Guidance unto the Ignorant

A retelling based on Memorials of the Faithful by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, with passages from Bahá'u'lláh's Kitáb-i-Íqán and details from The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh by Adib Taherzadeh. Words in quotation marks are quoted from those books.

In Memorials of the Faithful, 'Abdu'l-Bahá tells of two brothers, Áqá Muhammad-Báqir and Áqá Muhammad-Ismá'íl the tailor, who were imprisoned with the exiles in 'Akká. Before He turns to them, He tells a story about their brother, Pahlaván Ridá of Káshán.

Pahlaván Ridá was, in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words, "a man to outward seeming untutored, devoid of learning." Pahlaván means "athlete" or "champion," a term, the glossary of The Dawn-Breakers explains, applied to brave and muscular men. He was a tradesman. Like others who came into the Faith at the start, he cast everything away out of love for God, "attaining in one leap the highest reaches of knowledge." He became so eloquent, so suddenly, that the people of Káshán were astounded.

One day he went to Hájí Muhammad-Karím Khán, the Shaykhí leader, in Káshán, and asked him: "Sir, are you the Fourth Pillar? I am a man who thirsts after spiritual truth and I yearn to know of the Fourth Pillar."

In Shaykhí teaching, the Fourth Pillar, or Fourth Support, was the perfect man, the channel of grace, who must always be sought, and Hájí Muhammad-Karím Khán regarded himself as such. Taherzadeh writes that he had claimed this station, the Rukn-i-Rábi', for himself, the other three pillars being God, the Prophet Muhammad and the Holy Imáms. The claim had roused the wrath of the divines, and he had been forced to withdraw it by publishing a statement in two of his epistles. Now a number of political and military leaders were present, and he replied: "Perish the thought! I shun all those who consider me the Fourth Pillar. Never have I made such a claim. Whoever says I have, speaks falsehood; may God's curse be on him!"

A few days later Pahlaván Ridá went back to him. "Sir, I have just finished your book, Irshadu'l-'Avám (Guidance unto the Ignorant); I have read it from cover to cover; in it you say that one is obligated to know the Fourth Pillar or Fourth Support; indeed, you account him a fellow knight of the Lord of the Age. Therefore I long to recognize and know him. I am certain that you are informed of him. Show him to me, I beg of you."

The Lord of the Age is the promised Twelfth Imám. The Hájí was wrathful. "The Fourth Pillar is no figment. He is a being plainly visible to all. Like me, he has a turban on his head, he wears an 'abá, and carries a cane in his hand."

Pahlaván Ridá smiled at him. "Meaning no discourtesy," he said, "there is, then, a contradiction in Your Honor's teaching. First you say one thing, then you say another."

Furious, the Hájí replied: "I am busy now. Let us discuss this matter some other time. Today I must ask to be excused."

'Abdu'l-Bahá comments:

The point is that Ridá, a man considered to be unlettered, was able, in an argument, to best such an erudite "Fourth Pillar." In the phrase of Allámíy-i-Hillí, he downed him with the Fourth Support.

Allámíy-i-Hillí, "the Very Erudite Doctor," was the title of a famous Shí'ih theologian who died in 1325.

Bahá'u'lláh, too, read Irshadu'l-'Avám. In the Kitáb-i-Íqán, revealed in Baghdád in 1862, He writes that some had questioned Him about its author, so He felt it necessary to refer to his books, and one day a man told Him that this one could be found in the city. Of its title He writes: "From this title We perceived the odour of conceit and vainglory, inasmuch as he hath imagined himself a learned man and regarded the rest of the people ignorant." He kept the book a few days. In it He found that the author had listed "some twenty or more sciences" that he held to be essential for understanding the Mi'ráj, the Ascent of Muhammad, "whilst the Lord of the 'Mi'ráj' Himself was never burdened with a single letter of these limited and obscure learnings."

A few lines earlier in the same book, Bahá'u'lláh cites the tradition: "Knowledge is a light which God sheddeth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth."

Of Pahlaván Ridá's later life 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes that whenever "that lionhearted champion of knowledge" began to speak, his listeners marvelled, and that he remained, till his last breath, "the protector and helper of all seekers after truth." In the end he became known far and wide as a Bahá'í, was turned into a vagrant, and ascended to the Abhá Kingdom.

His two brothers left Persia for Adrianople and came under Bahá'u'lláh's protection to 'Akká. In the early days in the barracks both fell violently ill, with neither doctor nor medicine to be had, and they died on the same night, 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes, "wrapped in each other's arms."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Memorials of the Faithful by 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Bahá'u'lláh's Kitáb-i-Íqán.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1915). *Memorials of the Faithful*.