Born in the Vazír's House: The Birth of Bahá'u'lláh

Two years before the Báb was born in Shíráz, a child of the Núrí nobility was born in the capital of Persia. Esslemont opens his chapter on Bahá’u’lláh with the bare biographical facts:

Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alí, Who afterwards assumed the title of Bahá’u’lláh (i.e. Glory of God), was the eldest son of Mírzá ‘Abbás of Núr, a Vazír or Minister of State.... He was born in Tihrán (Teheran), the capital city of Persia, between dawn and sunrise on the 12th of November, 1817.

The household was a famous one. His family was wealthy and distinguished, Esslemont writes, many of its members having occupied important positions in the Government and in the Civil and Military Services of Persia.

Despite never attending school, the boy showed an unmistakable mark of inner gift:

He showed wonderful wisdom and knowledge.

When his father died, the responsibility for his younger siblings and for the family estates fell on his shoulders. He took up that work without complaint. The Persian government, hoping to keep so promising a young man within the orbit of the court, offered him his father’s ministerial post.

He declined.

The Prime Minister, surprised but not displeased, is reported to have said:

Leave him to himself. Such a position is unworthy of him. He has some higher aim in view.

In the years that followed, the young Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alí became known in his region not as an aspirant to office but as a guardian of the oppressed. He spent his inheritance freely upon the poor; he opened his home to the friendless; he was so widely loved that the country people of Núr called him Father of the Poor.

Then, in 1844, when the Báb declared His mission, the twenty-seven year old nobleman embraced the new Cause with a fervor that astonished even those who knew him best. Esslemont notes that he became one of the most powerful and fearless exponents of the new movement — and the long road of exile, prison, and Revelation began.

Bahá’ís remember the day of His birth on the second of the Twin Birthdays — the Holy Day paired, in the same evenings each year, with the Birth of the Báb. Two cities, two cradles, one Cause already gathering itself in silence.

Source: J. E. Esslemont, Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era (1923). Public domain text from Project Gutenberg eBook #19241.

Esslemont, J. E.. (1923). *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*. George Allen & Unwin. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19241/pg19241-images.html