The Face He Remembered: Mullá Ṣádiq Recognises the Báb

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers, Nabíl's narrative of the early days of the Faith, as translated by Shoghi Effendi. The narrative is retold in our own words; the longer passage in quotation marks preserves Mullá Ṣádiq's own account as recorded in that history.

After the Báb declared His mission in Shíráz in 1844 and sent out the Letters of the Living, He gave them a strict instruction: the time for open proclamation had not yet come. They were to teach with care, to point souls toward the search, but not, as yet, to publish His name abroad. One of the disciples charged with this delicate task was Mullá Ḥusayn, the first to believe, who journeyed north and came at length to the city of Iṣfahán.

There lived in Iṣfahán a man of deep piety and exacting conscience, Mullá Ṣádiq-i-Muqaddas — "the Holy," as his very name declared him. Years later Bahá'u'lláh would honour him with the title Ismu'lláhu'l-Aṣdaq, "the Name of God, the Most Truthful," and 'Abdu'l-Bahá would name him, after his death, a Hand of the Cause. But in 1844 he was simply a seeker, schooled like so many others in the teachings of Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim, waiting for the Promised One they had foretold. As soon as he heard that Mullá Ḥusayn had arrived, he hastened to meet him, and the two spoke at night in a private house.

Mullá Ṣádiq came straight to the question that consumed him. He asked Mullá Ḥusayn to divulge the name of Him who claimed to be the promised Manifestation. Mullá Ḥusayn answered that both to enquire after that name and to disclose it were alike forbidden. Then might it be possible, Mullá Ṣádiq pressed, for him — as it had been for the Letters of the Living — to seek the grace of the All-Merciful independently, and through prayer to discover His identity? To this Mullá Ḥusayn gave the same answer he gave every earnest seeker: that the door of God's grace is never closed to one who seeks to find Him.

That was all the guidance Mullá Ṣádiq needed. He did not argue further. He left Mullá Ḥusayn's presence at once and asked his host for the use of a quiet room, where, alone and undisturbed, he could turn his whole heart to God. What happened there he afterward set down himself, and Nabíl preserved it:

In the midst of my contemplation, I suddenly remembered the face of a Youth whom I had often observed while in Karbilá, standing in an attitude of prayer, with His face bathed in tears at the entrance of the shrine of the Imám Ḥusayn. That same countenance now reappeared before my eyes. In my vision I seemed to behold that same face, those same features, expressive of such joy as I could never describe. He smiled as He gazed at me. I went towards Him, ready to throw myself at His feet. I was bending towards the ground, when, lo! that radiant figure vanished from before me.

He had been given his answer in the only form that could leave no doubt. The One he had been searching for was not a stranger after all. In the years before, during his own sojourn in the shrine-city of Karbilá, Mullá Ṣádiq had more than once watched a young Pilgrim weeping in prayer at the threshold of the holy shrine — and had felt, without understanding it, the pull of that devotion. Now that very face shone before his inner eye, smiling, full of an unspeakable joy. The seeker had met the Sought long before, and only now understood whom he had seen.

Overcome with gladness, Mullá Ṣádiq ran out to find Mullá Ḥusayn, who received him with transport and assured him that he had at last attained the object of his desire. But he urged restraint. The hour for proclamation had not arrived; Mullá Ṣádiq must conceal his vision and tell no one. Instead, Mullá Ḥusayn gave him a mission. He was to travel onward — first to Kirmán, and then to Shíráz itself — to rouse the heedless and prepare hearts for the Day that had dawned, in the hope that the two of them might meet again in Shíráz and rejoice together in the presence of their Beloved.

Mullá Ṣádiq obeyed, and his recognition proved no passing rapture. He became one of the most fearless and steadfast of the Báb's followers, the first, it is said, to raise the new summons publicly in Shíráz, and a man who would endure imprisonment, the bastinado, and exile across the long decades that followed, never once flinching from the truth he had found in a borrowed room.

His story belongs to the Day of the Declaration because of the shape recognition took in him. He did not demand proofs or stand in judgment. He asked where to look, was told to pray, and prayed — and discovered that the Promised One was a face he had already loved without knowing its name. The Day of God, his story quietly says, is often recognised by a heart that has long been turning toward it in the dark.

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/