Across the Mountains: The Báb's Journey to Máh-Kú and Chihríq

Nabíl’s *Dawn-Breakers* recounts in detail the last two years of the Báb’s public life, which He spent not in the cities of Persia but in the remote mountain fortresses of the north-western frontier.

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The arrangement had been made by Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, the prime minister of Muḥammad Sháh. The Báb’s residence in Iṣfáhán under the protection of the friendly governor Manúchihr Khán had been ended by Manúchihr Khán’s death in 1847. The clergy of Iṣfáhán clamoured for the Báb’s removal; the prime minister, fearing both the clergy and the unrest a public trial in Tihrán would cause, ordered the Báb to be transported north to the frontier fortress of Máh-Kú in the province of Ádhirbáyján.

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The journey from Iṣfáhán to Máh-Kú was several hundred kilometres. The chronicle records the route by which the Báb was conducted: north through Káshán, where one believer (Hájí Mírzá Jání) had the privilege of receiving Him in his home for two nights; on through Qum and Ṭihrán, the Báb being conducted around the capital so that He should not enter the city; and at length, by a long traverse of the mountain country of the north-west, to the small frontier town beneath the rock of Máh-Kú.

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The fortress at Máh-Kú had been chosen for its remoteness. It stood on a steep cliff. The local population was largely Sunní-Kurd, presumed by the authorities to be hostile to a Shí’ah claimant of any kind. The warden, ‘Alí Khán, was given strict instructions to confine the prisoner to a single cell and to permit no visitors.

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Nabíl preserves the record of how those orders were progressively undone. ‘Alí Khán, the warden, was within weeks deferring to his prisoner; within months he was preparing in his own house a separate room for the believers who began to arrive from across Persia for visits. The villagers of Máh-Kú, who had been suspicious of the southerner installed in their fortress, came in time to seek His blessing daily. They named their new-born children for Him. They credited their crops to His prayers.

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In the cell at Máh-Kú the Báb composed the *Persian Bayán* — the principal book of His dispensation, written in His own hand on the small folio of papers permitted Him. Believers visiting the fortress carried out copies as they could.

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After nine months at Máh-Kú the prime minister, alarmed by the news that the prison had become a place of pilgrimage, ordered the Báb’s removal to a still more remote fortress: Chihríq, in the same province but among an even more isolated population. The same pattern, the chronicle records, repeated itself. The warden softened. The local notables came to call. Believers arrived from Khurásán and Mázindarán and the south. The cell at Chihríq became, in its turn, a centre of revelation and a place of pilgrimage.

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The two prisons together — Máh-Kú and Chihríq — held the Báb for almost the whole of the last two years of His life. The intent of His confinement was to silence Him. *The mountain that had been chosen to bury His voice became the pulpit from which it carried farthest.* From Chihríq He was taken at the end, in 1850, to Tabríz for the public examination and the execution that had at length been determined upon.

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