The Youth Who Asked to Die: Anís of Zunúz

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers, Nabíl's narrative of the early days of the Faith, translated and edited by Shoghi Effendi. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.

We remember the morning in the barrack-square — the ropes, the volleys, the two figures suspended together. But the youth at the Báb's side that day did not arrive there by accident, and he did not arrive there in a single hour. Nabíl, the chronicler of those days, preserves the story of how Mírzá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zunúzí came to be the one soul chosen, out of all the world, to die beside his Lord. It is, before it is a story of martyrdom, a story of longing.

A heart that could not be kept away

He was a young man of Tabríz, of good family, with everything before him that a respectable life could offer. His stepfather, Siyyid 'Alíy-i-Zunúzí, was a man of standing in the city. And it was precisely that standing which made the youth's faith a scandal. For Mírzá Muḥammad-'Alí had given his heart to the Báb, and nothing his family said or did could draw it back.

They tried. When his devotion became known, his stepfather was filled with shame and grief, lamenting that the young man had lost his reason and had brought disgrace upon the household. Pressure was applied; a confinement was imposed; the youth was kept, so far as it could be managed, away from the company of the believers and away — above all — from any chance of attaining the presence he most desired in the world.

For that was the whole of his longing. He did not crave influence or wealth or even, in the end, length of days. He craved one thing: to look upon the face of the Báb. And the more he was kept from it, the more the longing burned.

The prayer of the captive

The Báb, in those years, was being moved under guard between the remote fortress-prisons of the north-west, and His route at times brought Him near Tabríz. To be so close to his Beloved and yet held back by the walls of his own house was, for the young man, an anguish almost past bearing. Unable to go to the Báb in body, he went to Him in prayer, pouring out a supplication that Nabíl has preserved — words that hold the whole of his soul in a few lines:

Thou beholdest, O my Best-Beloved, my captivity and helplessness, and knowest how eagerly I yearn to look upon Thy face. Dispel the gloom that oppresses my heart, with the light of Thy countenance.

He prayed until he was overcome. And it was then, in the depth of that yearning, that he was granted what no wall could keep from him. The Báb came to him — and spoke to him a promise that turned his grief inside out. He was bidden to rejoice; and he was told that the One he loved had chosen him, and him alone, for a gift greater than the presence he had begged for:

Rejoice; I choose no one except you to share with Me the cup of martyrdom.

Consider what that sentence did to a heart already on fire. The youth had asked to see his Lord. He was answered with a promise to die with Him. Where another soul might have recoiled, Mírzá Muḥammad-'Alí was flooded with a joy that never afterward left him. He had been given a hope so high that no confinement, no shame, no threat could touch it.

The change that the city could see

From that hour the young man was transformed. The bitterness of his captivity fell away; in its place came a serenity and a tenderness that even his opponents could not fail to notice. The Báb had given him, in His own naming, the title by which the believers would forever remember him: Anís — Companion. He carried the title before he had earned it in the square; he carried it as a betrothal, a pledge of the day to come.

And he carried it gently. Nabíl is careful to record what kind of man the promise made of him. He did not grow harsh toward the family who had opposed him, or proud toward the city that had judged him. His conduct toward his kinsmen and toward all around him became so gracious, so free of rancour, that it disarmed them. The proof of it came on the last day of his life. When at length he laid down that life for his Beloved, Nabíl writes, "on the day he laid down his life for his Beloved, the people of Tabríz all wept and bewailed him." The very city that had once thought him mad now mourned him as one of its own. Love had done its slow, patient work, and it had been seen.

The day the promise was kept

When the Báb was brought at last to Tabríz for the final time, and the order for His death had come, Anís was near. As the Báb was being conducted across the barrack-courtyard toward the place of execution, the young man could no longer hold himself back. He flung himself at the Báb's feet and, seizing the hem of His garment, implored Him: "Send me not from Thee, O Master." And the Báb, who had promised him long before, answered him now: He bade him arise, and rest assured that he would be with Him; "To-morrow," He told him, "you shall witness what God has decreed."

That night, confined together, the Báb spoke a wish aloud before those with Him — that one who loved Him might be the instrument of His passing rather than the hands of His enemies. At once the young man sprang to his feet and announced himself ready for whatever his Lord might desire. And the Báb declared, of him, that this same youth who had risen to comply with His wish would, together with Him, suffer martyrdom — "Him will I choose to share with Me its crown."

So it was. In the square the next day the two were bound and suspended together, the head of Anís resting upon the breast of his Master, exactly as he had begged. When the first regiment fired and the smoke cleared, the watching thousands saw the young man standing unharmed, the ropes shot away, and the Báb nowhere to be found — He had been discovered, calm, completing His unfinished words to His secretary. Returned to the square, the Báb addressed the crowd and spoke of the youth at His side: had they believed, He said, every one of them would have followed the example of this youth, who stood in rank above most of them. Then the second volley took effect, and the long longing of Anís was answered in full. He died where he had only ever wished to be: as near to his Beloved as a soul can come.

What the youth still asks of us

There is something almost unbearably simple about Anís. He wanted one thing. He did not bargain for it, dilute it, or trade it away for safety when safety was offered. He asked his Lord for nearness, and when nearness turned out to mean death, he did not love it less. The Holy Day of the Martyrdom keeps many faces before us — the prison, the regiments, the rescued remains — but few of them search the heart as this young face does. For most of us are not asked to die. We are only asked whether, like Anís, we want the nearness of God more than we want anything the world can keep us safe with. He answered that question with his whole life, and then with his death, and a city that had called him mad wept to see how he answered it.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam.

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/