The Teacher Who Pointed to Tomorrow

A retelling for children, based on Nabíl's Dawn-Breakers (Chapter II — the last days of Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí).

In a small upper room in the city of Karbilá, a circle of students leaned in close to listen. Their teacher was an old man now. His name was Siyyid Káẓim, and for many years he had been teaching them, just as his own teacher, Shaykh Aḥmad, had taught before him.

His health was failing. He was tired, and there were people in the city who did not like his teaching at all — people who watched the little school and wished it would close. But day after day, Siyyid Káẓim kept right on teaching.

Lately, though, something about his lessons had changed.

For years he had explained difficult ideas and answered hard questions. Now, when students asked about those old questions, he gently turned them aside. He did not want to talk about himself or the things he had taught. He wanted to talk about something far more important — something that was coming.

"I am, in this world," he told one student, "but a leaf which has fallen to the ground; the tree itself is yet to bloom."

A leaf that has fallen — that was how he saw his own life. But the tree, the real and glorious thing, had not yet flowered. The One they had all been waiting and praying for, the Promised One, was about to appear. And Siyyid Káẓim told them plainly: it would happen soon, in their very own lifetimes — but he himself would not live to see it.

The time for waiting was over, he said. The time for searching had begun.

His best and oldest student was a young man named Mullá Ḥusayn. In those last weeks, Siyyid Káẓim sent him away on a journey to the faraway city of Tihrán. It looked like an ordinary errand. But there was a deeper reason: his teacher wanted him to be ready, and to be far from the school when the sad day came, so that nothing would hold him back from the great search ahead.

Then, one winter day, Siyyid Káẓim passed away in his own home, with his dearest students gathered all around him.

A few days later, the students came together, sad and unsure. What were they supposed to do now? Their beloved teacher was gone. But they remembered his last counsel, and the older students repeated it to everyone:

Scatter far and wide, set out from your homes, search Him out, and rest not until you have found Him.

So that is exactly what they did. They left their homes and spread out across the land to search. Mullá Ḥusayn came back from Tihrán and set off too, traveling south toward the city of Shíráz.

And there, on a spring evening, in the streets of Shíráz, Mullá Ḥusayn met a Young Man — the very One his teacher had sent him to find.

Siyyid Káẓim never got to see that meeting with his own eyes. But it happened just as he had promised. He had spent his whole life getting his students ready for someone greater than himself, and then he pointed them toward the future and sent them on their way. That is what a wise and humble teacher does: he does not keep the spotlight, but prepares others for what is coming next.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "The Hour Is Near: Siyyid Káẓim's Last Days at Karbilá".

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/