The Smoke That Cleared: Esslemont Tells the West of the Báb

A retelling based on Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J.E. Esslemont, the early introduction to the Faith for English-speaking readers. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that account.

Some stories are best understood when told to a stranger. When Dr. John Esslemont — a Scottish physician who came to the Faith in the early twentieth century — set out to introduce the Báb to readers who had never heard the name, he had to convey, in a few clear pages, both the wonder of the martyrdom and the sweetness of the One it befell. His telling in Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era has carried the story to millions in many languages. It is worth hearing the way he told it: simply, reverently, as news that the West had never been given.

A pure and beautiful soul

Esslemont does not begin with the firing squad. He begins with the character of the One condemned, so that his readers will feel the weight of what was about to be done. He describes the Báb as "this pure and beautiful soul, this inspired teacher of Divine Truth, this devoted lover of God and of his fellow-men." It is a phrase worth lingering over, because it sets the scene rightly. The figure in the square was not a rebel or an agitator, whatever His accusers claimed. He was young in years, of surpassing gentleness and holiness, loved by those who knew Him, who had spent His brief ministry calling His countrymen to God.

And Esslemont is careful to explain the heart of that ministry — for it is easily misunderstood. The Báb, he stresses, never claimed to be the final word. Again and again the Báb proclaimed that He was the Forerunner sent to prepare the way for One greater than Himself. That is the key to everything. The Báb came as the herald of a Promised One soon to appear; His whole mission, and at last His death, were poured out to open a door He knew He would not walk through Himself. A Western reader, hearing the parallel to John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, could begin to grasp what kind of station this was: the morning-star that announces a sun not yet risen.

The morning in the square

Then Esslemont brings his readers to Tabríz, to the 9th of July, 1850. The Báb, he notes, was then in the thirty-first year of His life. With Him was a devoted young follower who, Esslemont records, "had passionately begged to be allowed to share His martyrdom." The two were brought into the old barrack-square together.

About two hours before noon they were suspended by ropes drawn under their armpits, arranged — at the young man's own pleading — so that his head rested against the breast of his beloved Master. A regiment of soldiers was drawn up and received the order to fire. Esslemont's sentences here are plain, and the plainness only deepens the marvel:

Promptly the volleys rang out, but when the smoke cleared, it was found that the Báb and his companion were still alive. The bullets had but severed the ropes by which they were suspended, so that they dropped to the ground unhurt.

Hundreds of muskets had fired into two bound figures, and when the air cleared the crowd saw them standing free, the ropes shot to pieces, the prisoners untouched. The two walked to a room nearby, where they were found, Esslemont writes, "talking to one of their friends" — the Báb completing, with perfect composure, the conversation that the soldiers had interrupted.

The second regiment

The men who had fired were shaken to the soul. Esslemont records their reaction: "The Armenians, who considered the result of their volleys a miracle, were unwilling to fire again." A regiment of soldiers had looked upon a sign and refused to raise their weapons a second time. But the will of the authorities did not bend. Another regiment was brought onto the scene, ranged in the place of the first. About noon the two were suspended once more. The order was given. "This time," Esslemont writes, "the volleys took effect."

He does not flinch from the cost, and he does not dwell on it luridly. The bodies of both, he records, "were riddled by bullets and horribly mutilated, although their faces were almost untouched." Even in death, something of the Báb's serenity was left visible upon His countenance — the faces spared, as if to say that the soldiers' lead had reached only the flesh and not the spirit.

What the enemies could not finish

Esslemont follows the story past the square, because the martyrdom was not the end of it. The authorities cast the remains outside the city, but the faithful would not leave them there. "On the second night," he writes, "they were rescued at midnight by some of the Bábís." And then, in a single sentence, he carries his Western readers across the next sixty years: the remains, "after being concealed for years in secret depositories in Persia, were ultimately brought, with great danger and difficulty, to the Holy Land."

In that one line is folded an epic — the wrapping of the body, the hiding under floors and behind walls, the long smuggling across mountains and seas, and at last the resting place on Mount Carmel where a golden dome now stands. Esslemont gives his readers the shape of it, trusting them to feel its grandeur: a Light struck down and flung into the dark, kept burning by the devotion of countless hidden hands, and brought finally into the open day.

The herald's whole gift

What Esslemont understood — and what he wanted the West to understand — is that the Báb's death is inseparable from the Báb's message. He had come to prepare a way. He had announced, again and again, that One greater than Himself was at hand. And He sealed that announcement with His life, exactly as a true herald might, asking nothing for Himself, pointing always beyond Himself. The young follower at His side had begged only to be near Him; the Báb Himself lived and died only to make ready for Another. There is a single self-forgetfulness running through the whole scene.

That is why this telling, written for strangers, still speaks so directly to us. It strips the story to its essence and lets the essence shine: a pure and beautiful soul, a devoted lover of God and of His fellow-men, who gave everything to prepare the way — and whom the smoke of a regiment's volley could not, the first time, so much as touch. We keep the Holy Day at the noon hour because the world should not forget what was done that morning, nor Who it was done to.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J.E. Esslemont.

Esslemont, J.. (1923). *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust.