Quddús: The Most Holy

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers, Nabíl's narrative of the early days of the Faith, translated by Shoghi Effendi. The narrative is retold in our own words; short phrases in quotation marks are titles or words preserved in that history.

In the spring and summer of 1844, in the city of Shíráz, something quiet and world-changing was taking place. One by one, eighteen seekers found their way to the door of a young Merchant who had declared Himself to be the Báb — the Gate — the Promised One for whom they had been waiting. Each came expecting to test Him. Each was, instead, recognised by Him before a word of examination could be spoken. These eighteen He named the Letters of the Living, the first believers of a new Day.

The last of them to arrive was also the youngest. His name was Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí, and he came from the town of Bárfurúsh in the northern province of Mázindarán. He was barely twenty-two years old, of a gentle and refined nature, without the great learning or wide fame that marked some of the others. By every outward measure he was the least of that company. Yet the Báb, who saw not as men see, reserved for him the very highest of the names He would bestow.

The Dawn-Breakers preserves the account. When the count of the Letters had reached seventeen, the Báb told Mullá Ḥusayn — the first to believe — that one place yet remained to complete the number, and that the one who would fill it had already been chosen by God, though they had not yet met. Soon afterward Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí arrived, and the circle was complete. To this youth the Báb gave the name Quddús — "the Most Holy." It was a name of extraordinary weight, and He conferred it on the one who, to the eyes of the world, had the least claim to it.

The honour did not stop at a name. When the Báb prepared to set out on the long and arduous pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina — the journey every Muslim longs to make, and the place where He intended to proclaim His mission at the very heart of Islám — He chose Quddús, alone among all the Letters of the Living, to accompany Him. The others were sent out across Persia to teach; this one young man was kept at the Báb's side. Together they journeyed south to the port of Búshihr, took ship across the gulf, and made the difficult passage to the holy cities of Arabia. Throughout that pilgrimage Quddús served as the Báb's companion and amanuensis, writing down His words, walking in His shadow, sharing the hardships of the road and the sea.

To grasp what this meant, one has only to remember who Quddús was when the journey began: a young man from a provincial town, with no rank that the great ones of his day would have noticed. And one has only to remember who he became. In the years that followed, Quddús would stand at the centre of the heroic and tragic events of the new Faith. He would be present at the gathering of Badasht; he would be imprisoned; and at last, at the fortress of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, he would take a leading part in the defence of that small band of believers against overwhelming force, and would give his life for the Cause in his own native Bárfurúsh, where his earthly life had begun. The Báb would extol him as "Ismu'lláhi'l-Ákhir" — the Last Name of God — and the highest of titles would continue to gather around the youth who had once seemed the least.

This is the wonder the Feast of Asmá' — the Feast of Names — sets before us. The names and titles of God are not prizes handed to the strong, the famous, or the learned. They are bestowed by a wisdom that reads the heart. The Báb looked at a quiet young man whom the world had overlooked and saw in him a holiness so complete that no lesser name would do. The name came first; the life grew up to fill it. Quddús did not earn "the Most Holy" by a record of achievement already behind him — he received it as a destiny held out before him, and then spent every remaining year, down to the last hour of his martyrdom, making the name true.

We are taught that every name of God is a quality we are each meant to reflect, however dimly. The story of Quddús puts the matter plainly: the One who confers the names sees in the humblest soul a capacity for holiness that soul may not yet see in itself. The task of a lifetime is simply to grow toward the name we have been given.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Dawn-Breakers, Nabíl's narrative, translated by Shoghi Effendi.

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/