically, the evidentiary standards required to prove rape were so stringent that many victims, unable to meet them, faced prosecution for adultery instead, leading to significant miscarriages of justice and widespread condemnation from human rights advocates.²²Under Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinances, the burden of proof for rape was exceptionally stringent, requiring the testimony of four adult male witnesses to secure a conviction. Failure to meet this standard not only impeded justice for victims but also exposed them to potential prosecution for adultery or fornication if the rape allegation was not substantiated. Compounding this issue, the Law of Evidence (Qanun-e-Shahadat) of 1984 stipulated that the testimony of two women was equivalent to that of one man in certain cases, thereby diminishing the weight of women’s testimonies in court proceedings. In 2006, significant legal reforms were enacted through the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, which aimed to rectify these injustices. This Act redefined the legal framework for prosecuting rape and adultery, shifting many cases from the Hudood Ordinances to the Pakistan Penal Code and thereby eliminating the requirement for four male witnesses in rape cases. However, as of November 2021, the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order of 1984, which devalues women’s testimony in certain civil matters, remains in effect. See “The Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance,” No. 7 of 1979, The Gazette of Pakistan Extraordinary, Feb. 10, 1979, http://beta.shariasource.com/documents/201.

In response, women across Pakistan began to mobilize, setting the stage for organized activism and laying the foundation for groups like the Women’s Action Forum in the early 1980s. This ideological and legal turning point catalyzed a sustained struggle for gender equality and social reform in Pakistan in which members of civil society, poets, writers, intellectuals, professors, and artists all united against the laws that dehumanized women.

One of the central motifs in this resistance narrative of Pakistan’s women’s movement (in which men and women participated together) was the resurgence of female figures from Islamic history through the eyes of women writers who aimed to challenge the prevailing clerical interpretations of women’s roles shaping both religious discourse and their position in society. This approach sought to counteract the oppressive measures instituted by the Hudood Ordinances, which many viewed as distortions of Islamic principles resulting in systemic discrimination against women.​​​​ ​During the protests against the government’s oppressive policies, popular poetry became a powerful tool of resistance. Poets employed legal argumentation and cross-questioning techniques in their verses to challenge and expose the so-called custodians of Islam, compelling them to confront the truth of their actions and be held accountable to the public. A notable example among popular work by poets such as Kishwar Naheed, who wrote “hum gunahgar aurtein” (We sinful women), is Rehana Tawfiq’s memorable “Aadhi Gawahi” (Half testimony), which led to her prolonged incarceration in state prison in the aftermath of the poem’s widespread resonance.

Mahbūb-i Khuda khvud jis si kahih
Jannat hay tiri qadmun talih
Ay ʿaql kay andhun suchu zara
Kiya uskī gawāhī ādhī hay!

​Jis rūz pukāray jāo gay
Nām say apnī māun kay
Tu unsay bhī kah dinā
Jā, tirī gawāhī ādhī hay!​

​Wuh pahlī gawāhī nabuwat kī
Khud jis say Nabi ku tasallī milī
Kahīyay tu zara ae maulāna!
Kya woh bhi gawāhī ādhī hay!​

​Yih mūtī ʿilm-u dānish kay
Yih hadīsain Rihmat-i ʿAlam kī
Kiyun tumku in pih yaqīn hay agar
Ayishā kī gawāhī ādhī hay!​

​Qurān kī rūh nah samjhay tum
Lafzūn kī ghulāmī kartay rahay
Islām tu dīn-i mukammal hay
Bas ʿaql tumharī ādhī hay

​Qurān min tu yih bhi likhā hay
Pushāk hu tum ik dūjay kī
Khud apni hāthun āj huī
Pushāk tumhārī ādhī hay!​

​Tum khidmat-i dīn ki parday min
Jāiz ku nā jāiz kartay rahay
Kāfir ku tuh Muslim kar nā saki
Muslim ku knāfir karti rahay​

​Tū chāhay bāligh u ʿaqil hu
​Tū chāhay ʿālim u fāzil hu
Aur mard tiri ju muqābil hu
Wuh chāhay mutlaq jāhil hu
Mullāh kī nazar min tu phir bhi
Kam ʿaql hay sīdhi sādhi hay
Su tirī gawāhī ādhī hay!​

