Shaykh Ḥasan Meets Bahá'u'lláh in Karbilá

In June 1851, a year after the martyrdom of the Báb, Bahá'u'lláh left Ṭihrán for Karbilá. He later told Nabíl why. The Amír-Niẓám had summoned Him, said he was convinced that Bahá'u'lláh had supported the defenders of Ṭabarsí, offered Him a post at court, and suggested that He visit Karbilá while the Sháh travelled to Iṣfahán. Bahá'u'lláh rejected the accusation and refused the post, and a few days later He left the capital. He spent the month of Ramaḍán in Kirmánsháh, stopped a few days in Baghdád, and reached Karbilá in the month of Shavvál.

In Kirmánsháh, Nabíl presented to Him a letter in which the Qájár prince Íldirím Mírzá professed his devotion to the Cause. Bahá'u'lláh read it and said: "The faith which a member of the Qájár dynasty professes cannot be depended upon." Within a few months the same prince ordered the death of Siyyid Baṣír-i-Hindí, a blind and learned believer from India, because of words the siyyid had spoken about the late Muḥammad Sháh.

In Karbilá, Bahá'u'lláh found that a number of leading residents, among them Shaykh Sulṭán, had become followers of a certain Siyyid-i-'Uluvv and believed him to be the incarnation of the Divine Spirit. Bahá'u'lláh met Shaykh Sulṭán several times and, by counsel and loving-kindness, won him to the Cause of the Báb. His fellow-disciples followed him one after another, and the Siyyid-i-'Uluvv himself came to acknowledge Bahá'u'lláh's authority.

Also living in Karbilá was the aged Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Zunúzí. He had transcribed the Báb's verses during His imprisonment at Máh-Kú. Later, at Chihríq, the Báb told him not to join the struggle at Ṭabarsí, but to go to Karbilá and stay there, "inasmuch as you are destined to behold, with your own eyes, the beauteous countenance of the promised Ḥusayn." Shaykh Ḥasan went. He married, earned his living as a scribe, and bore the insults of the Shaykhís patiently. He told no one what the Báb had said.

His own account, which Nabíl gives in an earlier chapter, describes what happened on the day of 'Arafih, in October 1851. As he was passing the gate of the inner courtyard of the shrine of the Imám Ḥusayn, he saw Bahá'u'lláh for the first time. Bahá'u'lláh came towards him, took him by the hand and said: "This very day I have purposed to make you known as a Bábí throughout Karbilá." Still holding his hand, He walked with him the length of the market-street, and at the end said:

Praise be to God that you have remained in Karbilá, and have beheld with your own eyes the countenance of the promised Ḥusayn.

Shaykh Ḥasan at once remembered the Báb's promise, which he had never shared with anyone. He wanted to proclaim the advent of the promised Ḥusayn to the whole city there and then, but Bahá'u'lláh told him to hold back. "Not yet," He whispered; "the appointed Hour is approaching. It has not yet struck. Rest assured and be patient." From that moment, Shaykh Ḥasan said, all his sorrows vanished. He was so poor that he was often hungry, yet he felt that all the treasures of the earth were nothing beside what he now possessed.

Nabíl writes that Bahá'u'lláh confided to Shaykh Ḥasan in Karbilá the secret He would reveal later in Baghdád. That public Declaration came in 1863.

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam (Chapter XXV — Bahá'u'lláh's Journey to Karbilá, and Shaykh Ḥasan's own account in Chapter II). 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/