The Answer Was a Poem

A retelling based on The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, with the account in The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam and a detail from The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh by Adib Taherzadeh. Words in quotation marks are as preserved in those accounts.

For two years Bahá'u'lláh was absent from His family in Baghdad, living in the mountains of Kurdistan. His daughter, Bahíyyih Khánum, recalled how the first clue to His whereabouts came: her brother and their uncle, Mírzá Músá, overheard two people speaking of a marvellous one living as a dervish in the mountain district of Sulaymáníyyih, whom they called "The Nameless One." When He came home, still in the dervish's garment, the family never tired of hearing about that time. The food was easy to describe: coarse bread and a little cheese, and very rarely a cup of milk, with some rice and a tiny bit of sugar boiled into it as a treat.

She also recorded this. One evening the Sufis of that countryside were gathered to discuss a mystical poem when a dervish arose among them and gave so wonderful an interpretation of its meaning that "awe fell upon the gathering." His hearers were silent for a while, then came close round Him and begged Him to come again to teach them. One asked, "Oh Master! Shall we then see thee no more?" He answered: "In a time to come, but not yet, go to the city of Baghdad, ask for the house of Mirza Musa Irani. There shalt thou hear tidings of me." Then He left them and went back into the desolate places.

The Chosen Highway follows this with an account that 'Abdu'l-Bahá gave to the friends at Abu-Sinan in 1915. In Baghdad, He said, "many learned mullas and others came into the Holy Presence, several of whom became His devoted friends." One of these was Kayván Mírzá, a grandson of Fath-'Alí Sháh. He asked Mírzá Muḥít to obtain permission for an audience "at some midnight in secret."

The reply was: "When I was in the wilderness of Kurdistan I composed this poem."

If thou hast in thine heart one desire for thy life, then come not hither!

But shouldst thou be prepared to sacrifice soul, and heart and life, come and bring others!

Such is the path if thou desire to enter the Kingdom of Light,

If thou art not of those able to walk this path—

Begone, and trouble us not!

Mírzá Muḥít conveyed this reply to Kayván Mírzá. In 'Abdu'l-Bahá's account: "He chose to 'Begone,' his heart failed him!"

In the same account 'Abdu'l-Bahá spoke of a man "of another kind," Áqá Siyyid Mujtahid, who said:

"I had been told that these the Babis were wine-bibbers, that there was much wine in the room of the Bab, that, moreover, they had no moral principles whatsoever! I went to investigate for myself and found Purity within Purity. I was filled with amazement at the sanctity of that place, and bewildered to find the exact opposite of that which I had heard. I am firmly convinced that 'This is the Truth.'"

The Dawn-Breakers, Nabíl's history, tells the story of the request differently. In Nabíl's account it was Mírzá Muḥít-i-Kirmání himself who asked, "through one of the Persian princes who dwelt in Baghdad," to meet Bahá'u'lláh, and who "requested that his proposed interview be regarded as strictly confidential." Taherzadeh names the prince as Kayván Mírzá.

Mírzá Muḥít regarded himself as one of the foremost figures of the Shaykhí school. Years before, on the last day of the Báb's pilgrimage to Mecca, the Báb had found him standing facing the Black Stone, taken his hand and declared His mission to him. Later in that meeting He said: "O Muhit! Set forth whatsoever perplexes your mind, and I will, by the aid of God, unloose My tongue and undertake to resolve your problems, so that you may testify to the excellence of My utterance and realise that no one besides Me is able to manifest My wisdom." Mírzá Muḥít gave Him his questions. "I shall never depart from Medina," he assured the Báb, "whatever may betide, until I have fulfilled my covenant with You." He stayed only a while in Medina before leaving for Karbilá. The Báb wrote His answer on the road from Mecca to Medina, and Mírzá Muḥít received it in Karbilá and remained unmoved. From then on, Nabíl writes, his attitude towards the Faith "was one of concealed and persistent opposition."

It was near the end of his life, while he was living in 'Iráq, that he asked to see Bahá'u'lláh. "Tell him," was Bahá'u'lláh's reply, "that in the days of My retirement in the mountains of Sulaymaniyyih, I, in a certain ode which I composed, set forth the essential requirements from every wayfarer who treads the path of search in his quest of Truth." He asked that a verse from that ode, the same lines given above, be shared with him, and added: "If he be willing, he will openly and unreservedly hasten to meet Me; if not, I refuse to see him."

The answer disconcerted Mírzá Muḥít. Unable to resist and unwilling to comply, he left for his home in Karbilá the very day he received it. As soon as he arrived he fell ill, and three days later he died.

Bahíyyih Khánum's chronicle records that in those Baghdad years many learned and interesting people gathered round Bahá'u'lláh, valuing His wisdom and the counsel He gave when perplexing problems were laid before Him. "Surely his knowledge must be from Heaven!" the people said.

This is a retelling. For the fuller accounts, see The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield and The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam.

Blomfield, L.. (1940). *The Chosen Highway*.