Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim Prepare the Way

A retelling based on Nabíl's The Dawn-Breakers (chapters I–III), with reference to Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By. Words in quotation marks are from The Dawn-Breakers unless another book is named.

At the age of forty, Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá'í left his home and kindred in Baḥrayn, on the Persian Gulf, and gave the rest of his life to one task. He studied in Najaf and Karbilá and became recognized there as a mujtahid, one of the authorized expounders of Islamic scripture. His purpose, Nabíl writes, was to prepare the way for "Him who must needs be made manifest in the fulness of time." He cared nothing for the honours his admirers offered him.

He travelled to Persia, teaching in Shíráz, Yazd, Ṭihrán and Kirmánsháh. In Shíráz he praised the city so highly that his hearers were puzzled, and he told them: "Among you there shall be a number who will live to behold the glory of a Day which the prophets of old have yearned to witness." Asked when the Promised One would appear, he wrote to Siyyid Káẓim: "The mystery of this Cause must needs be made manifest, and the secret of this Message must needs be divulged. I can say no more, I can appoint no time." Shoghi Effendi calls him "the herald of the Bábí Dispensation."

Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí came from Gílán to find him while still in his early twenties. He had memorized the whole Qur'án by the age of eleven. Within a few weeks Shaykh Aḥmad told him to stop attending his lectures: from now on, the disciples who were perplexed would come to him. Before leaving Karbilá for the last time, Shaykh Aḥmad confided to Siyyid Káẓim, "his chosen successor," the secret of his mission. His last words to him were: "You have no time to lose." Shaykh Aḥmad died in 1826 and was buried in Medina.

Siyyid Káẓim taught in Karbilá for many years. His teaching roused envy and opposition, and his opponents accused him of heresy, but he carried on. He gave his students signs by which they would know the Promised One: He would be of pure lineage, a descendant of Fáṭimih, "more than twenty and less than thirty" years old, "endowed with innate knowledge."

As his own death drew near, he urged his disciples again and again: "Scatter far and wide, detach yourselves from all earthly things, and humbly and prayerfully beseech your Lord to sustain and guide you. Never relax in your determination to seek and find Him who is concealed behind the veils of glory." He died in Karbilá on the day of 'Arafih in 1259 A.H., at the end of 1843.

One of his foremost disciples, Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bushrú'í, spent forty days in prayer and fasting at the Mosque of Kúfih and then set out for Persia. On the evening of 22 May 1844, in Shíráz, the Báb welcomed him into His home and asked him: "Whom, after Siyyid Káẓim, do you regard as his successor and your leader?" Mullá Ḥusayn answered that their teacher had told them "to forsake our homes, to scatter far and wide, in quest of the promised Beloved," and he listed the signs Siyyid Káẓim had given. That night the Báb declared His mission to him.

This is a retelling. For the full account, see Nabíl's The Dawn-Breakers, chapters I–III, and Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By, chapter I.

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/