I Am, I Am, I Am: The Báb's Examination at Tabríz

In the summer of 1848 the Báb was brought from His mountain prison at Chihríq to the city of Tabríz, the capital of Ádhirbayján, to be examined before the most senior religious authorities of the realm. The young Crown Prince Náṣiri’d-Dín Mírzá would preside; the Shaykhu’l-Islám of the city, the chief jurists of Tabríz, and Mullá Muḥammad-i-Mamaqání would question Him.

Nabíl records, before the trial proper, an incident at Urúmíyyih on the journey north. The Báb’s horse appeared to His companions to be on the verge of bolting. The Báb steadied them with a single instruction:

Fear not. Do as you have been bidden, and commit Us to the care of the Almighty.

The horse arrived at Urúmíyyih unharmed, the Báb composed.

At the formal examination in Tabríz the assembled clerics opened with a question they treated as decisive: did this young prisoner indeed claim to be the promised Qá’im? The Báb did not hedge. Nabíl records what He said in the courtroom:

I am, I am, I am, the promised One! I am the One whose name you have for a thousand years invoked.

The clerics turned, then, to a smaller question, designed to discredit Him: had not His revealed verses contained grammatical irregularities? The Báb answered with a principle that went past their challenge entirely:

The Word of God can never be subject to the limitations of His creatures.

Grammar belongs to creatures; revelation does not. The challenge collapsed. The clerics, unable to reach Him by argument, turned to physical punishment. The Báb was bastinadoed by the Shaykhu’l-Islám’s own command — bare feet beaten with rods until the bones bruised through.

He was returned to Chihríq. From the cell He composed a long denunciatory epistle to the chief minister, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, which Nabíl quotes from extensively. The Báb closed His own account of the trial with the warning of the Qur’án itself:

Think men that when they say, ‘We believe,’ they shall be let alone and not be put to the proof?

Within two years He would be martyred in the same city where He had stood trial. The trial itself, in Nabíl’s narration, was already half the martyrdom — the public, courageous, doctrinal act for which He was, at last, to be killed.

Source: Nabíl-i-A'ẓam, The Dawn-Breakers (Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1932), Chapter XVIII — Examination of the Báb at Tabríz. Public domain text from the Bahá'í Reference Library.

Nabíl-i-A'ẓam. (1932). *The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/other-literature/historical/dawn-breakers/