The Hidden Light of Ṭihrán: Mullá Ḥusayn Delivers the Scroll

A retelling based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi, which draws on the eyewitness chronicle of Nabíl. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.

When Mullá Ḥusayn walked out of the house of the Báb in Shíráz on the morning after the Declaration, he had become the first human being to recognise the new Manifestation of God. He was, the Báb had told him, the Bábu'l-Báb — the Gate of the Gate, the first of the Letters of the Living. And in the weeks that followed, as the other Letters arrived one by one, drawn to Shíráz by dreams and visions and an unaccountable certainty, seventeen souls in all came to that threshold and knew Him.

But one place in the circle of the Letters was, the Báb said, still to be filled — and He would not point to the one who should fill it. He told Mullá Ḥusayn that there remained a soul whose recognition would surpass them all, and He left the finding of that soul to the disciple's own heart. Then He sent him north, away from Shíráz, charging him to set out for the capital, for in Ṭihrán there lay hid, the Báb intimated, a Mystery of God whose splendour no eye had yet beheld — a secret more precious than all that had so far come to pass.

So Mullá Ḥusayn travelled to Ṭihrán not knowing exactly whom he sought, only that he would know him when he found him. He took lodging near one of the religious schools of the city. There, by what the histories present as no accident at all, he fell into conversation with a young theological student from the district of Núr, in the province of Mázindarán — and the talk turned, as Mullá Ḥusayn steered it, to the great families of that district. He asked whether, among the descendants of the late Mírzá Buzurg of Núr, a man celebrated for his charm and rank, there was anyone living who had inherited his distinction.

The student answered that there was: a Son of that house, young still, who had distinguished Himself not by office or ambition but by His character. He cheered the disconsolate, the student said. He fed the hungry. He befriended the poor and the stranger. He sought no rank and held none. His days were spent in kindness, and the people loved Him.

At every detail Mullá Ḥusayn's eagerness grew, until the student wondered at his excitement over a Person he had never met. Mullá Ḥusayn asked His name. The answer was Ḥusayn-'Alí — the One the world would come to know as Bahá'u'lláh. Then Mullá Ḥusayn entrusted to the student a scroll, wrapped in a cloth, and asked him to place it into that Nobleman's hands at the hour of dawn the next day, and to bring back any reply.

The scroll contained passages from the writings of the Báb. The student carried it, as he had promised, and delivered it at first light. And Shoghi Effendi records what happened when Bahá'u'lláh read it. He perused its contents, and at once recognised the Source from which it came. He turned to those present and, in words of glad acceptance that the bearer carried back to Mullá Ḥusayn, testified to the truth of the Message and embraced the Cause of the Báb — the first stirring, in the capital of Persia, of the Faith that He would one day crown with His own Revelation.

When the student brought that answer to Mullá Ḥusayn, the disciple was overcome with a joy beyond measuring. He had found the soul the Báb had sent him to find. He could not contain his happiness, and he begged the young man to keep the matter secret.

But the deepest meaning of that morning belonged not to Mullá Ḥusayn but to the Báb. When word of Bahá'u'lláh's acceptance reached Him in the south, the Báb's gladness was unlike His joy at any other recognition. For the One who had now answered the call was no ordinary believer; He was the Promised One of the Báb's own Revelation, the very Beloved whose advent the Báb had come to herald. Of that response Shoghi Effendi preserves the Báb's testimony — that had His Revelation been intended for no other soul than this, it would still have been sufficient proof of its truth.

Here is the wonder the Feast of Light invites us to ponder. The greatest Light of the age was, in that hour, entirely hidden. Bahá'u'lláh held no station the world could see, made no claim, drew no crowds. He was known in Ṭihrán only as a generous young Nobleman who fed the poor. The brightest Sun was, for the moment, behind a veil — recognised first not by the learned divines of the capital, but through a scroll carried at dawn by an unknown student to a door nobody was watching.

And it was recognised. Before the world had any inkling, the Báb knew that the One for whom He had come had inclined toward the Day. The lamp had found the Sun. The herald had heard, from afar, the footstep of his King.

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

Effendi, S.. (1944). *God Passes By*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/