mythologizing Baha'i history and modern Baha'is are not accustomed to see these figures

As a simple example of how mythologizing can harm both the truth and people’s ability to hold to a higher truth, I will mention something that is not in these pages. Elsewhere, I have shown calculations, based on original histories, that demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt that the number of Babis killed between 1844 and the early 1850s amounted to scarcely more than 3,000 persons. Even recently, the Bahaʾi authorities have re-affirmed the accuracy of their claim that an iconic figure— 20,000—died. This is to fly in the face of all the evidence, including that of their own sources. No historian of any quality or dignity would venture beyond the figures I have given, and some might reduce them. My figures are based on a count of names and rough figures given for the four main incidents in which Babis died, together with extra figures with much smaller death counts. For there to have been a further 17,000 deaths that are unaccounted for in government, diplomatic, Babi, or Bahaʾi sources beggars belief. It is simply not likely that as many as 20,000 Babis even existed in Iran between 1844 and 1852, the period of the main incidents. To give some idea of how vast the discrepancy is, we need only note that 20,000 equals the number of British dead during the Battle of the Somme.

No intelligent historiography can continue where such irrational denials of the obvious occur. There is absolutely nothing to stop Bahaʾis recognizing those 3,000 martyrs, valuing them, or writing about them in a hagiographic fashion. They have a right to do that. What they do not have is a right to falsify or deny explicit evidence. If they ever come up with solid proof that 20,000 died, historians will be the first to welcome the new figure…

Modern Baha’is are not accustomed to see these figures of their founding myth handled without the kid gloves of piety. Unfortunately, the prophetic aura has no place in unbiased historiography. Throughout this book, I have tried to wean pious readers (if there are any) off their diet of romance and mysticism. They are welcome to go back to that diet once they have read, digested, and dealt rationally with my presentation of the facts. But they are not welcome to attack my findings or my presentation on the basis of what their hagiographies tell them. Hagiographies occupy a different mental plane to academic histories, and religious conviction is no substitute for hard fact in a rational context.

(The Messiah of Shiraz - Studies in Early and Middle Babism by Denis Martin MacEoin)