Anís at the Side of the Báb

From Nabíl's account in The Dawn-Breakers, chapter 23, with details from God Passes By.

The Martyrdom of the Báb took place at noon on July 9, 1850, in the barrack square of Tabríz. Nabíl's narrative, The Dawn-Breakers, records it in detail. At its center, beside the Báb, is a young believer of Tabríz, Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alíy-i-Zunúzí, surnamed Anís.

The day before, as the Báb was led into the courtyard of the barracks, this youth forced his way through the crowd, barefoot, and threw himself at His feet. "Send me not from Thee, O Master," he implored. "Wherever Thou goest, suffer me to follow Thee." The Báb answered: "Muḥammad-‘Alí, arise, and rest assured that you will be with Me. To-morrow you shall witness what God has decreed." He was arrested and put in the same cell as the Báb and His amanuensis, Siyyid Ḥusayn.

The next morning Anís was brought before the mujtahids of the city and urged to recant. "Never," he said, "will I renounce my Master." When the guards tried to return him to the cell, he burst into tears and begged to stay with the Báb. He was handed over to Sám Khán, the Christian colonel of the Armenian regiment ordered to carry out the execution. Sám Khán had a nail driven into a pillar of the barracks and two ropes fastened to it.

Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí begged Sám Khán to be placed in such a manner that his own body would shield that of the Báb.

He was suspended so that his head rested on the breast of his Master. A regiment of seven hundred and fifty men, in three files, fired in turn. Nabíl writes that the smoke turned the light of the noonday sun into darkness. About ten thousand people were watching from the roof of the barracks and the tops of the houses around it. Then the smoke cleared.

There, standing before them alive and unhurt, was the companion of the Báb, whilst He Himself had vanished uninjured from their sight.

The bullets had cut the ropes and left both of them unharmed. "The Siyyid-i-Báb has gone from our sight!" the crowd cried out.

They set out in a frenzied search for Him, and found Him, eventually, seated in the same room which He had occupied the night before, engaged in completing His interrupted conversation, with Siyyid Ḥusayn.

That morning the farrásh-báshí had broken off that conversation, and the Báb had warned him: "Not until I have said to him all those things that I wish to say can any earthly power silence Me." Now He told him: "I have finished My conversation with Siyyid Ḥusayn. Now you may proceed to fulfil your intention." The farrásh-báshí, too shaken to go on, left the scene and resigned his post.

Sám Khán ordered his men out of the barracks and swore never again to take part in any act that would harm the Báb. Áqá Ján Khán-i-Khamsih, colonel of the body-guard, volunteered in his place, and the Báb and His companion were suspended again in the same way. As the regiment prepared to fire, the Báb spoke His last words to the watching crowd:

Had you believed in Me, O wayward generation, every one of you would have followed the example of this youth, who stood in rank above most of you, and willingly would have sacrificed himself in My path. The day will come when you will have recognised Me; that day I shall have ceased to be with you.

This time the volley took their lives. Shoghi Effendi records in God Passes By that their faces were but little marred. At the moment the shots were fired a violent gale arose, and from noon until night a whirlwind of dust darkened the city.

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers (Nabíl-i-A‘ẓam, translated by Shoghi Effendi), chapter 23, with details from God Passes By. For the fuller account, see the original.

Nabíl-i-A'ẓam. (1932). *The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/other-literature/historical/dawn-breakers/