Letters from the Mountain

*A retelling based on **Selections from the Writings of the Báb**, with details from **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi. Words in quotation marks are quoted from those texts.*

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The Báb had written to Muhammad Sháh asking for an audience, in which He might set forth the truths of His Revelation and dispel the King's doubts. In 1847 an escort was bringing Him toward the capital. At the fortress of Kinár-Gird, less than thirty miles from Ṭihrán, a messenger handed the leader of the escort a written order from the Grand Vizir, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, to turn aside to Kulayn and wait there.

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A letter from the Sháh to the Báb followed, couched in courteous terms. The place of imprisonment chosen for Him, on the advice of the Grand Vizir, was the fortress of Máh-Kú, in the remotest north-western corner of Ádhirbayján. The people of that district, the Grand Vizir's birthplace, had long enjoyed his patronage.

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The Báb called Máh-Kú Jabál-i-Basít, the Open Mountain. In the Persian Bayán He wrote that at night He did not even have a lighted lamp, and that His chamber, built of sun-baked bricks, had no door. In a Tablet to Muhammad Sháh He complained that the inmates of the fortress were confined to two guards and four dogs.

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Shoghi Effendi writes that Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí imagined that, by keeping the Báb from meeting the Sháh face to face and sending Him to the farthest corner of the realm, he had "stifled the Movement at its birth."

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From His imprisonment in the mountains of Ádhirbayján, where He remained for the rest of that King's reign, the Báb wrote to Muhammad Sháh. One of these epistles, as it is given in the Selections, begins with God: "Glory be unto Him Who knoweth all that is in the heavens and in the earth." Before a word is addressed to the King, the Báb writes: "Praise be unto Him Who at this very moment perceiveth in this remote prison the goal of My desire."

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Then He turns to the throne. "Thou pridest thyself in the things thou dost possess," He tells the King, "yet no believer in God and in His signs, nor any righteous man would ever deign to regard them." He reminds him that four years have passed since He first cautioned him not to wax proud before God, and that in all that time He has seen nothing from the King or his soldiers but oppression.

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He answers a suspicion: "Methinks thou dost imagine that I wish to gain some paltry substance from this earthly life. Nay, by the righteousness of My Lord!"

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He offers the King a test: summon the divines of the land, then summon the Báb, and see whether they can utter words like His.

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"If thou hast decided to shed My blood, wherefore dost thou delay? Thou art now endowed with power and authority." For Himself, He writes, it would be an infinite bounty conferred by God.

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"Art thou not ashamed in the presence of God," He asks, "for consenting to the consignment to a fortress of Him Who is the Testimony of God?" And He writes: "Were the veil to be removed from thine eye thou wouldst crawl unto Me on thy breast, even through the snow."

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A further epistle begins: "This is an Epistle from Him Who is the true, the undoubted Leader." In it He addresses the King by name, "O Muhammad!", and recounts what became of His earlier messages. He had sent a messenger with a Tablet, but others turned the man away, came between him and the King, and expelled him from the land. On His return from pilgrimage He had sent another messenger with Epistles, and the oppressor, He writes, committed a thing the like of which not even the wicked would commit.

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He warns the King about his Chancellor. "Dost thou imagine him whom thou hast appointed Chancellor in thy kingdom to be the best leader and the best supporter? Nay, I swear by thy Lord." The day will come, He writes, when the King will wish he had never taken such a counsellor.

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"I have no desire to seize thy property, even to the extent of a grain of mustard, nor do I wish to occupy thy position. If thou followest Me not, then unto thee be the things thou dost possess, and unto Me the land of unfailing security."

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He asks the King to look at where He lives, "a lofty mountain wherein no one dwelleth", and in the same passage calls Himself "the rightful Sovereign of all men", Who would never take from the people so much as a grain of mustard, but would live among them "even as one of themselves".

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He tells the King and his minister that this is His last reminder to them, and commits His affair and theirs to God. Near its close He prays: "I am well pleased to lay down My life in Thy path."

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At Máh-Kú, Shoghi Effendi records, the Grand Vizir's plan had already begun to fail. The people of the district, unruly and proud, and long favoured by him, came to love the Prisoner so much that their first act each morning was to find a place where they could catch a glimpse of His face, and ask from afar His blessing on their day's work.

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Meanwhile controversy over the Báb spread through the bazaars, mosques and schools of the country, while Muhammad Sháh sank under the weight of his illness. When he died, his minister fell with him. Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí was soon stripped of the treasures he had amassed, fell into disgrace, was expelled from the capital and took refuge in Karbilá. The seventeen-year-old Náṣiri'd-Dín Mírzá ascended the throne.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **Selections from the Writings of the Báb** and **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi.*

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