The Dawning Light
Episode VII: The Prince of Nur
As Bahá'u'lláh set out for Mazindaran, quiet signs gathered around a mission few yet understood.
The Dawning Light
Episode VII: The Prince of Nur
When Bahá’u’lláh was still a child, His father dreamed a dream.
He saw his son swimming in a vast, limitless ocean. His body shone upon the waters with a radiance that illumined the sea. Around His head, His long, jet-black locks floated in great profusion above the waves. A multitude of fishes gathered around Him, each holding fast to the extremity of one hair. Fascinated by the effulgence of His face, they followed Him in whatever direction He swam. Great as was their number, and however firmly they clung, not one single hair was detached from His head. No injury affected His person. Free and unrestrained, He moved above the waters, and they all followed.
The Vazír summoned a soothsayer who had achieved fame in that region and asked him to explain the vision. The man spoke as if seized by a premonition. “The limitless ocean that you have seen, O Vazír, is none other than the world of being. Single-handed and alone, your son will achieve supreme ascendancy over it. Wherever He may please, He will proceed unhindered. No one will resist His march. The multitude of fishes signifies the turmoil which He will arouse amidst the peoples and kindreds of the earth. Around Him will they gather, and to Him will they cling. This tumult will never harm His person, nor will His loneliness upon the sea of life endanger His safety.”
That soothsayer was later taken to see Bahá’u’lláh. He looked intently upon His face and examined His features. He was charmed by His appearance and extolled every trait. Every expression in that face revealed to his eyes a sign of concealed glory. So profuse was his praise that the Vazír, from that day, became even more passionately devoted to his son. Like Jacob, he desired only to ensure the welfare of his beloved Joseph, and to surround Him with his loving protection.
But the glory the soothsayer saw would arrive through ruin.
The Vazír, Mírzá Buzurg, was a man whose vast wealth, noble ancestry, artistic attainments, and exalted rank had made him the object of universal admiration. For more than twenty years, no one among his wide circle of family and kindred, stretching across Núr and Tihrán, suffered distress, injury, or illness. Then, quite suddenly, everything broke.
A flood rose in the mountains of Mázindarán. It swept with great violence over the village of Tákúr and utterly destroyed half the mansion of the Vazír, situated above the fortress of that village. The best part of that house, known for the solidity of its foundations, was wiped away by the roaring torrent. Its furnishings ruined. Its ornamentation gone. Then came the loss of State positions. Then the repeated assaults of envious adversaries.
And yet, as Bahá’u’lláh Himself later recounted, the Vazír maintained his dignity and calm. Within the restricted limits of his means, he continued his acts of benevolence and charity. He showed his faithless associates the same courtesy and kindness that had always marked his dealings. With splendid fortitude he grappled, until the last hour of his life, with the adversities that weighed so heavily upon him.
Out of that house, ruined and unbroken, Bahá’u’lláh now came carrying a message.
But Núr had already been disturbed before it was awakened.
Before the Báb’s declaration, Bahá’u’lláh had visited the district, at a time when the celebrated mujtahid Mírzá Muhammad-Taqíy-i-Núrí stood at the height of his authority. Over two hundred disciples sat at his feet, each regarding himself as an authorised exponent of the Faith and Law of Islám. The mujtahid was expatiating upon a dark passage of the reported utterances of the imáms, and he asked his disciples to elucidate an abstruse theory. Every one of them confessed his inability.
Bahá’u’lláh, passing by with companions, paused to listen. Then, in brief but convincing language, He gave a lucid exposition of what two hundred trained scholars could not explain.
The mujtahid was furious, not at Bahá’u’lláh, but at his own men. “For years I have been instructing you,” he exclaimed. “I have patiently striven to instil into your minds the profoundest truths and the noblest principles of the Faith. And yet you allow this youth, a wearer of the kuláh, who has had no share in scholarly training, who is entirely unfamiliar with your academic learning, to demonstrate his superiority over you!”
A youth. A wearer of the nobleman’s hat, not the clerical turban. And he had silenced two hundred scholars with a few sentences.
