On her return home in the spring of 1847, Tahirih stopped in the important city of Hamadanwhere she touched off conversions to the new faith in the important Jewish community there. By the turn of the century, Hamadan had the largest group of Baha’is of Jewish background in Persia.
When she had been in Baghdad, Tahirih debated from behind a curtain a group of Muslim clerics. A Jewish doctor, Hakim Masih, who was accompanying the King of Persia to the holy cities of Iraq, was there and was swayed by her logical arguments expressed with such force and became a believer. Since he had never heard of the Bab, he thought this woman was the Promised One.
When he returned to Tihran, he treated a prisoner who was a Babi and a survivor of Fort Tabarsi who taught him about Tahirih and the Bab. Through Masih’s subsequent teaching, many Jews became Babis.
At the height of the Persian Empire there were 127 urban centers with significant Jewish populations. Click below to hear a talk on the Jews in Ancient Persia