The Báb's Pilgrimage to Mecca

Late in 1844, a few months after He declared His mission in Shíráz, the Báb set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. He left His wife in the care of His mother and joined the pilgrims of Fárs. Quddús was His only companion, and His Ethiopian servant attended Him.

At Búshihr He boarded a sailing vessel. The voyage to the coast of Arabia took two months of slow, stormy sailing, and many of the pilgrims fell sick. The Báb Himself, in the Persian Bayán, recalled its hardships:

For days we suffered from the scarcity of water. I had to content myself with the juice of the sweet lemon.

A fellow passenger, Ḥájí Abu'l-Ḥasan-i-Shírází, remembered how the Báb and Quddús spent those weeks, the Báb dictating and Quddús writing down His words:

During the entire period of approximately two months... whenever by day or night I chanced to meet either the Báb or Quddús, I invariably found them together, both absorbed in their work.

At Jaddih the Báb put on the pilgrim's garb and set out for Mecca on a camel. Quddús walked the whole way beside Him, holding the bridle. One day, when the Báb had dismounted near a well to offer His morning prayer, a Bedouin appeared, snatched the saddlebag lying beside Him, which held His writings and papers, and disappeared into the desert. His servant set out after him, but the Báb, still at prayer, motioned to him to give up the chase. Later He told him:

Had I allowed you, you would surely have overtaken and punished him. But this was not to be. The papers and writings which that bag contained are destined to reach, through the instrumentality of this Arab, such places as we could never have succeeded in attaining.

In Mecca He performed all the rites of the pilgrimage. At Muná, on the day of sacrifice, He bought nineteen lambs, sacrificed them, and gave the meat to the poor.

On the last day of His pilgrimage He found Mírzá Muḥíṭ-i-Kirmání, a leading figure of the Shaykhí community, standing facing the Black Stone. The Báb took his hand and told him that none besides Him could claim to be the Gate that leads men to the knowledge of God, and that he must either submit to His Cause or publicly repudiate it. Muḥíṭ, confused and afraid, professed his allegiance and put his questions to the Báb, who promised a written reply. Muḥíṭ assured Him: "I shall never depart from Medina, whatever may betide, until I have fulfilled my covenant with You." He stayed a short while in Medina and then, as Nabíl records, left for Karbilá without keeping his pledge. The Báb wrote His reply on the road from Mecca to Medina.

Before leaving Mecca He also sent a letter to the Sharíf of Mecca, setting out His claim and calling on him to accept it. Quddús delivered it. The Sharíf was too busy to read it.

As the Báb approached Medina, Nabíl writes, He remembered the Prophet Muḥammad, who was buried there, and Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá'í, who lay in the cemetery of Baqí'. Nabíl pictures the spirits of the early martyrs of Islam pleading with Him not to go back to His own land, where His enemies were waiting, and gives the reply of the Báb's "indomitable Spirit":

I am come into this world to bear witness to the glory of sacrifice... Rejoice, for both I and Quddús will be slain on the altar of our devotion to the King of Glory.

Quddús was put to death in Bárfurúsh in 1849. The Báb was executed in Tabríz in 1850.

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam (Chapter VII — The Báb's Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina). For the fuller account, see the original.

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/