The Black Standard Unfurled: Mullá Ḥusayn Marches to Ṭabarsí

In the summer of 1848 Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bushrú’í received from the Báb at Chihríq a charge that would conclude his life. The Báb’s instruction reached him at Mashhad. He was to set out for Mázindarán — *the Verdant Isle,* the green coastal province beneath the Caspian — and the manner of his departure was to be unmistakable:

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> Adorn your head with My green turban, the emblem of My lineage, > and, with the Black Standard unfurled before you, hasten to the > Jazíriy-i-Khadrá.

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Mullá Ḥusayn obeyed. He left Mashhad with two hundred and two companions, the green turban on his head, the Black Standard carried before him. Nabíl, writing of that march, records that he himself had been told by Mullá Ḥusayn the precise number who would die.

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> I, together with seventy-two of my companions, shall suffer > death for the sake of the Well-Beloved.

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The march took them west, through hostile country. At Bárfurúsh they met the first organised resistance — a mob whipped to fury by the principal cleric of the town. They were treacherously refused safe passage by Khusraw, a chieftain who had agreed to escort them and then plotted their murder; Mullá Ḥusayn escaped this betrayal, in Nabíl’s telling, by what could only be called a miracle.

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They reached the shrine of Shaykh Ṭabarsí — a small structure in a forest clearing — and immediately set to building defences. Within weeks the Bábís had erected the timber-and-mud fortress that the Persian government, with all its artillery and all its imperial troops, would never take by direct assault during the months of siege that followed.

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Quddús arrived to join them, bearing his own authority as the last Letter of the Living. He addressed the company on his arrival with the Qur’ánic words the Báb had appointed for him:

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> The Baqíyyatu’lláh will be best for you if ye are of those who > believe.

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Bahá’u’lláh Himself, then living quietly in Tihrán, attempted on more than one occasion to reach the fort to share its hardships. He was arrested before He could arrive. Nabíl preserves the words He spoke to His captors:

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> If you insist on inflicting your punishment, I offer Myself > as a willing Victim of your chastisement.

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Within months the prophecy Mullá Ḥusayn had carried in his own mouth would be fulfilled. He himself fell early in the siege. Quddús and the remaining companions were to be killed by treachery in the spring. The seventy-two companions — and the many beyond them — would form, in the Bahá’í memory, the first ranks of the martyrs.

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