The Hidden Journey of the Báb's Remains

*A retelling based on Shoghi Effendi's **God Passes By**, chapter XVI, which records the transfer of the Báb's remains. Words in quotation marks are preserved in that history.*

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After the martyrdom of the Báb in Tabríz on 9 July 1850, the bodies of the Báb and His fellow-martyr, Mírzá Muḥammad-'Alí, were cast at the edge of the moat outside the city. In the middle of the second night, through the intervention of Ḥájí Sulaymán Khán, they were taken to a silk factory owned by one of the believers of Mílán. The next day they were laid in a wooden casket and carried to a place of safety.

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## Hidden in Ṭihrán

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On Bahá'u'lláh's instructions the remains were brought to Ṭihrán and placed in the shrine of Imám-Zádih Ḥasan. They were later moved to the house of Ḥájí Sulaymán Khán, and from there to the shrine of Imám-Zádih Ma'ṣúm, where they stayed until 1867–68. That year a Tablet from Bahá'u'lláh, revealed in Adrianople, directed two believers, Mullá 'Alí-Akbar-i-Sháhmírzádí and Jamál-i-Burújirdí, to move them at once. The shrine was later rebuilt, and the instruction proved providential.

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The two men searched for a new hiding place. On the road to Chashmih-'Alí they came upon an abandoned, ruined mosque, the Masjid-i-Mashá'u'lláh. After dark they wrapped the remains in a silk shroud they had brought and placed them inside one of its walls. The next day they found that the hiding place had been discovered, and they carried the casket secretly through the city gate to the house of a believer, Mírzá Ḥasan-i-Vazír.

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It stayed there for fourteen months, until so many believers learned of it and came to visit that Mullá 'Alí-Akbar wrote to Bahá'u'lláh for guidance. Ḥájí Sháh Muḥammad-i-Manshádí, surnamed Amínu'l-Bayán, was then asked to take charge of the trust in the utmost secrecy. With another believer's help he buried the casket beneath the floor of the inner sanctuary of the shrine of Imám-Zádih Zayd.

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It lay there undiscovered until Bahá'u'lláh sent a chart of its exact location to a believer in Ṭihrán and instructed him to hide it elsewhere. It was then kept in his house and in the houses of other believers.

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## To the Holy Land

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In 1899, following directions from 'Abdu'l-Bahá, a group of believers carried the remains from Ṭihrán by way of Iṣfahán, Kirmánsháh, Baghdád and Damascus to Beirut, and from there by sea to 'Akká. They arrived on 31 January 1899, fifty lunar years after the Báb's execution. That same year 'Abdu'l-Bahá laid the foundation stone of the Shrine on the site on Mount Carmel that Bahá'u'lláh had selected.

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For almost a decade 'Abdu'l-Bahá faced one obstacle after another. The owner of the land long refused to sell, officials raised endless objections and suspicions, and enemies of the Faith brought false accusations about the purpose of the building. 'Abdu'l-Bahá was many a time heard to remark: "Every stone of that building, every stone of the road leading to it, I have with infinite tears and at tremendous cost, raised and placed in position."

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## Naw-Rúz 1909

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On Naw-Rúz 1909, the first He celebrated after His release from confinement, 'Abdu'l-Bahá had the marble sarcophagus, a gift of the Bahá'ís of Rangoon, moved into the vault. That evening, by the light of a single lamp and in the presence of believers from the East and the West, He laid within it with His own hands the wooden casket holding the remains of the Báb and His companion.

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When all was finished, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who had cast aside His turban, shoes and cloak, bent over the open sarcophagus, rested His forehead on the edge of the casket, and wept aloud, so that everyone present wept with Him. That night He could not sleep.

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In a Tablet announcing the news He wrote that the body of the Báb, "after having for sixty years been transferred from place to place, by reason of the ascendancy of the enemy, and from fear of the malevolent, and having known neither rest nor tranquillity," had been laid to rest on Mount Carmel on the day of Naw-Rúz.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi.*

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