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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
Zanjan, Iran
6 stories took place here — most often featuring the Báb, Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí-i-Zanjání (Ḥujjat) and Zaynab.
Zanján (today: Zanjan, Iran)
Nabíl's chronicle records that in the spring and summer of 1850, the city of Zanján was the scene of one of the most prolonged Bábí defenses of the early years. Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zanjání, surnamed Ḥujjat, took refuge with his followers in the fortress of 'Alí-Mardán Khán; he and they held against the assembled forces of the Sháh's army for nine months.
During the long siege of Zanján, a young village woman named Zaynab could not bear to stand idle while her companions fell. She put on a man's garments, took up sword and gun, and begged the leader of the defenders for leave to fight. For days she stood in the front of the battle with a courage that astonished the army arrayed against her — a single peasant girl defying both an empire and the expectations of her age.
In 'Abdu'l-Bahá's own early history of the Faith, the upheaval at Zanján stands among the great trials of the believers. Led by the fearless scholar Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí — surnamed Ḥujjat, "the Proof" — the Bábís of the city, attacked and besieged at the decree of the clergy, held out through battle after battle until they were at last lured into surrender by oaths sworn upon the Qur'án, and put to the sword.
When the young believer Siyyid Ashraf of Zanján was captured and sentenced to death, his persecutors devised what they thought would surely break him: they brought his own mother before him to beg him to deny his Faith and live. She did the opposite. Rather than plead for his life, she charged him to remain steadfast — and warned him never to disgrace, by a moment's weakness, the Cause for which so many had already died.
Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zanjání was among the boldest and most independent-minded religious leaders of Persia — a man unafraid to break with the crowd of clerics when his own judgment told him otherwise. When word of the Báb reached Zanján, he did not rush to condemn or to follow. He sent a trusted messenger to investigate — and when the answer came back, he was ready to act on the truth whatever it cost him.
Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zanjání was the foremost and most fearless divine of the city of Zanján. When the message of the Báb reached him and he recognised its truth, he did not keep his conviction to himself: he proclaimed the new Cause openly from his place of authority, won a great multitude of his townsmen, and bore imprisonment rather than be silenced.