​Khūn di kar pālay nūh-i bashar
Tarbiyat-i insān tira farz
Sanwarein ju naslain tujhku ajar
Bigṛein ju naslain tiri pakad
Tiri jān pi haq hay sab kā magar
Haq apnā linā chāhay agar
Tu tirī gawāhī ādhī hay!​

​Yih zulm hay nā insāfi hay
Kuch bul lay chup kiyun sādhī hay
Kiyun tirī gawāhī ādhī hay!
Kyun tirī gawāhī ādhī hay!​

​Beloved of God, who says to you

“Paradise lies beneath your feet”
O blind of intellect, just think for a moment
Is her testimony half?​

​On the day you are called
By your mothers’ names
Then tell them too
“Go, your testimony is half!”

​That first testimony of Prophethood
From which the Prophet himself found solace
Tell me, O Mawlana!
Was that testimony also half?​

​These pearls of knowledge and wisdom
These sayings of the Mercy to the Worlds
Why do you believe in them if
Ayesha’s testimony is half?​

​You did not understand the spirit of the Qurʾan
Remained enslaved to mere words blackening the page
Islam is a complete religion
Only your intellect is half!​

​It is also written in the Qurʾan
You are garments for one another
Today, by your own hands
Your garment has become half!​

​In the guise of serving religion
You kept making the lawful unlawful
Could not convert a disbeliever to a Muslim
Kept turning Muslims into disbelievers​

Women!

​Even if you are mature and sensible
Even if you are learned and virtuous
And the man opposite you
Even if he is completely ignorant
In the eyes of the cleric, you are still
Simple-minded and naive
So your testimony is half!​

​Giving blood, nurturing human beings
Training humanity is your duty
If generations are refined, you get reward
If generations are spoiled, you are held accountable
Everyone has a right over your life, but
If you wish to claim your own right
Then your testimony is half!​

​This is oppression, this is injustice
Say something, why are you tongue-tied?
Why is your testimony half?
Why is your testimony half?​²³Translation by Aqsa Ijaz; In a personal conversation with the author, Rehana Tawfiq recounted that she recited this poem during the Women’s March held on February 12, 1983, in Lahore, Pakistan. The march was organized by the Women’s Action Forum and the Punjab Women Lawyers Association to protest against the proposed Law of Evidence and other discriminatory measures under General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime. According to Tawfiq, she was briefly imprisoned for publicly reading the poem during the demonstration. To the best of our knowledge, the poem has not been published in any official capacity.

Tawfiq’s poem encapsulates the spirit of an era that shaped the late 1970s and early 1980s in Pakistan, a time marked by political upheaval, ideological struggles, and shifting cultural landscapes. In this climate of resistance and transformation, Hashmi’s novella resurrects the figure of Tāhirah as a potent symbol of spiritual passion and intellectual defiance, who complicated theological questions from within religious discourse rather than by abandoning it, and stood her ground against all opposition. By employing the imaginative power of literary art––in line with her contemporaries fighting to restore the dignity of women––Hashmi used her book to intervene in the ongoing cultural debate, augmenting the spirit of dissent that defined this transformative era. In doing so, she presents Tāhirah’s legendary defiance as a historical precedent for Pakistani women that could inform the new struggle for women’s liberation, thereby highlighting how historical icons can be reinterpreted to inspire renewed calls for social and cultural change.

Chihrah-bi-chihrah is a brief yet intensely lyrical exploration of the historical figure of Tāhirah. Where Iqbal treats Tāhirah as a somewhat ethereal figure symbolic of reforming energy within Islam, Hashmi approaches her from a more intimate and grounded perspective, aiming to centralize the complex inner workings of the mind of a woman who became one of the eighteen disciples of the Bābī faith. Tāhirah is portrayed at the center of two opposing poles of responsibility: on the one hand she is shown as a woman grappling with the weight of her spiritual calling and the demands of her intellect, and, on the other, as a wife, sister, daughter, and mother who is expected to perform a traditional role of child-rearing and homemaking. Hashmi effectively delves into the tension between these dual roles, highlighting the emotional and intellectual struggles Tāhirah faces as she navigates the demands of family life and worldly trappings while being pulled by the irresistible force of her spiritual vocation.

