Siyyid Yaḥyá's Secret Test

A retelling for children, based on The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam (Chapter IX), the story of how a famous scholar came to believe in the Báb.

Siyyid Yaḥyá was one of the most learned men in all of Persia. Whenever he was at a gathering of scholars, the others kept quiet and let him speak. The king, Muḥammad Sháh, trusted him completely.

News had reached the king about the Báb, in the city of Shíráz, and His claim to bring a new message from God. The king wanted to know the truth, so he sent Siyyid Yaḥyá to Shíráz to meet the Báb and report back. On the way, Siyyid Yaḥyá thought up the questions he would ask.

At their first meeting, Siyyid Yaḥyá spent about two hours asking the Báb the hardest questions he knew, about the Qur'án and the old prophecies. The Báb gave a short, clear answer to every one. Siyyid Yaḥyá felt ashamed of his own pride, and he quickly asked leave to go.

At the second meeting, he found that all the questions he had meant to ask had gone out of his head. Yet the Báb answered them anyway, one by one, the very questions he had forgotten. Even so, a voice inside him kept whispering: Might not this, after all, have been an accidental coincidence?

So he decided on one last test. At the third meeting he would ask the Báb, only in his heart and never out loud, to write for him a commentary on a short chapter of the Qur'án called the Súrih of Kawthar. If the Báb wrote it without being asked, and it was unlike what the usual scholars wrote, he would believe.

When he came into the Báb's presence the third time, he began to tremble so much that he could not stay on his feet. He had met the king many times without the slightest fear. The Báb rose, took him by the hand, and seated him beside Him. "Seek from Me," He said, "whatever is your heart's desire. I will readily reveal it to you." Siyyid Yaḥyá could not say a word. Then the Báb smiled and asked him: if He were to reveal a commentary on the Súrih of Kawthar, would he accept that His words came from the Spirit of God? Tears ran down Siyyid Yaḥyá's face.

That afternoon the Báb asked for His pen-case and some paper and began to write. Siyyid Yaḥyá later said that the verses streamed from His pen with a rapidity that was truly astounding. The Báb did not stop until the whole commentary was finished, near sunset. Then He read it aloud.

Siyyid Yaḥyá spent the next three days and nights copying it out with another believer. By then he was so sure, he said, that

if all the powers of the earth were to be leagued against me they would be powerless to shake my confidence in the greatness of His Cause.

He is remembered today by the name Vaḥíd.

Another learned man of those days, Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí of Zanján, sent one of his own students to Shíráz to look into the Báb's claim. When the student came back, Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí read one page of the Báb's writings, fell to the ground, and declared: I bear witness that these words which I have read proceed from the same Source as that of the Qur'án. The Báb gave him the name Ḥujjat.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see the story of Siyyid Yaḥyá's three interviews with the Báb.

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/