The Scholar of Gulpáygán

A retelling based on Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, vol. 3 (chapter 5 and Appendix II), with dates from H. M. Balyuzi, Eminent Bahá'ís in the Time of Bahá'u'lláh. Words in quotation marks are quoted from those books.

Mírzá Muḥammad, known to Bahá'ís as Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl, was born in 1844 into a family of religious scholars in Gulpáygán, in Persia. He studied at Karbilá, Najaf and Iṣfahán, mastered both the traditional and the philosophical branches of Islamic learning, and became head of a theological college in Ṭihrán. He had taken the name Abu'l-Faḍl, which Taherzadeh renders "the father of knowledge," while he was still a Muslim.

In 1876, at the height of his career, one of his students began bringing him arguments put forward by some Bahá'ís and asking for help in answering them. About the same time a blacksmith, Ustád Ḥusayn, who could not read, asked him two questions about Islamic traditions that left the learned man confounded in front of his companions. Stung, he agreed to meet a Bahá'í teacher at the house of ʻAbdu'l-Karím, a draper in the bázár. The teacher had no learning, yet Abu'l-Faḍl could not refute him, nor the other unschooled believers he met over several meetings.

He read most of the Writings of the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh that he could find. His mind could not reject them, but his heart was not yet convinced, and he asked for a miracle. One day, at the house of a believer, he read Tablets addressed to the Ottoman ministers. In the Lawḥ-i-Fu'ád he came upon these words of Bahá'u'lláh: "Soon will We dismiss the one who was like unto him, and will lay hold on their Chief who ruleth the land, and I, verily, am the Almighty, the All-Compelling." The first was the Grand Vizier, ʻÁlí Páshá, who had already been dismissed and had died in 1871. The "Chief" was Sulṭán ʻAbdu'l-ʻAzíz. Abu'l-Faḍl told the believers that the fulfilment of this prophecy would be his proof, and asked them not to speak to him of the Faith until then.

Some months later, in the street near the Sháh's Mosque, two Bahá'ís told him that the news of the Sulṭán's dethronement had reached Ṭihrán by telegram. He answered them angrily and went home. A few days later came the news that the Sulṭán had been killed. By his own account he went through a hard struggle, but he could not deny what he had asked for. In 1876, Balyuzi records, the confirmation of his belief came "after a period of studying the Writings of the Faith and seeing the prophecies of Bahá'u'lláh come true."

It cost him a great deal. He was forced to leave his college, and the honour in which he had been held turned to persecution. He was imprisoned for five months; in December 1882 he was arrested again with many of the Bahá'ís of Ṭihrán and held for twenty-two months. He lived modestly, often earning a little as a scribe.

About five years after he became a Bahá'í, Bahá'u'lláh in a Tablet commanded him to arise and tell the peoples of the world of the Faith. He spent almost forty years doing so. He travelled throughout Persia, and to ʻIshqábád, Samarqand and Bukhárá. He never met Bahá'u'lláh, feeling himself too unworthy to ask for permission. In 1894 he spent ten months with 'Abdu'l-Bahá in 'Akká, then at His direction settled in Cairo, where scholars of al-Azhar gathered to hear him. Between 1900 and 1904 he taught in Paris and the United States. He died in Cairo on 21 January 1914. In his books, Taherzadeh writes, he left for posterity "the fundamentals of Bahá'í proofs from every point of view."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, vol. 3, by Adib Taherzadeh.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1983). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, vol. 3 (ch. 5 and Appendix II)*. George Ronald.