One of the most poignant moments occurs in the opening of the novella, where Hashmi presents Tāhirah in conversation with her sister, Marzīah. Through this dialogue, Hashmi immediately establishes Tāhirah’s existence on an elevated spiritual plane, portraying her as a protagonist who, at the very outset of her inner journey, is entirely disinterested in the trappings of the material world:

Marzīah: My dear sister! My friends want to meet you and talk to you. Would you sit with us for a while?

Umm-i Salmah [Tāhirah] lovingly put her hand on her sister’s shoulder and said, “No, not today.”

Marzīah: My sisters have come from very far, and they have heard a great deal about your poetry. Your words of wisdom have made you admired by my friends. If you meet them, they would be very happy. Your poetry is famous everywhere.

Umm-i Salmah looked toward her sister lovingly and said, “You know very well how to use words.”

Marzīah: My sister, this fame of yours makes you even more beloved to me. I am very proud to call you my sister. Although, I struggle to understand your poetry. God knows what it is that you write, which dreams you remain in conversation with, who are you in love with!

Umm-i Salmah: Indeed, you don’t understand everything I write, but it is not important to understand everything. After all, who can understand dreams and what they mean? What are dreams? Nobody can know them.²⁴Jamila Hashmi, Chihrah-bi-chihrah rū-bi-rū (Lahore: Writers Book Club, Lahore, 1982; Lahore: ʿAks, 2022), 12–13. Citaions refer to ʿAks edition.

This opening dialogue between Tāhirah and her sister Marzīah is rich in symbolic and thematic significance, setting the tone for the entire novella and offering insight into Tāhirah’s inner world. In this brief exchange, Hashmi introduces the tension between worldly fame and spiritual depth, a motif that recurs throughout the book. Marzīah, who admires her sister’s renown, represents the conventional perspective—one rooted in material recognition, where fame and public acknowledgment signify success. Her assertion that Tāhirah’s poetry is “famous everywhere” reflects how the world perceives her: as an intellectual and a poet whose words carry weight. However, Marzīah’s struggle to grasp the deeper meaning of her sister’s work highlights the gap between external acclaim and spiritual understanding.

This exchange is a moment of paradox where the act of recognition is itself a form of erasure. Marzīah’s love for her sister is rooted in admiration for her public persona, but her words betray an essential dissonance: admiration is not the same as understanding. “God knows what it is that you write, which dreams you remain in conversation with, who you are in love with!” Marzīah’s exclamation is a declaration of bewilderment masquerading as affection. This is an elemental failure of translation, where meaning dissolves in the space between speaker and listener. Tāhirah’s response intensifies this disjunction. “Indeed, you don’t understand everything I write, but it is not important to understand everything.” This is a statement that obliterates the need for explanation, a refusal of epistemological certainty. Her words embody this contradiction. She is both accessible (as a poet, as a sister, as a figure of fame) and inaccessible (as a mystic, as an artist speaking a language that refuses full articulation).

Tāhirah’s rhetorical question, “What are dreams? Nobody can know them,” functions not merely as a dismissal but as a rupture. If dreams are unknowable, then the self that engages with them is also unknowable. Here, Hashmi’s Tāhirah emerges as a figure who remains just beyond reach, whose essence cannot be contained by language or external categorization. This refusal of legibility destabilizes the reader’s expectation of clarity. The more Tāhirah is spoken about, the more elusive she becomes.

Furthermore, Tāhirah’s posture of withdrawal—her refusal to meet admirers, her rejection of participation in her own fame—aligns her with the notion of longing as an asymptotic pursuit. To desire is to recognize absence, to chase after something that will never be possessed in full. Marzīah wants to bridge the gap between them, to bring Tāhirah into the world of the knowable, the admired, the beloved. But Tāhirah does not reciprocate this desire; instead, she gestures toward the unknowable, toward dream-visions (rawyā), toward the inexpressible.

