Mullá Ḥusayn's Last Ride

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative (trans. Shoghi Effendi). The narrative below is retold in our own words; the short line in quotation marks is verbatim from the book. Read the full text for Nabíl's complete account.

Mullá Ḥusayn was the first human being to believe in the Báb — the seeker who, on that night in Shíráz in 1844, had recognized the Promised One and become His first disciple. Five years later, the road that began in that lamplit room had led him to a half-built shrine in the forests of Mázindarán, a place called Fort Ṭabarsí, where a few hundred Bábís were besieged by the imperial army.

On the morning of the ninth of Rabíʻu'l-Avval — the 2nd of February, 1849 — Mullá Ḥusayn rose and made ready. He performed his ablutions and dressed himself in fresh garments, as a man prepares for something sacred. And then he placed upon his head the very turban that the Báb had sent to him. He would ride out wearing his Beloved's own turban.

He mounted his horse and led his companions — Nabíl records the number as about three hundred and thirteen — out through the gate of the fort to meet the besieging force. Into the dark of that winter morning he rode, at the head of his small band, and the verse on his heart held no thought of escape, only of arrival:

Cleansed of all earthly defilements, we shall seek the court of the Almighty.

What followed was almost beyond belief. He and his companions swept forward with such speed and courage that they broke through one barricade, then a second, then a third, scattering the soldiers before them. For a few astonishing moments, a few hundred unarmored believers carried all before them.

Then an officer hiding in a tree took aim and fired, and the bullet struck Mullá Ḥusayn in the breast. Bleeding, he dismounted; his companions carried him back inside the fort. There he asked to be left alone with Quddús, the young leader he loved, and the two of them spoke quietly together for some two hours. And then the first believer breathed his last — his face, Nabíl tells us, bearing the faintest of smiles.

He had crossed half of Persia searching for his Lord; he had found Him in a single night; and he had spent every year afterward, and finally his life itself, in His service. He died as he had lived — riding straight toward the thing he loved, wearing his Master's turban, with a smile upon his face. The court of the Almighty he had ridden out to seek had opened wide to receive him.

This account is retold for the Bahai Story Library; it is a paraphrase, not the original text. The quoted line is verbatim from The Dawn-Breakers (Nabíl, trans. Shoghi Effendi). See the source for the complete account.

Nabíl-i-Aʻẓam. (1932). *The Dawn-Breakers (Nabíl's Narrative)*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://reference.bahai.org/en/t/nz/DB/