I Bear Witness These Words Are From the Same Source: Siyyid Yaḥyá Recognizes the Báb
Nabíl-i-A'ẓam, The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation, (1932), Bahá'í Publishing Trust · Read original
When in Bahá'í history
Shíráz (today: Shíráz, Iran)
Among the most distinguished early converts to the Cause of the Báb stood Siyyid Yaḥyá-i-Dárábí — known later in Bahá’í memory as Vaḥíd, the Peerless. He was a man of immense scholarly reputation, a respected court figure, and, according to Nabíl, the man Muḥammad Sháh had personally chosen to investigate the new movement and to report back from Shíráz on whether the young Siyyid claiming to be the Promised One should be taken seriously.
Vaḥíd arrived in Shíráz committed to a careful, disinterested examination. Nabíl records three sessions of conversation between them. The first was conducted at length on questions of prophecy and exegesis. Vaḥíd, comfortable in dialectic, came away unsettled but not yet persuaded. The second session covered similar ground in greater depth. Vaḥíd left, again, restive — the Báb’s answers were not those of an impostor, but nor was he ready to bow before a young provincial Siyyid.
Vaḥíd resolved on a final test. He would compose, in his own mind, a question on the most difficult passage of the Qur’án he could devise — the Súrih of Kawthar — and ask the Báb to reveal its inward meaning. He told no one of the question.
When he sat with the Báb the next day, he had not yet asked. The Báb anticipated him. He took up His pen and, in Vaḥíd’s presence, revealed a commentary on the very Súrih Vaḥíd had silently chosen — verses streamed from His pen with a rapidity that was truly astounding, Nabíl writes — answering the unspoken question in a torrent of Arabic verse.
Vaḥíd's defences fell. He turned to the Báb and made the declaration that would define the rest of his life:
I bear witness that these words which I have read proceed from the same Source as that of the Qur'án.
In the same chapter Nabíl introduces another remarkable figure who soon followed — Mullá Muḥammad-‘Alí-i-Zanjání, known to Bahá’í history as Ḥujjat — an independent-minded cleric whose reading of the Báb was no less decisive than Vaḥíd's.
Nabíl closes the chapter with the failed execution attempt of Governor Ḥusayn Khán. The Governor, infuriated by the spreading influence of the new movement, swore by the imperial diadem of Muḥammad Sháh that he would have the Báb killed that very night. Within hours, however, a sudden cholera plague descended on the city. The Governor’s own son fell ill, then the Governor’s household. Terrified, the authorities released the Báb. The execution they had planned would not be carried out — not yet.
Source: Nabíl-i-A'ẓam, The Dawn-Breakers (Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1932), Chapter IX — The Báb's stay in Shíráz after the Pilgrimage, continued. Public domain text from the Bahá'í Reference Library.
Cite this story
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/
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