I Am the Promised One

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

In the summer of 1848 the Báb was brought from His prison in the castle of Chihríq to Tabríz. The Grand Vizier, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, ordered the leading clergy of the city to meet in the official residence of the governor of Ádhirbáyján and decide how to put an end to His influence. The governor was the heir to the throne, the young Náṣiri'd-Dín Mírzá, and he attended the gathering himself. It was presided over by his tutor, the Niẓámu'l-'Ulamá. Crowds pressed around the gate to see the Báb, and a way had to be forced for Him through them.

When He entered, every seat in the hall was taken except one, which had been kept for the heir to the throne. The Báb greeted the assembly and, without hesitating, sat down in that seat. Nabíl records that a deep silence fell on the room and no one dared to speak.

At last the Niẓámu'l-'Ulamá asked Him: "Whom do you claim to be, and what is the message which you have brought?"

"I am," thrice exclaimed the Báb, "I am, I am, the promised One! I am the One whose name you have for a thousand years invoked, at whose mention you have risen, whose advent you have longed to witness, and the hour of whose Revelation you have prayed God to hasten. Verily I say, it is incumbent upon the peoples of both the East and the West to obey My word and to pledge allegiance to My person."

Only one man answered: Mullá Muḥammad-i-Mamaqání, a leader of the Shaykhí community, who insulted Him. The Báb replied that He had not come of His own accord but had been summoned, and that He maintained what He had said.

The Niẓámu'l-'Ulamá then asked for proof. The Báb answered that the strongest proof of a Prophet's mission is His own Word, and said that within two days and two nights He could reveal verses equal in number to the whole Qur'án. Asked to describe the gathering in the style of the Qur'án, He began, and Mamaqání at once interrupted to point out a breach of the rules of grammar. The Báb replied that the Word of God is not bound by the rules of men, since those rules were themselves drawn from the Word of God, and that scholars had found no fewer than three hundred such instances in the Qur'án itself. When another man asked Him about the tense of a word, the Báb answered with a verse of the Qur'án, then rose and left the gathering.

The Niẓámu'l-'Ulamá himself was displeased at the way the meeting had been conducted. In the end it was decided that the Báb should be punished. The governor's bodyguard refused to carry this out, and the Shaykhu'l-Islám of Tabríz, Mírzá 'Alí-Aṣghar, summoned Him to his own house and there, with his own hand, struck the soles of His feet eleven times with the rods. The Báb was then taken back to Chihríq.

In God Passes By, Shoghi Effendi writes that the gathering, called to condemn the Báb, instead gave Him the opportunity to assert His claims in public, formally and without reservation.

This account is retold for the Bahai Story Library; it is a paraphrase, not the original text. The quoted words are 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/