The Christian Colonel: Sám Khán and the Báb

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative (translated by Shoghi Effendi). The narrative is retold in our own words; the short lines in quotation marks are verbatim from the book.

Not every figure in the story of the Báb's martyrdom was an enemy. On the morning of the 9th of July, 1850, the man given the duty of commanding the firing squad in the barrack-square of Tabríz was a colonel named Sám Khán — and he was not a Muslim, nor a follower of the Báb, but a Christian. He had no part in the religious quarrel that had condemned the prisoner. He was a soldier under orders. And as the hour of the execution approached, those orders began to weigh upon him in a way he could not shake off.

For Sám Khán had looked upon the Báb, and what he saw disturbed him. This was no common criminal. Nabíl's narrative preserves the colonel's mounting unease — the sense, growing in him, that he was being asked to raise his hand against an innocent and holy Man. He could not still the protest of his own conscience. And so, rather than carry his trouble in silence, Sám Khán did a remarkable thing: he went to the Báb Himself and confessed it.

"I profess the Christian Faith," he told the Báb, "and entertain no ill will against you. If your Cause be the Cause of Truth, enable me to free myself from the obligation to shed your blood."

It was an extraordinary plea — a commander of the execution begging his prisoner for release from his own task. And the Báb's reply was as extraordinary as the plea. He did not curse the colonel, nor demand that he mutiny, nor promise him a dramatic deliverance. He answered with calm assurance and a kind of trust:

"Follow your instructions," the Báb said, "and if your intention be sincere, the Almighty is surely able to relieve you from your perplexity."

Take note of what the Báb laid upon him: not rebellion, but sincerity. If your intention be sincere. The Báb placed the matter where it belonged — in the honesty of Sám Khán's own heart — and entrusted the outcome to God. The colonel, having received this answer, returned to his duty. He drew up his regiment of seven hundred and fifty soldiers in three files before the wall where the Báb and His companion Anís had been suspended by ropes. The order was given. The files fired in turn. The square filled with the smoke of the muskets.

And when the smoke cleared, the watching crowd beheld a sight no one could explain. Anís stood there alive and unharmed; the bullets had cut only the ropes; and the Báb had vanished from before their eyes. He was found, unhurt, back in His cell, calmly finishing a conversation that had been interrupted when they had first come to lead Him out.

For Sám Khán, this was answer enough. He had asked the Báb to enable him to free himself from the obligation to shed innocent blood, and he had been told that if his intention were sincere, God would relieve him. Now, before his own eyes, the volley of his own regiment had left the Báb untouched. The colonel did not need to be told twice what this meant. He refused, then and there, to give the order a second time. He marched his entire regiment away from the square, withdrawing his men from the whole terrible business — and, the histories record, he vowed that he would never again take part in such a deed, even were it to cost him his own life. Another regiment had to be brought up to complete what Sám Khán would not.

There is something in this episode that the Day of the Martyrdom asks us to hold on to. Amid the cruelty of that morning — the jeering crowds, the hardened officials, the cold machinery of execution — there stood one man, an outsider to the Faith, who simply could not bring himself to do an unjust thing in silence. He listened to his conscience; he spoke the truth to the very Person he had been ordered to kill; and when the sign came, he kept faith with it. The Báb had asked of him only sincerity, and Sám Khán proved sincere.

He was not a believer in the Báb, so far as the histories tell us. But on the day the world martyred the Manifestation of God, the Christian colonel chose to honour the prompting of his own heart rather than the command of his superiors — and so his name is remembered with respect, on this most sorrowful of days, as one who would not stain his hands.

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/