There Remains One More: The Letters of the Living

Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bushrú’í had recognised the Báb on the evening of May 22, 1844, in a small house in Shíráz. The Báb, knowing what was coming, addressed him with words that would mark the beginning of a new revelation:

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> 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.

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But Mullá Ḥusayn, Nabíl reports in *The Dawn-Breakers*, was the first of a number. The Báb was waiting for the others. They began to arrive in Shíráz in the days and weeks that followed — fellow disciples of Siyyid Káẓim, scattered now in obedience to the Siyyid’s last charge, drawn back by an inward summons each could neither name nor resist.

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Each one came expecting some examination. Each was met, instead, by a host who knew them before they spoke. The Báb would address them by name, hand them the very text of the question they had been preparing to ask, and answer it in detail before they opened their mouths. The pattern repeated itself. One after another, the disciples acknowledged Him.

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When seventeen had thus *enlisted under the standard of the Faith of God,* the Báb made an extraordinary announcement to Mullá Ḥusayn:

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> Seventeen Letters have thus far enlisted under the standard of > the Faith of God. There remains one more to complete the number.

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The eighteenth place, Nabíl explains, was reserved for one whom the Báb had not yet met but whom He had already recognised: Quddús, the youngest of the Letters of the Living, the one who would later accompany Him on pilgrimage to Mecca and bear the weight of the campaign at Shaykh Ṭabarsí.

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These eighteen, with the Báb Himself making the nineteenth and the Point, formed the first complete unit of the new dispensation. They were sent out to teach, each to a particular field of labour. They departed Shíráz quietly, instructed not to proclaim openly until the Báb’s own pilgrimage to Mecca was complete.

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Within a few years, most of them would be dead — by sword or fever or fortress siege. Their names would be inscribed in *The Dawn-Breakers* as the eighteen Letters of the Living of the Báb’s dispensation; and from that small band of eighteen, in fewer than two decades, a Faith would arise that would outlive every empire then ruling the regions in which they had been born.

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