Later, after Bahá’u’lláh had departed, that same mujtahid told his disciples two dreams. In the first, he stood amid a vast concourse of people, all of them pointing to a house where the Sáhibu’z-Zamán, the promised Qá’im, dwelt. He rushed toward it, frantic with joy. But at the door the guards refused him entry. The promised One was engaged in private conversation with another Person. That Person, the guards said, was Bahá’u’lláh.
In the second dream, the mujtahid found coffers belonging to Bahá’u’lláh, filled with books. Every word and letter in those books was set with the most exquisite jewels. Their radiance was so overpowering that it woke him from sleep.
He did not yet understand what he was seeing. But Núr had already been shown.
Then, in the year sixty, Bahá’u’lláh returned.
The celebrated mujtahid who had wielded such immense power was now dead. The vast number of his devotees had shrunk to a handful of dejected disciples, striving under the leadership of his successor, Mullá Muhammad, to uphold the old traditions. Into that gloom, Bahá’u’lláh arrived, and the enthusiasm that greeted Him sharply contrasted with everything around it.
A large number of the officials and notables in the neighbourhood called upon Him. They were eager for news of the Sháh, the ministers, the government, the usual world of rank and patronage. Bahá’u’lláh replied to their enquiries with extreme indifference. He turned instead to the Revelation of the Báb, pleading its cause with persuasive eloquence and directing their attention to the immeasurable benefits it was destined to confer upon their country.
Those who heard Him marvelled. Here was a man of that position and that age, speaking as though court life were dust beside the truth. They felt powerless to challenge the soundness of His arguments. They admired the loftiness of His enthusiasm and the profundity of His thoughts. And they were deeply impressed by His detachment.
Only one relative dared to attack Him openly: His uncle Azíz.
He slandered. He protested. He ran to the mujtahid Mullá Muhammad and begged for rescue. “O vicegerent of the Prophet of God!” he cried. “A youth, a layman, attired in the garb of nobility, has come to Núr. He has invaded the strongholds of orthodoxy and disrupted the holy Faith of Islám. Arise and resist his onslaught! Whoever attains his presence falls immediately under his spell. I know not whether he is a sorcerer, or whether he mixes with his tea some mysterious substance that makes every man who drinks it fall a victim to its charm.”
Mullá Muhammad, for all his own limitations, could hear the folly in that. “Have you not partaken of his tea,” he asked, “or heard him address his companions?”
“I have,” Azíz replied, “but, thanks to your loving protection, I have remained immune from the effect of his mysterious power.”
The mujtahid would not face Bahá’u’lláh himself. He contented himself with a written statement: “O Azíz, be not afraid, no one will dare molest you.” But through a grammatical blunder, the mujtahid so perverted his own sentence that those who read it among the notables of Tákúr were scandalised by its meaning. It humiliated both its bearer and its author.
When those who heard Azíz’s slanders sought to silence him and injure him, Bahá’u’lláh intervened on his behalf. He advised them to leave him in the hands of God.
That failure mattered. The mujtahid’s evasion set up what came next.
Those who heard Bahá’u’lláh and received His message arose at once to spread it through the district and to extol the virtues of its Promoter. Mullá Muhammad’s own disciples pressed him, insisting that the first obligation of a man in his position was to investigate any movement that affected the interests of their Faith. The mujtahid returned evasive answers. His disciples refused them. They pressed harder.
Finally Mullá Muhammad sent two emissaries to investigate. He chose Mullá Abbás and Mírzá Abu’l-Qásim, both sons-in-law of the late mujtahid Mírzá Muhammad-Taqí, and both trusted lieutenants. He pledged himself to endorse unreservedly whatever conclusions they reached, and to accept their decision as final.
They arrived in Tákúr and learned that Bahá’u’lláh had departed for His winter resort. They followed Him there. When they arrived, they found Him engaged in revealing a commentary on the opening Súrih of the Qur’án, “The Seven Verses of Repetition.”
They sat. They listened. The loftiness of the theme, the persuasive eloquence of its presentation, the extraordinary manner of its delivery, all of it struck them.
Then Mullá Abbás could no longer contain himself. He rose from his seat. Urged by an impulse he could not resist, he walked to the door and stood there, trembling with emotion, his eyes full of tears, in an attitude of reverent submissiveness.
