A Blazing Light at the Gate: The Servant of the Pilgrims to Bahjí

A retelling based on Memorials of the Faithful by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, which preserves the life of Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá Baghdádí. Short phrases in quotation marks are 'Abdu'l-Bahá's own words as rendered in that book.

When the Bahá'ís gather in the dark before dawn each year to commemorate the Ascension of Bahá'u'lláh, they remember not only the One who passed, but the company of souls who had spent their lives drawing near to Him. In Memorials of the Faithful, 'Abdu'l-Bahá sets down, one by one, the lives of those who had loved Bahá'u'lláh and served His Cause — and among them is a man whose entire work was to help others reach the presence the community now mourned: Muḥammad- Muṣṭafá Baghdádí.

He was, 'Abdu'l-Bahá tells us, a believer of Iraq, and his love for Bahá'u'lláh made him known far beyond his own city. "The one individual who, in the year seventy, was famed in Iraq for his love of Bahá'u'lláh, was this honored person," the Master writes. To be famed for one's love of Bahá'u'lláh in those years was no small or safe thing. The Faith was hunted; to be openly identified with it was to invite suspicion, loss, and danger. Yet Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá did not hide. His devotion was a thing people spoke of. 'Abdu'l-Bahá calls him "wise, brave, deserving in every way" — a soul in whom courage and discernment were joined.

In time he made his home near the coast, in the region through which travellers passed on their way to the prison-city of 'Akká, where Bahá'u'lláh was held. This placed him at a crossroads of the most precious traffic in the world: the quiet, footsore stream of pilgrims who had set out from Persia and beyond, crossing mountains and deserts and seas, for the single hope of attaining the presence of the Blessed Beauty. Many of them arrived exhausted, friendless, and uncertain — strangers in a strange land, with the most sacred goal of their lives still ahead of them and the dangers of the prison-city still to be reckoned with.

To these pilgrims Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá became host, helper, and guide. 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembers that he "faithfully served the Cause, assisting all the pilgrims as they arrived and departed," and describes him as "an excellent servitor, a generous and kindly host." Picture what that service meant in the living of it: the door always open, the table always set, the traveller welcomed and rested and fed; the practical help of arranging the next stage of a perilous journey; the reassurance offered to a frightened heart that had come so far and dreaded falling at the last. Every pilgrim who reached Bahá'u'lláh's threshold in those years and passed through Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá's care carried, into that holiest of audiences, something of his kindness. His was a hidden ministry — not the glory of the audience itself, but the smoothing of the road that led to it.

There is a particular beauty in a life given to helping others draw near. The pilgrims came for Bahá'u'lláh; Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá asked nothing for himself but the joy of bringing them closer. He stood, as it were, at the gate, and his whole happiness was in the arrivals and departures of those whose hearts were set on the One he too adored.

Then came the year 1892, and the setting of the Sun of Bahá. When Bahá'u'lláh ascended, a fierce testing fell upon the community. Bahá'u'lláh had, in His Covenant, appointed 'Abdu'l-Bahá as the Centre to whom all must turn; but there were those who rose against that Covenant, who wavered and schemed and sought to draw the believers after themselves. In such hours the faith of every soul is weighed, and many who had seemed firm were shaken.

Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá was not among them. 'Abdu'l-Bahá testifies that after Bahá'u'lláh's passing "Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá remained loyal to the Covenant." And the Master adds a phrase that captures the sheer solidity of the man: "He stood so firm against the waverers that they dared not draw a breath." Here was no quiet or hesitant loyalty. The same courage that had made him famed for his love of Bahá'u'lláh in the dangerous years now made him a bulwark in the dangerous days after. Those who would have unsettled the friends found, in him, an immovable wall. His steadfastness was itself a service to the bereaved community — a fixed point by which others could steady themselves.

And so he lived out his days as he had lived them all: holding fast. When at last his own hour came, 'Abdu'l-Bahá portrays his departure as the passing of one who went "detached from all save Him, rejoicing in His glad tidings, holding fast to the cord that none can sever." The cord that none can sever is the Covenant itself — the unbreakable bond that runs from Bahá'u'lláh through 'Abdu'l-Bahá and on through the ages. Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá had clung to it in life and did not let go in death.

'Abdu'l-Bahá's verdict on him is a single, shining phrase: he was "a blazing light." It is the right image for such a soul. A blazing light is what a pilgrim sees from far off across a dark country — a sign that there is warmth ahead, and welcome, and the way home. For all the travellers who reached Bahá'u'lláh's threshold in the years of His confinement, Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá had been exactly that: a light at the gate, drawing the weary in.

On the Day of the Ascension, when the community remembers the One whose presence those pilgrims sought, it is fitting also to remember the servant who helped them find Him — and who, when that presence was withdrawn from the world, stood firm as a flame and would not be moved.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Memorials of the Faithful by 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1915). *Memorials of the Faithful*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/memorials-faithful/