Description: Focusing on idealists and visionaries who believed that Justice could reign in our world, this book explores the desire to experience utopia on earth. Reluctant to await another existence, individuals with ghuluww, or exaggeration, emerged at the advent of Islam, expecting to attain the apocalyptic horizon of Truth.
Brief description: Kathryn Babayan is Assistant Professor of Iranian History and Culture at the University of Michigan.
Review Quotes: At the end of the journey we can agree that the author has offered us 'a bridge to a past to which we are now blind.' A pretty solid bridge it is, too, a work of great industry, erudition and insight... This is a book that will richly repay close reading and rereading, and makes a very important contribution to our understanding of both Safavid religious and political history, and the role of Sh'ite Islam in modern Iran.--Charles Melville "Times Literary Supplement" (7/9/2004 12:00:00 AM)