One of the Keepers of This Door

*A retelling based on **Memorials of the Faithful** by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, with details from **The Dawn-Breakers** by Nabíl. Words in quotation marks are as preserved in those accounts.*

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Mullá Sádiq of Khurásán had been known in Persia for the purity of his life, and people called him "Mullá Sádiq the saintly." As a young man he had been a disciple of Siyyid Kázim. The people of Khurásán were strongly attached to him, and he was counted among the most renowned divines of his day. Bahá'u'lláh gave him the name Ismu'lláhu'l-Asdaq, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá names him among the Hands of the Cause of God.

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After he came to Baghdad and attained the presence of Bahá'u'lláh, he was sitting one day in the courtyard of the men's apartments of Bahá'u'lláh's house, by the little garden. 'Abdu'l-Bahá was in one of the rooms just above, which looked onto the courtyard. A Persian prince, a grandson of Fath-'Alí Sháh, arrived at the house and asked him, "Who are you?"

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Ismu'lláh answered that he was a servant of that Threshold: "I am one of the keepers of this door."

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Then, while 'Abdu'l-Bahá listened from above, he began to teach the prince the Faith. At first the prince objected violently, and his face showed his fury. Yet in a quarter of an hour, "gently and benignly," Ismu'lláh had calmed him. The prince's anger turned to smiles, and he said how glad he was to have met Ismu'lláh and heard what he had to say.

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"He always taught cheerfully and with gaiety," 'Abdu'l-Bahá wrote, and he answered gently and with good humour however much anger was turned against him. "He was truly Ismu'lláh, the Name of God, not for his fame but because he was a chosen soul."

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Years before, in 1844, he had been living in Isfahan, where Siyyid Kázim had told him to prepare the way for the new Revelation. Nabíl, who met him years later, recorded his own account in The Dawn-Breakers. When Mullá Husayn reached the city, Mullá Sádiq asked him the name of the One who claimed to be the Promised One. "To enquire about that name and to divulge it are alike forbidden," Mullá Husayn replied.

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Mullá Sádiq asked whether he, too, might seek the answer through prayer. "The door of His grace," Mullá Husayn said, "is never closed before the face of him who seeks to find Him."

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Mullá Sádiq went to a room alone to pray. There he remembered the face of a Youth he had often seen at Karbilá, standing in prayer at the entrance of the shrine of the Imám Husayn, His face bathed in tears. In a vision he saw that face again, smiling at him. He ran to Mullá Husayn, who assured him that he had, at last, attained the object of his desire.

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He went on to Shíráz, where, 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes, he was soon widely known as a believer. Nabíl tells what happened there. Quddús gave him a writing of the Báb that told the believers to add to the call to prayer words bearing witness to the Báb. One day, leading his congregation in the Masjid-i-Naw, Mullá Sádiq sounded those words aloud. The city was in uproar, and the governor of Fárs had him and Quddús arrested.

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The governor asked whether the Báb's call to the kings meant that Muhammad Sháh must lay down his crown. Mullá Sádiq answered: "If these words be the Word of God, the abdication of Muhammad Shah and his like can matter but little."

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Because he taught openly and boldly, they hung a halter on him and led him through the streets and bazaars of the city. Even so, "composed and smiling, he kept on speaking to the people." He did not yield and was not silenced. Nabíl adds that he was scourged, and that an onlooker, seeing him smile, asked him why. "The first seven strokes were severely painful; to the rest I seemed to have grown indifferent," Mullá Sádiq replied. He and Quddús, Nabíl writes, were "the first to be persecuted on Persian soil for the sake of their Faith."

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When he was freed he went to Khurásán and taught there, and then travelled with Mullá Husayn, the Bábu'l-Báb, to the fort of Tabarsí. The enemy surrounded the fort and kept pouring cannon balls into it. For eighteen days the believers inside had no food. "They lived on the leather of their shoes." When that was gone they had only water, a mouthful each morning. Yet whenever they were attacked they sprang to their feet and drove the army back from their walls.

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He was taken prisoner at the fort and handed over to the chiefs of Mázindarán, who were to lead him about and finally kill him. He was brought in chains to the appointed place, and there, in the middle of the night, one man set him free and guided him to safety. God, 'Abdu'l-Bahá says, put it into that man's heart.

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"Once freed, he taught more widely than ever." He attained the presence of Bahá'u'lláh in 'Iráq, and again in the Most Great Prison. 'Abdu'l-Bahá describes him: "He was like a surging sea, a falcon that soared high." When he taught, the proofs streamed out of him, and "when he chanted or prayed, his eyes shed tears like a spring cloud."

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Many Tablets were revealed for him by Bahá'u'lláh, and after his passing a special Tablet of Visitation. His tomb is in Hamadán. Near the close of His memorial of him, 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes once more: "He was truly Ismu'lláh, the Name of God."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller accounts, see **Memorials of the Faithful** by 'Abdu'l-Bahá and **The Dawn-Breakers**, chapters IV and VIII.*

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