Edward Granville Browne
Táhrih exerted a powerful charm and charisma on those who met her, and she was generally praised for her beauty. Contemporaries and modern historians comment on Táhirih's rare physical beauty. A courtier described her as "moonfaced", "with hair like musk" whilst one of her fathers pupils wondered how a woman of her beauty could be so intelligent. Historian Nabíl-i-Aʻzam reports the "highest terms of [her] beauty", George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, wrote, "beauty and the female sex also lent their consecration to the new creed and the heroism… the lovely but ill-fated poetess of Qazvín". British Professor Edward Granville Browne who spoke to a great number of her contemporaries, wrote that she was renowned for her "marvellous beauty". The Shah's Austrian physician, Jakob Eduard Polak, also cited her beauty. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and Bahíyyih Khánum noted her beauty in several talks and writings. Táhirih's education with her father lead her to become a devoutly religious and she upheld these beliefs for the rest of her life. It also made her hungry for knowledge and she busied herself with reading and writing religious and other forms of literature. Her formal education ended when she was about thirteen or fourteen, when she was summoned by her father to consent to a betrothal arranged by her uncle and father.