The dialogue, therefore, is not merely an introduction to Tāhirah’s character but a hook into the novella’s deeper existential concerns. What does it mean to be understood? What is the relationship between fame and truth? How does language attempt—and fail—to capture the essence of another? Hashmi’s exchange between the sisters becomes a meditation on these questions, inviting the reader to consider not just what is said, but what is left unsaid, what resists articulation, what vanishes in the very act of being named.

As one reviewer of Hashmi’s book notes, her prose often incorporates symbolism and is intentionally suggestive and ambiguous.²⁵Osama Siddique, “Facing the Divine: A Brilliant Testament to an Extraordinary Poet,” The Friday Times, August 15, 2023, https://thefridaytimes.com/15-Aug-2023/facing-the-divine-a-brilliant-testament-to-an-extraordinary-poet. This is fitting given that the era, religion, and movement she explores are still shrouded in mystery, as are the complex, controversial, and often unknowable spiritual and mystical ideas that her protagonist, Tāhirah, grapples with. What Hashmi excels at is capturing the deep anguish, thirst, and fervor that must have consumed and tormented Tāhirah in her pursuit of transcending the visible world to gaze upon the unseen, perhaps even unknowable, truths. Like many extraordinary figures throughout history who have introduced revolutionary ideas or founded new movements and religions, Tāhirah too faced intense scrutiny, criticism, and persecution. Hashmi portrays her story with deep emotion and sensitivity, making the experience of her subjective world the novella’s central concern.

Throughout the novella, the unfolding of Tāhirah’s character is inseparable from the unfolding of Shiʿi religious thought. Hashmi situates Tāhirah’s journey within the broader theological and political upheavals in Islam, using the tragedy of Karbala as both a historical reference and a metaphor for sacrifice and transformation. She traces the dynastic struggles, Mongol invasions, and recurring “corruption” or “depravity” (sg. fasād) and “tribulations” or “strife” (sg. fitnah) that have shaped Muslim history, framing Babism (from the Arabic bāb, meaning “Gate”) not as a sect born of ambition or political opportunism, but as a response to a deep spiritual vacuum. Hashmi does what a great fiction writer does best: defamiliarizing reality in such a way that the reader is forced to see it anew, stripped of the conventions and habitual perceptions that obscure its deeper significance. By embedding Tāhirah’s story within the larger historical and theological upheavals of her time, Hashmi renders familiar narratives of religious conflict and transformation strange, unsettling, and immediate. The weight of history does not act as a backdrop but as a force pressing upon the characters, revealing faith not as a static doctrine but as a lived and often perilous negotiation with power, ideology, and personal conviction. This defamiliarization compels the reader to question assumptions about religious movements, historical inevitability, and the personal costs of belief, making Tāhirah’s journey not just a historical account but an experiential rupture in the reader’s own understanding of faith and resistance.

The novel presents Babism as a movement born from a collective yearning for renewal, shaped by widespread anticipation of the Mahdī’s (the hidden Imam) arrival. As Hashmi writes, “A thousand years is a long time for a faith to face the test and to wait.”²⁶Hashmi, Chihrah-bi-Chihrah, 37–38. The historical conditions were ripe for transformation, much like earlier moments of millenarian fervor in Christian history. The Babists’ zeal, like that of the so-called Assassins (hashshāshīn) of medieval Iran and other religious insurgents, was fueled by an unwavering conviction, but their defiance was met with brutal repression.²⁷See, for example, Marshall Hodgson, The Secret Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs Against the Islamic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001); and Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995). ʿAlī Muhammad “Bāb” and his followers— Mullā Husayn Būshrūyah′ī (the “Bāb-al-Bāb”), Muhammad-ʿAlī Bār′furūshī (“Quddūs”), and Tāhirah were executed, slain in battle, or murdered by mobs. Their fates underscore the novel’s central meditation on faith as an urgent, lived reality, one that demands sacrifice and often exacts a heavy cost.

