On the Smear of Hashish: Regarding Chris Bennett’s hallucinations on “Bābism and Drugs”
A recent Substack article by Christ Bennett[1] (a particularly obnoxious NARC and cannabis fundamentalist) has revived one of the strangest and oldest accusations in the Orientalist archive: that 19th-century Bābism was born out of opium and hashish use. The post claims that early Bābīs were intoxicated mystics, that the Bāb himself may have been influenced by cannabis. At first glance, the piece appears to be a collage of quotations, “Grok summaries,” and century-old missionary tracts. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a textbook example of bad historiography: selective citation, recycled propaganda, and anachronistic projection masquerading as research. Here I explain why those claims collapse under basic scrutiny.
The oldest Orientalist cliché: “drugs and prophets”
From the 13th century onward, Muslim reformers and heterodox mystics were routinely accused by clerical and colonial opponents of “hashish-induced delusions.” The Crusader legend of the “Assassins” imagined Ismāʿīlīs as drugged fanatics; the same trope was later applied to Sufis and Qalandars. When the Bāb appeared in 1844—a young merchant from Shiraz whose revelation electrified Iran—this cliché resurfaced. Qajar officials and European missionaries, bewildered by his charisma, accused him of everything from epilepsy to intoxication. These were not empirical observations but cultural reflexes: the East, in their imagination, could only produce prophets through narcotics or madness. To recycle that trope in 2025, without context or critical distance, is not historical recovery. It is colonial ventriloquism.
The Dolgorouki story: a proven fabrication
The article’s centerpiece is the claim that a Russian diplomat named “Sheikh Issa Dolgorouki” drugged the Bāb with hashish and manipulated him into claiming divine status. The source for this is a passage in The Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty (1999), which quotes Fardust’s alleged memoirs. Let us note that Husayn Fardust’s book was ghost-written for him whilst he was in prison after the fall of the Shah’s regime. Yet multiple historians—and as recently as Mina Yazdani[2]—have long demonstrated that no such Dolgorouki existed. The story originated in 19th-century anti-Bābī pamphlets and was revived by Pahlavi-era propagandists to portray the movement as a foreign conspiracy. Russian archival records, Iranian diplomatic correspondence, and contemporary Russian-language sources contain no trace of this individual. The “confession” quoted in Fardust’s book is a forgery, likely inserted by ghostwriters drawing on older clerical polemics, as is Fardust’s own book. Citing this myth as evidence is equivalent to citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as proof of world conspiracy. It disqualifies the argument from the start.
Missionary gossip is not historical data
Most of the other citations in the Substack post come from 19th-century missionary tracts: The Church of England Pulpit Review, Samuel Graham Wilson’s Bahaism and Its Claims, and similar works. These were not field studies. They were polemics written to discredit “Persian heresies” and defend Christian orthodoxy.
For example:
- The assertion that “neophytes were converted under intoxication” appears only in missionary propaganda decades after the events.
- British and French consuls who mentioned Bābīs “under the influence” were describing prisoners sedated in Qajar jails, not mystical rituals.
To treat such sources as reliable testimony is to collapse propaganda into historiography. But, as we contend, Chris Bennett is a NARC, so he is not engaging in historiography. Rather, his is clear as day black propaganda.
What serious scholarship actually says
Modern academic work paints a far
more nuanced picture. Scholars such as Denis MacEoin, Abbas Amanat, Todd
Lawson, and others agree on several points: The Bāb’s own writings contain
no endorsement of narcotics.
The Persian Bayān and Arabic Bayān—his two major scriptural
texts—condemn them, mentioning opium (tiryāk) specifically. For example:
The Eighth Gate of the Ninth Unity [of the Persian Bayān]: Concerning the prohibition of opium (tiryāq), intoxicants, and all medicine in general
The quintessence of this Gate is that every condition that lies beneath Love is beneath God, and every condition of Love is of God. You are forbidden intoxicants and anything that takes the ruling of medicine in an absolute sense, so that you may purify yourselves from everything by which mention is made of what is devoid of God. In cases of necessity, however, you may substitute them with subtle and wholesome things which are among the qualities of the Tree of Love—things that have been and ever are its attributes. And the ruling herein, in the general, is like that in the particular: just as abstention from one breath of association with an unbeliever corresponds to abstention in its totality. Yet the Almighty God—exalted and glorified be It—has, in every state, manifested Itself in a manner before which all existence prostrates and toward which all are drawn by Love and ascend through obedience. There is not a single atom but that, in the core of its being, it worships It and speaks with its own tongue. Nevertheless, in this Manifestation, whatever thing does not pertain to the conditions of the Tree of Love is not beloved, and whatever does pertain to it has ever been and shall be beloved.
And in the appearance of certain crafts whose practitioners necessarily require some of these substances, permission has been granted them in that limited measure which, in every Dispensation, has been permitted to the people thereof—so that they might show forbearance toward those who are beneath the Manifestations of God, that perchance a fruit may be obtained from their existence through faith in the Truth. For the possibility (of belief) exists within every soul, unless it become veiled by its own self.
