The Eighteen Letters of the Living

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam (Chapter III, The Declaration of the Báb's Mission), with one detail from Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By.

Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bushrú’í recognised the Báb on the evening of May 22, 1844, in the Báb's house in Shíráz. The Báb addressed him in these words:

O thou who art the first to believe in Me! Verily I say, I am the Báb, the Gate of God, and thou art the Bábu’l-Báb, the gate of that Gate. Eighteen souls must, in the beginning, spontaneously and of their own accord, accept Me and recognise the truth of My Revelation. Unwarned and uninvited, each of these must seek independently to find Me.

Mullá Ḥusayn was told not to reveal to anyone what he had seen and heard.

Among the first to follow was Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Basṭámí, who, on the third night of prayer and fasting, was led by a vision to the Báb. Each of his twelve companions, Nabíl writes, "in his turn and by his own unaided efforts, sought and found his Beloved." Some were guided in sleep, others in waking, a few while in prayer, and others in their moments of contemplation. One after another they came into the presence of the Báb and were declared Letters of the Living.

One of them, Ṭáhirih, never came to Shíráz. When her sister’s husband, Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, was leaving Qazvín, she gave him a sealed letter for the Promised One whom, she said, he was sure to meet on his journey. He met the Báb, recognised Him, and gave Him the letter, and the Báb declared her one of the Letters of the Living.

One night the Báb said to Mullá Ḥusayn:

Seventeen Letters have thus far enlisted under the standard of the Faith of God. There remains one more to complete the number. These Letters of the Living shall arise to proclaim My Cause and to establish My Faith. To-morrow night the remaining Letter will arrive and will complete the number of My chosen disciples.

The next evening, as the Báb was returning home with Mullá Ḥusayn behind Him, a dishevelled, travel-stained youth came up, embraced Mullá Ḥusayn, and asked whether he had reached his goal. Mullá Ḥusayn tried to calm him and put him off. The youth, fixing his gaze on the Báb, said: "Why seek you to hide Him from me? I can recognise Him by His gait." It was Quddús, then twenty-two years old. He would go with the Báb on His pilgrimage to Mecca, and later stand with Mullá Ḥusayn at the fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí.

The Báb then sent the Letters out to teach, each to his own native province. He told them not to refer to His name or person, but to announce that the Gate to the Promised One had been opened. Only Mullá Ḥusayn and Quddús remained with Him in Shíráz. Shoghi Effendi writes in God Passes By that by the time of the Báb’s own martyrdom in 1850, no less than half of the Letters of the Living had already given their lives.

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam (Chapter III, The Declaration of the Báb's Mission). 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/