Ḥujjat Sends Mullá Iskandar to Shíráz

A retelling drawn from Nabíl's The Dawn-Breakers, chapters IX and XXIV. Words in quotation marks are from that book.

Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zanjání, later known as Ḥujjat, was the son of one of the leading mujtahids (senior divines) of Zanján. Nabíl calls him "one of the ablest ecclesiastical dignitaries of his age." He had studied at Najaf and was known as "a man of independent mind." His outspokenness had brought him into conflict with the other divines of Zanján, and he was once summoned to Ṭihrán to defend his views before his opponents.

When the call of the Báb reached him from Shíráz, he did not accept or reject it on report. He chose one of his disciples, Mullá Iskandar, "in whom he reposed the fullest confidence," and sent him to Shíráz "with explicit instructions to conduct a minute and independent enquiry."

Mullá Iskandar attained the presence of the Báb. He stayed forty days in Shíráz, learning the principles of the Faith, and then, with the Báb's approval, went home to Zanján. He arrived when the leading divines of the city were gathered with Ḥujjat. Ḥujjat asked him at once whether he believed in the new Revelation or rejected it. Mullá Iskandar handed over the writings of the Báb he had brought, and said that whatever his master decided, he would follow.

Ḥujjat was angry. "What!" he said. "But for the presence of this distinguished company, I would have chastised you severely. How dare you consider matters of belief to be dependent upon the approbation or rejection of others?"

He took from his messenger a copy of the Báb's Qayyúmu'l-Asmá'. After reading a single page, he fell prostrate on the ground and declared before the assembled divines: "I bear witness that these words which I have read proceed from the same Source as that of the Qur'án."

Later, Nabíl records, an envoy whom Ḥujjat had sent to Shíráz with a petition and gifts, Mashhadí Aḥmad, brought back a sealed letter from the Báb. In it the Báb gave him one of His own titles, Ḥujjat (the Proof), and told him to proclaim the teachings of the Faith from the pulpit "without the least reservation." Ḥujjat dismissed his students and closed his classes. "Of what profit," he said, "are study and research to those who have already found the Truth, and why strive after learning when He who is the Object of all knowledge is made manifest?"

He became one of the foremost defenders of the Báb's Cause, and died during the siege of Zanján.

This is a retelling. For the full account, see Nabíl's The Dawn-Breakers, chapters IX and XXIV.

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/