While Hashmi’s portrayal of the protagonist is deeply committed to highlighting the serious role Tāhirah played in shaping the theological discourse of her time, she also ensures that the reader remains acutely aware of the misogynistic certainties internalized and enacted even by the most affectionate family members. As one navigates the novella and encounters its dense moments of philosophical reflection—articulated in profoundly esoteric monologues that unveil the intricate workings of Tāhirah’s mind—a sudden, jarring expression of discrimination emerges, framing her womanhood as an impediment to ascending higher spiritual planes. Consider the scene where Tāhirah discusses a recurring dream with her father:

When she saw the dream more than once, she became restless to know what it signaled to her.

“The hidden Imam has been concealed for a thousand years now; was this dream a signal of his appearance?” she asked.

“O, life of your father!” her father retorted. “You remain lost in the books of philosophy. Your anxious mind produces these kinds of dreams. But women will not be the vessel through which the news of the appearance of the concealed Imam will be channeled.” Mullah Salih laughed.

Umm-i Salma looked at her father in great frustration.

“You didn’t like what I said,” he continued. “But think! If the news of this arrival were to come, it would be through a sage sitting in a khanqah (lodge), not to some girl.”

“I don’t say that it is indeed a vision of that. But I am overwhelmed by the recurrence of the dream. Why does your God show himself like this to a girl?”²⁸Hashmi, Chihrah-bi-Chihrah, 27.

This passage, read closely, exposes a palpable tension between the luminous potential of female spiritual insight and the restrictive, patriarchal norms that seek to contain it. The vivid imagery of the recurring dream, laden with divine possibility, is abruptly undercut by her father’s dismissive banter—a stark reminder that even within the sanctuary of family, the voice of a woman is too often deemed unworthy of channeling celestial truth. Hashmi, through this encounter, does more than simply depict familial conflict; she lays bare the historical patterns of silencing female mysticism, echoing the lament of countless women whose inner lives have been both vibrant and vilified. In doing so, the text invites the reader to reconsider the price of spiritual transcendence within a society that privileges male authority, offering a powerful commentary on how even the most personal and profound revelations can be undermined by the pervasive forces of misogyny.

Conclusion    

The literary reception of Tāhirah—as exemplified by Iqbal’s expansive epic and Hashmi’s intimate narrative—reveals a rich interplay between historical memory and imaginative reconfiguration. Both texts celebrate her as a figure of profound spiritual defiance and intellectual passion, yet they also engage in a creative process that transforms her historical persona into a mutable emblem of resistance and renewal. In this reimagining, Tāhirah transcends her temporal origins to become a living symbol that disrupts conventional narratives of gender, faith, and authority within the broader Islamicate tradition. Her figure, therefore, is not simply a vestige of the past, but a dynamic presence that continues to inspire a rethinking of how spirituality and rebellion intersect in the modern world.

This process of transformation is intricately bound up with the notion of cultural fantasy, wherein historical fact is merged with poetic invention to re-enchant the past. Iqbal’s incorporation of her verses into a broader celestial narrative, alongside Hashmi’s nuanced exploration of her inner life, works to defamiliarize established discourses, inviting readers to re-experience her legacy as both an homage to a storied tradition and a reinvention of it. Through this lens, Tāhirah’s spectral presence oscillates between myth and history, embodying the tension between the restrictive forces of tradition and the liberatory impulses of visionary thought. This tension not only enriches the aesthetic quality of the literary works but also compels a reconsideration of the ways in which historical narratives are mobilized to confront contemporary issues of identity, power, and social justice.

Looking ahead, the fertile concept of cultural fantasy opens promising avenues for further research into Tāhirah’s impact on literary and cultural imaginaries beyond Iran. Scholars might investigate why and how unlike in Iran—Tāhirah’s home—her figure has been appropriated in multifaceted ways across diverse cultural and political contexts, particularly in the Indian subcontinent and in other regions where her legacy has been rearticulated to challenge prevailing orthodoxies and inspire both literary expression and sociopolitical dissent. By examining these reinterpretations, future studies can deepen our understanding of how creative storytelling reconfigures historical legacies into dynamic narratives that inform evolving conceptions of identity, resistance, and transcendence. This line of inquiry promises to illuminate the enduring power of cultural fantasy as a tool for reimagining the past to forge new visions of liberation in our global cultural landscape.