“You behold my condition,” he told his companion. “I am powerless to question Bahá’u’lláh. The questions I had planned to ask Him have vanished suddenly from my memory. You are free either to proceed with your enquiry or to return alone to our teacher and inform him of the state in which I find myself. Tell him from me that Abbás can never again return to him. He can no longer forsake this threshold.”
Mírzá Abu’l-Qásim did not hesitate. “I have ceased to recognise my teacher,” he replied. “This very moment, I have vowed to God to dedicate the remaining days of my life to the service of Bahá’u’lláh, my true and only Master.”
In a single visit, the envoys became followers.
The news spread with bewildering rapidity across the district. It roused people from their lethargy. Clerics, State officials, traders, peasants, all flocked to Bahá’u’lláh’s residence. A considerable number embraced the Cause. In their admiration, some of the most distinguished among them told Him: we see how the people of Núr have risen around you. If Mullá Muhammad were also to join, the triumph of this Faith would be completely assured.
Bahá’u’lláh answered with words that cut through every calculation of advantage.
“I am come to Núr solely for the purpose of proclaiming the Cause of God. I cherish no other intention. If I were told that at a distance of a hundred leagues a seeker yearned for the Truth and was unable to meet Me, I would, gladly and unhesitatingly, hasten to his abode, and would Myself satisfy his hunger.”
And then He did exactly that.
Mullá Muhammad lived in Sa’ádat-Ábád, a village not far from Tákúr. Bahá’u’lláh, accompanied by companions, proceeded there at once. The mujtahid received Him with ceremony. Bahá’u’lláh stated His purpose without evasion: “I have not come to this place to pay you an official or formal visit. My purpose is to enlighten you regarding a new and wondrous Message, divinely inspired and fulfilling the promise given to Islám. Whosoever has inclined his ear to this Message has felt its irresistible power, and has been transformed by the potency of its grace. Tell Me whatsoever perplexes your mind, or hinders you from recognising the Truth.”
Mullá Muhammad retreated into method. He would undertake no action, he said, unless he first consulted the Qur’án, his practice of invoking God’s aid, opening the Book at random, and reading the first verse his eyes fell upon. Bahá’u’lláh did not refuse him.
The mujtahid called for a copy of the Qur’án. He opened it. He closed it again. He refused to reveal the nature of the verse to those present.
All he said was this: “I have consulted the Book of God, and deem it inadvisable to proceed further with this matter.”
A few agreed with him. The rest saw clearly what those words implied. Fear was speaking for itself.
Bahá’u’lláh, disinclined to cause him further embarrassment, arose, asked to be excused, and bade him a cordial farewell.
Then, one day, on a riding excursion into the countryside, Bahá’u’lláh came upon one of the strangest and warmest encounters of the entire journey.
A lonely youth sat beside a brook. His hair was dishevelled. He wore the dress of a dervish. He had kindled a fire, and he was cooking his food and eating it.
Bahá’u’lláh approached him with love and asked what he was doing.
“I am engaged in eating God,” the dervish blurted out. “I am cooking God and am burning Him.”
Bahá’u’lláh did not mock him. The unaffected simplicity of his manners and the candour of his reply pleased Him extremely. He smiled and began to converse with him with unrestrained tenderness and freedom. Within a short time, He had changed the man completely. Enlightened as to the true nature of God, his mind purged from the idle fancies of his people, the dervish recognised the Light that this loving Stranger had brought him.
His name was Mustafa, Mustafa Big-i-Sanandají, later surnamed Majdhúb. He left his cooking utensils behind. He rose and followed Bahá’u’lláh on foot, behind His horse, inflamed with love, chanting verses of a song he composed on the spur of the moment and dedicated to his Beloved:
“Thou art the Day-Star of guidance. Thou art the Light of Truth. Unveil Thyself to men, O Revealer of the Truth.”
That poem later circulated widely among his people. Many knew that a certain dervish had composed it in praise of his Beloved. But none suspected, at a time when Bahá’u’lláh was still veiled from the eyes of men, that this dervish alone had recognised His station and discovered His glory.
By the time Bahá’u’lláh departed from Núr, the district had been changed. By His magnetic eloquence, the purity of His life, the dignity of His bearing, the unanswerable logic of His argument, and the many evidences of His loving-kindness, He had won the hearts of the people and enrolled them under the standard of the Faith. Such was the effect of His words and deeds that the very stones and trees of that district seemed to have been quickened by the waves of spiritual power emanating from His person. Those He left behind continued to propagate the Cause and consolidate its foundations. Some endured the severest afflictions for His sake. Others drank the cup of martyrdom in His path.
