Bābāī ibn Lutf

Not much is known about Bābāī ibn Lutf, the earliest-known historian of Iranian Jewry. He lived in Kashan, an industrial town on the Silk Road. His Kitāb-i-anusīā (The Book of the Forced Convert) is a chronicle of the Persian Jewish community during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly focused on persecutions, forced conversions, and struggles for religious freedom. Written in the Persian masnavi style—most famous in Rumi’s poetry—ibn Lutf’s chronicle is composed of five thousand couplets.