Quddús, the Last Letter of the Living

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam, translated and edited by Shoghi Effendi, with details from Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By. The words in quotation marks are from those books.

The Báb declared His mission to Mullá Ḥusayn in Shíráz in May 1844. Shoghi Effendi writes that forty days passed before the others began to come. One by one they found Him, some, Nabíl writes, in sleep, some while awake, some in prayer. The Báb called them the Letters of the Living.

One night the Báb said to Mullá Ḥusayn: "Seventeen Letters have thus far enlisted under the standard of the Faith of God. There remains one more to complete the number." He added that the last of them would arrive the next night.

The next evening, as the Báb was returning home with Mullá Ḥusayn walking behind Him, a young man, dishevelled and travel-stained, came up to Mullá Ḥusayn, embraced him, and asked whether he had found what he was seeking. Mullá Ḥusayn tried to calm him and told him to rest first. The young man would not wait. He fixed his gaze on the Báb and said: "Why seek you to hide Him from me? I can recognise Him by His gait. I confidently testify that none besides Him, whether in the East or in the West, can claim to be the Truth."

Mullá Ḥusayn went to the Báb and told Him what had happened. "Marvel not," the Báb said, "at his strange behaviour. We have in the world of the spirit been communing with that youth. We know him already. We indeed awaited his coming. Go to him and summon him forthwith to Our presence."

The young man was Muḥammad-'Alí of Bárfurúsh, in the province of Mázindarán. In the classes of Siyyid Káẓim, Nabíl records, he was the last to arrive, sat in the lowliest seat, and was the first to leave; his companions noticed his silence and modesty. He was twenty-two years old when he accepted the Báb in Shíráz. Shoghi Effendi calls him "the last, but in rank the first" of the Letters of the Living.

A few months later, in October 1844, the Báb sailed from Búshihr on pilgrimage to Mecca, and He took this disciple with Him. Shoghi Effendi writes that he held the bridle of the Báb's camel and walked beside Him on foot to the holy Shrine.

The name by which he is remembered came later. At the gathering of Badasht in 1848 Bahá'u'lláh gave a new name to each of those present, and upon the last Letter of the Living He conferred the title of Quddús. Later that year Quddús, with Mullá Ḥusayn, the first of the Letters, was among the defenders of the fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, and in 1849 both gave their lives for the Faith.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam, chapters III, VII, XVI and XIX–XX, and God Passes By, chapters I–III.

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/