The Friend Who Walked Beside the King

*A retelling for children, based on the account of Jináb-i-Muníb in **Bahá'í Chronicles**, drawn from 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Memorials of the Faithful.*

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In the dark, a young man walked through the desert beside a great traveling party, and as he walked, he sang.

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His name was Mírzá Áqá, though the friends knew him as Jináb-i-Muníb. He had grown up in the city of Káshán, in Persia, and he was the kind of person everyone noticed. He was handsome and full of charm. He could write the most beautiful letters by hand, like an artist painting with words. He wrote poems. And he had a singing voice so lovely that people stopped to listen.

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But here is the surprising part. In his younger days, Mírzá Áqá had loved an easy life. He liked comfort and nice things and getting his own way. He was gentle and a little delicate — not at all the sort of person you would expect to find marching across a desert on foot.

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So what changed him? In the days of the Báb, Mírzá Áqá's heart had caught fire with the love of God. And once that fire was lit, nothing else mattered to him in the same way again.

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When Bahá'u'lláh was living in Iraq, Mírzá Áqá could not stay away. He left Káshán and hurried to be near Him. He moved into a small, plain little house and had barely enough to live on — and he did not mind one bit. He spent his days carefully writing down the holy words of God, copying them out in his beautiful hand so that others could keep them and read them.

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He left behind almost everything to do this. In all the world, he had only one treasure of his own — his daughter. And even she stayed behind in Persia when he rushed away to be close to Bahá'u'lláh.

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Then came a long journey. Bahá'u'lláh and those traveling with Him set out from the city of Baghdad, beginning a great trip toward Constantinople, far away. The roads were long and hard, mile after mile of empty desert. And the gentle young man who had once loved comfort? He walked the whole way on foot.

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You can imagine how difficult that was for someone like him. But Mírzá Áqá did not complain. He gladly counted out the miles, and he filled his days and nights with prayer, talking to God and singing to Him. He became a close companion of 'Abdu'l-Bahá on that journey. Some nights the two of them walked side by side, and Mírzá Áqá would sing poems into the darkness, and the joy they felt was almost too great for words.

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When the travelers reached Constantinople, Bahá'u'lláh asked Mírzá Áqá to go back to Persia and share the Faith with others. So he went, and for a long time he served wonderfully, especially in the city of Tihrán. But his heart kept pulling him back. Before long he traveled all the way to Adrianople, just to be in the presence of Bahá'u'lláh once more.

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Then the hardest time of all arrived. Bahá'u'lláh was to be sent away again, this time as a prisoner to the prison-city of 'Akká. By now Mírzá Áqá was very sick and very weak. The friends told him he could stay behind in Adrianople, where there were doctors who could care for him and help him get better.

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He said no.

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He would not stay behind, not even to save his own life. He wanted only one thing: to be near his Lord, to give everything he had for Him. So, ill as he was, he went with the prisoners.

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By the time they reached the sea, Mírzá Áqá was so weak that it took three strong men to lift him and carry him aboard the ship. Once they had set sail, he grew worse and worse. The ship's captain did not want to carry a passenger so sick, and at a city called Smyrna he said that Mírzá Áqá would have to be left behind on shore.

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And so the friends had to do the hardest thing. Mírzá Áqá was too weak even to speak — but somehow he gathered his last bit of strength and dragged himself to the feet of Bahá'u'lláh, and there he lay down and wept. And on the face of Bahá'u'lláh, too, there was a look of deep, deep pain.

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They carried Mírzá Áqá to a hospital in Smyrna, but they were given only one hour to stay with him. They laid his head gently on the pillow. They held him and kissed him many times. And then they were made to leave.

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Years later, when 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembered that moment, the tears still came. He remembered what a great soul Mírzá Áqá had been — wise and steadfast, modest and full of faith. There was no one quite like him.

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The young man who once loved comfort had given up his home, his ease, his only treasure, and at last his very life — all to stay close to the One he loved. That is what real love can do inside a person: it can turn someone soft and delicate into someone braver and stronger than anyone ever imagined.

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*This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see ["Jináb-i-Muníb"](/stories/bc-jinab-i-munib).*

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