A Merchant of Shíráz: The Birth of the Báb

Each year on the First Day of the Twin Birthdays, Bahá’ís remember the birth of Siyyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad — the One whom history would come to know as the Báb — in Shíráz, in southern Persia, on October 20, 1819. Esslemont’s short account of His early life, in Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, sketches the years before the Declaration:

Mírzá ‘Alí-Muḥammad, Who afterwards assumed the title of Báb (i.e. Gate), was born at Shíráz, in the south of Persia, on the 20th of October 1819 A.D.

He was a Siyyid — a descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad through the line of His daughter Fáṭimih. His father, a well-known merchant, died soon after His birth, Esslemont writes, and He was raised by a maternal uncle.

The young Siyyid stood out from the other children of His city.

He was noted for great personal beauty and charm of manner, and also for exceptional piety, and nobility of character.

Esslemont notes how His religious observance went well beyond what was required of Him:

He was unfailing in His observance of the prayers, fasts and other ordinances of the Muḥammadan religion, and not only obeyed the letter, but lived in the spirit of the Prophet’s teachings.

When He was about fifteen He entered the family business — first with His guardian uncle, and afterward with another uncle who lived at Búshihr, the trading port on the Persian Gulf. He spent His youth, then, as a merchant of cloth and silks, weighing His goods honestly, paying His debts promptly, and earning a reputation in the bazaar for fairness so striking that it was remembered long after the Declaration.

He married when about twenty-two years of age. Of this marriage one son was born, who died while still an infant, in the first year of the Báb’s public ministry.

The biography is, on its surface, an ordinary merchant’s biography. But beneath the surface — in the long prayers, the unbroken honesty of His dealings, the gentleness Esslemont describes — there was a preparation already underway. On the eve of His twenty-fifth year, the merchant of Shíráz would step out of His shop and into history.

For Bahá’ís the Birth of the Báb is paired, in the lunar calendar that governs the Twin Birthdays, with the Birth of Bahá’u’lláh — the two days observed on consecutive evenings every year, often together, as a single luminous celebration.

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