Mázindarán in general, and Núr in particular, became distinguished from every other province and district in Persia as the first to embrace the Message. The district of Núr, its name means “light”, lay embedded within the mountains of Mázindarán. And it was the first to catch the rays of the Sun that had risen in Shíráz.
But the forces that gathered around Bahá’u’lláh did not begin in Núr. Long before the Báb’s declaration, power had already recognised Him, and already failed to contain Him.
Hájí Mírzá Áqásí, the Grand Vazír of Muhammad Sháh, though completely alienated from Bahá’u’lláh’s father, showed the son every mark of consideration. So great was the esteem the Grand Vazír professed for Him that Mírzá Áqá Khán-i-Núrí, the man who would one day succeed as Prime Minister, felt jealous. Though Bahá’u’lláh was still a youth, and His father still alive, He was given precedence before the Grand Vazír. What will happen to me, Mírzá Áqá Khán wondered, when this young man succeeds his father?
After the Vazír’s death, the Grand Vazír continued his attention. He visited Bahá’u’lláh in His home and addressed Him as though He were his own son. But that devotion was soon tested. Passing one day through the village of Quch-Hisár, which belonged to Bahá’u’lláh, the Grand Vazír was so struck by its charm and the abundance of its water that he conceived the desire to own it.
Bahá’u’lláh refused, not from attachment, but from justice. “Had this property been exclusively mine own, I would willingly have complied with your desire. This transitory life, with all its sordid possessions, is worthy of no attachment in my eyes, how much less this small and insignificant estate. As a number of other people, both rich and poor, some of full age and some still minors, share with me the ownership of this property, I would request you to refer this matter to them.”
Unsatisfied, Hájí Mírzá Áqásí turned to fraud. When Bahá’u’lláh learned of his designs, He transferred the title to the sister of Muhammad Sháh, who had already expressed her desire to become its owner. The Grand Vazír, furious, ordered the estate seized. The Sháh’s sister rebuked his agents and took the case to her brother. “Many a time,” she told the Sháh, “your Imperial Majesty has signified your desire that I should dispose of my jewels and purchase property. I have at last succeeded. Hájí Mírzá Áqásí, however, is fully determined to seize it from me.” The Sháh commanded the Grand Vazír to forgo his claim.
In despair, the Grand Vazír summoned Bahá’u’lláh and tried by every artifice to discredit His name. His charges failed. Then came the accusation: “What is the purpose of all this feasting and banqueting in which you seem to delight? I, who am the Prime Minister of the Sháhinsháh of Persia, never receive the number and variety of guests that crowd around your table every night. You surely must be meditating a plot against me.”
“Gracious God!” Bahá’u’lláh replied. “Is the man who, out of the abundance of his heart, shares his bread with his fellow-men, to be accused of harbouring criminal intentions?”
The Grand Vazír was utterly confounded. He dared no reply. Though supported by the combined ecclesiastical and civil powers of Persia, he found himself, in every contest he ventured against Bahá’u’lláh, completely defeated.
And these were not the only occasions. Not once, beset though He was by the gravest perils, did Bahá’u’lláh submit to the arrogance, the greed, or the treachery of those around Him. In His constant association with the highest dignitaries of the realm, He was never content simply to accede to the views they expressed. He would fearlessly champion the cause of truth, assert the rights of the downtrodden, defend the weak, and protect the innocent.
A house broken by flood and stripped of office, yet undiminished in dignity. A youth who silenced two hundred scholars. A mujtahid who dreamed of coffers filled with jewelled books and could not enter the room where the Promised One spoke with Bahá’u’lláh. A Grand Vazír of Persia who could not win a single contest against Him. And then, in the year sixty, that same figure, carrying a message not His own, awakening an entire district, turning even a confused dervish by a roadside brook into a witness who sang of things no one else yet understood.
The Vazír had dreamed of his son swimming free in a limitless ocean, multitudes clinging to His locks, and none of it hindering Him.
Núr had begun to watch that dream become history.