The Man Who Judged Fairly

*A retelling for children, based on **Bahá'í Chronicles** ("Mirza Qurban-‘Ali"), which quotes Nabíl's account in **The Dawn-Breakers**.*

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Mírzá Qurbán-‘Alí came from the town of Bárfurúsh, in the province of Mázindarán in Persia. He was a man of sincere piety, and people everywhere admired him. When he went on pilgrimage to Karbala, crowds gathered along his way to honor him. He did not like this at all. He avoided the crowds and wanted nothing to do with the show and ceremony of being a leader.

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On his way home from that pilgrimage he met Mullá Husayn, the first follower of the Báb, and through him he accepted the Báb's message. Later, when the believers gathered at the fort of Shaykh Tabarsí, he was too ill to join them, and he grieved about this for a long time.

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He dressed simply and kept every law of his Faith with great care. "The Báb Himself conforms to the observances of His Faith in their minutest details," he often said. "Am I to neglect on my part the things which are observed by my Leader?"

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In 1850, as he was getting ready to leave Tihrán, he was arrested and brought before the Amír-Nizám, the Shah's chief minister. Large crowds gathered outside to learn what would happen to him. The Amír told him that officials of every rank had been pleading for him since the night before. He said that Qurbán-‘Alí was so respected that he was not much below the Báb Himself, and that it would have been better for him to claim to be a leader himself.

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Mírzá Qurbán-‘Alí answered boldly. "Ever since I attained the age of manhood, I have regarded justice and fairness as the ruling motives of my life," he said. He went on to say that he had judged the Báb fairly and was sure of Him. "I am assured of the unquestioning devotion of over a thousand admirers, and yet I am powerless to change the heart of the least among them." Yet the Báb had so changed the hearts of a thousand people like him that, without ever meeting Him, they had given up their own wishes for His.

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The Amír said he did not want to sentence such a man to death. But in the end he grew angry. He ordered that any of the Báb's followers held in prison who could be persuaded to give up their faith should be set free, and that the rest should be put to death.

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Mírzá Qurbán-‘Alí went to his death full of joy. To the watching crowd he said that the same Light that had once shone in Muhammad had risen again in the Báb. "A rose is a rose in whichever garden, and at whatever time, it may bloom," he told them. He was one of the believers who gave their lives that day, remembered as the Seven Martyrs of Tihrán.

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*This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see ["Mirza Qurban-‘Ali"](/stories/bc-mirza-qurban-8216-ali).*

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