They Unclosed Their Hands in Resistance: Ḥujjat and Zanján

*A retelling based on **A Traveler's Narrative**, 'Abdu'l-Bahá's own account of the Báb and the early believers (translated by E. G. Browne). The narrative is retold in our own words; short phrases in quotation marks are preserved from that work, in Browne's translation.*

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In the brief history that 'Abdu'l-Bahá set down of the rise of the Faith and the sufferings of its first followers, there is a passage where He turns to the upheavals that broke upon the believers in two cities at once, far apart on the map of Persia but joined in the pattern of their ordeal.

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"In Zanján and Nayríz likewise," He writes, "at the decree of erudite doctors and notable lawyers a bloodthirsty military force attacked and besieged." Two communities of ordinary people, guilty of nothing but the acceptance of a new Faith, were set upon by the armed power of the state, and the warrant for the attack was issued by the learned and the pious. Of the second city, Nayríz, the leader was the great scholar Vaḥíd.

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Of the first, 'Abdu'l-Bahá records simply: "In Zanján the chief was Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí the mujtahid."

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This Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí was a man the believers and at length the Báb Himself came to honour with the title Ḥujjat — "the Proof." He was a religious scholar of unusual independence, one who had never been content to follow the well-worn paths of the divines around him, and who had paid for that independence with the hostility of his colleagues long before the new Faith ever reached him.

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When it did reach him, he embraced it, and his city followed him in great numbers. He became the centre and the strength of a whole community of the faithful in Zanján — and, by the same measure, a marked man, for nothing so alarms the guardians of an old order as a respected authority who has gone over to a new truth and carried a multitude with him.

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The crisis, when it came, was not of the believers' seeking. 'Abdu'l-Bahá is careful on this point. "At first," He writes, "they sought to bring about a reconciliation." They did not march out for conquest; they did not raise their hands to seize power or to spread their Faith by the sword. They wished to be left in peace to believe what they had come to believe. It was the other side that chose the sword.

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And the believers, meeting "cruel ferocity" where they had offered reconciliation, found themselves driven into a corner from which there was no longer any way out. "The overpowering force of the victorious troops," the account continues, "having cut off every passage of flight, they unclosed their hands in resistance."

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That phrase repays a moment's thought. Their hands had been *closed* — held back, restrained, extended in the hope of peace. Only when every road of escape had been deliberately sealed against them, only when surrender meant simply being slaughtered where they stood, did they at last open those hands and take up the defence of their lives and their faith. This was not the aggression of fanatics. It was the last recourse of people who had been hunted into a wall and given the single choice between defending themselves and being destroyed without resistance.

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What followed was one of the most prolonged and bitter struggles of that whole terrible period. 'Abdu'l-Bahá does not pause to chronicle it blow by blow — "Were we to occupy ourselves in detail with the wars of Nayríz and Zanján," He writes, "or to set forth these events from beginning to end, this epitome would become a bulky volume." But the shape of it is plain in His telling.

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The believers fought "numerous battles." A small body of townspeople, encircled by the trained and re-supplied forces of an empire, held their ground far longer than anyone had a right to expect — not through any military advantage, for they had none, but through a steadfastness that no bombardment and no assault could break.

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Ḥujjat himself stood at the heart of it, the soul of the resistance, sustaining his people through privation and loss with the same conviction that had made him abandon the safe road of his calling in the first place.

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And then, as at Nayríz, as at the fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, the end was bought not by valour but by betrayal. The defenders could not be beaten down; so they were deceived.

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'Abdu'l-Bahá records the manner of it with a kind of weary precision: "After numerous battles they too at last yielded to covenants and compacts, oaths and promises, vows registered on the Qur'án, and the wonderful stratagems of the officers, and were all put to the edge of the sword." Every instrument of trust that a society possesses was turned against them. Solemn covenants were offered. Promises were sworn.

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Oaths were inscribed and registered upon the holy Book itself — the most binding pledge that religion knew how to make. And on the strength of those pledges the believers laid down their resistance; and the moment they had done so, the pledges were broken and they were put to death.

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There is a heavy irony, and a heavy lesson, in that. The men who attacked the believers had done so "at the decree of erudite doctors and notable lawyers," under the banner of religion. And the men who finally destroyed the believers did so by swearing falsely upon the very scripture they claimed to defend.

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The whole moral apparatus of the day — its learning, its law, its oaths, its sacred Book — was bent into a weapon against a community whose only offence was the sincerity of its belief. The defenders of Zanján kept faith to the last; it was their enemies who broke every faith they had.

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What shines out of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's spare account is the contrast it draws without ever raising its voice. On one side stand "erudite doctors and notable lawyers" with all the power of the state behind them, willing to perjure themselves upon the Qur'án to accomplish their ends.

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On the other stands a body of plain believers, led by a fearless scholar, who tried first for peace, who took up arms only when flight was made impossible, and who, even when deceived and surrounded, would not purchase their lives by denying what they had recognized as true. They were "all put to the edge of the sword." By every worldly measure they lost everything.

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By the only measure the account finally cares about, they kept the one thing that cannot be taken by force or stolen by an oath — their fidelity.

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This is the glory of Jalál in its civic and collective form. It is not the lone hero's single deed, but the steadfastness of a whole people: men and women who stood together, suffered together, and fell together rather than abandon their Lord. 'Abdu'l-Bahá would not let their long resistance be forgotten or misremembered as mere rebellion.

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He set it down for what it was — a community that opened its hands in self-defence only when every other passage had been closed, and that met betrayal and the sword with a constancy the centuries have not diminished. Every passage of flight cut off, they unclosed their hands in resistance, and held their ground for the Cause they would not deny.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **A Traveler's Narrative** by 'Abdu'l-Bahá.*

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