Forty Days and a Compass of the Heart: The Quest of Mullá Ḥusayn

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; short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.

We remember the night the Báb declared His mission to Mullá Ḥusayn at the gate of Shíráz in May of 1844. But that meeting did not fall by chance upon an idle traveller. It came at the end of a long obedience and a long preparation — and the story of how Mullá Ḥusayn made himself ready is itself a parable of how a soul comes to recognise the Day of God.

It began with a death and a charge. Siyyid Káẓim, the second of the two great heralds, died in Karbilá at the close of 1843, and his faithful disciples, fear in their hearts, found themselves leaderless. Mullá Ḥusayn returned from a mission in Persia to steady them. He reminded them of their teacher's unfailing promise and pleaded with them to keep vigilant and to press on with the search for the concealed Beloved. Then he asked them what last instruction their departed chief had left. They told him that Siyyid Káẓim had charged them, again and again, to leave their homes, to scatter far and wide, to purge their hearts of every idle desire, and to dedicate themselves to the quest of the One whose advent he had so often foretold. The Object of their quest, the Siyyid had said, was now revealed; the veils between them and Him were such as only they could remove by their own devoted search. He had put it plainly, in words The Dawn-Breakers preserves:

Nothing short of prayerful endeavour, of purity of motive, of singleness of mind, will enable you to tear them asunder.

Mullá Ḥusayn pressed his fellow-disciples: why, then, did they linger in Karbilá instead of arising to obey? Some, abashed, even offered to submit to him if he claimed to be the Promised One. He rebuked the thought at once — far be it from God's glory, he said, that he, who was but dust, should be likened to the Lord of Lords. Their duty, and his own, was simply to arise and carry out the dying message of their chief. He went from one disciple to another, fearlessly delivering the charge; most returned evasive answers. Seeing the futility of his efforts, he spoke to them no more.

He did not wait for company. With his brother and his nephew, who had travelled with him before, he set out southward toward Najaf. On the way they came to a mosque, and there Mullá Ḥusayn resolved to halt for forty days, giving himself to retirement, fasting, and prayer. By these vigils he prepared his soul for the holy adventure on which he was about to embark. His brother shared the fasts and the devotions; his nephew attended to their needs and joined them in worship in his hours of leisure. It was during these days of withdrawal that other seekers, among them the learned Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Bastámí, came upon them and were drawn into the same retreat — but Mullá Ḥusayn's own forty days were the heart of it: a deliberate emptying of self, so that nothing of his own desire should stand between him and the One he sought.

When the forty days were complete, Mullá Ḥusayn rose and turned toward Persia, where he felt his search must truly begin. He did not yet know his destination. An inner prompting led him first to Búshihr, the port on the Persian Gulf, and there — though he could sense, he later said, the nearness of his Beloved — a sudden impulse turned him, like a compass needle swinging to the north, away from the sea and toward the city of Shíráz. He travelled on foot. And when at last he reached the gate of Shíráz, a few hours before sunset, he directed his brother and his nephew to go ahead to the prayer-house and await him there, saying that he would join them for evening prayers — but that something, he could not say what, was drawing his heart into the city.

What drew him, he was about to discover, was a young Merchant of radiant countenance who came forward to meet him on the road. But the meeting that transformed the world was prepared long before the two of them spoke. It was prepared in the obedience that made Mullá Ḥusayn arise when others made excuses; in the humility that refused every honour not his due; in the forty days of fasting that hollowed out his heart for what was to fill it; and in the quiet, trusting attention to an inner prompting he could not explain. By the time the Báb stood before him, Mullá Ḥusayn was a soul made ready.

This is why his quest belongs to the Day of the Declaration as truly as the Declaration itself. Recognition, his story teaches, is not only a gift bestowed in a single luminous hour; it is also the fruit of a long turning of the whole self toward God. The Báb came to meet a man who had spent forty days learning to want nothing but Him — and so, when the hour struck, there was nothing left in Mullá Ḥusayn to keep him from believing.

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/