And seek refuge with God, your Lord, the All-Merciful, from whatever It does not love—if indeed you desire to prosper! (my trans.)
الباب الثامن من الواحد التاسع فی حرمة التریاق و المسکرات و الدواء مطلقا. ملخص این باب آنکه کل شئون دون حب از دون حق بوده و هست و کل شئون حب از حق بوده وهست و نهی شده از مسکرات و آنچه حکم دواء بر او شود مطلقا تا آنکه مطهر کنی خود را از هر شیئ که لدون الله بر او ذکر شود و بدل نمائی درمواقع ضرورت بالاء لطیفه و نعماء طیبه که شئون شجرۀ محبت بوده و هست و حکم آن در کلی مثل جزئی است مثل آنکه احتراز از یک نفس دون مؤمن مثل کلی او است ولی خداوند عالم عز و جل در هر حال بشأنی تجلی فرموده که کل وجود او را ساجدند و کل بحب او راغب و بطاعت او صاعد و هیچ ذرۀ نه مگر آنکه بکنه کینونیت عابد است او را و ناطق است بلسان خود ولی در این ظهور هر شیئی که از شئون شجرۀ محبت نیست محبوب نبوده و نیست و هر شیئی که بوده محبوب بوده وهست و در ظهور بعضی صنایع که لازم دارند اهل آن بعضی از این اشیاء را اذن داده شده و این همان قدری است که در نزد هر ظهوری اذن داده شده اهل آنرا که با دون مظاهر حق مدارا نموده لعل ثمری از وجود ایشان اخذ شود بایمان بحق زیرا که امکان درهر نفسی هست اگر خود بنفسها محتجب نشود و لتستعیذن عما لا یحبه الله بالله ربکم الرحمن ان انتم تحبون ان تفلحون[3].
However, drug use was widespread in Qajar society. Opium was a social staple across all classes—clerics, merchants, poets, and mystics alike. To single out the Bābīs as exceptional is historically dishonest. So the actual trajectory is the opposite of what Chris Bennett implies: from cultural ubiquity to ethical reform, not from vice to denial.
The internal contradiction
Yet Bennett tries to have it both ways: he depicts the Bāb as a hashish-addled mystic and then praises Bahá’u’lláh for cleaning up the mess. But this narrative ignores the obvious fact that the movement survived the Bāb’s execution in 1850, produced thousands of sophisticated theological works, and evolved into a disciplined, religious, revolutionary movement that toppled the Qajar monarchy in the first two decades of the 20th century. Drug-addled cults do not produce coherent scripture, intricate metaphysics, a codified system of law, and topple monarchs and their dynasties. The Bayān’s numerical and linguistic structure alone—with its nineteen-fold symmetry and recursive Qurʾānic intertextuality—is a work of disciplined intellect, not intoxication.
Yes, 19th-century Persia had Sufi circles that used small doses of opium or hashish during dhikr (remembrance) ceremonies. That practice belonged to a broader Indo-Iranian pharmacological culture, not to any specific theology. To attribute the Bāb’s revelation to those customs is like attributing Rumi’s poetry to wine or Blake’s visions to laudanum. Mystical ecstasy predates chemistry.
Why the accusation keeps returning
Every revolutionary religious movement in history has faced the same discrediting formula:
- “They are possessed.”
- “They are drunk or drugged.”
- “They are sexually corrupt.”
Such claims are social weapons, not historical facts. Calling the Bābīs “hashish-crazed” was an efficient way for Qajar officials and clerics to frame them as immoral subversives in order to justify their mass murder. This is what Bennett is really giving voice to. Reviving that smear today—without understanding its polemical origins—reproduces the same logic of marginalization. It is not “research”; it is digital Orientalism, and based on previous experience, Bennett has never quite concealed his white male supremacy beneath the haze of his bong smoke.
What the evidence actually supports
- The Bāb’s revelation and teachings show no trace of narcotic inspiration.
- A minority of followers, living in a culture where opium was common, likely used it socially or medicinally.
- Enemies magnified this into a moral scandal.
The evidence, then, describes something else.
Conclusion: history vs. pseudo-history
Chris Bennett’s post is not uncovering hidden history. It is repackaging 19th-century sectarian propaganda in AI-generated syntax. Its quotations are selective, its sources outdated, and its interpretive lens wholly uncritical. To imagine that the Bāb’s visionary theology—a synthesis of Qurʾānic hermeneutics, Neoplatonic metaphysics, and Shiʿi messianism—could be reduced to cannabis fumes is absurd. The textual, historical, and spiritual record all say otherwise. The Bāb’s message was about illumination, order, and revolution—not intoxication. To mistake the brilliance of that light for the smoke that surrounded it is to repeat, yet again, the oldest Orientalist confusion: confusing radiance for haze.
