The Scholar Who Chose to Serve: Mírzá Muḥammad

A retelling drawn from 'Abdu'l-Bahá's tribute in Memorials of the Faithful. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved by the Master in that book.

We are used to thinking of honour as something that lifts a person up — that seats them higher, sets them above their fellows, surrounds them with people to serve them. The Faith of Bahá'u'lláh turns that picture upside down. In its teaching, the truest honour a soul can attain is to go lower in order to serve. The life of Mírzá Muḥammad, whom 'Abdu'l-Bahá honoured in His Memorials of the Faithful, is a portrait of exactly that reversal.

Mírzá Muḥammad came from Iṣfáhán, and by every worldly measure he began life near the top. He was, the Master tells us, "of gentle birth, his family was known and respected, and he was an accomplished scholar." From an early age the leading divines of his city had marked his "excellent mind." He had drunk deeply from philosophy and history, the sciences and the arts. He had enjoyed, in the Master's words, "every comfort, and the world was good to him." He was a young man of standing, learning, and ease — a man, in the ordinary way of things, who would be served by others all his days.

But beneath all that learning he carried a thirst that none of his books could slake. "He thirsted after the secret of reality," the Master writes, "and longed for knowledge of God." He went on seeking, debating in the gatherings of the learned, restless and unsatisfied — "like a fish taken from the water" — until at last the Glad Tidings of Bahá'u'lláh reached him, and the seeking was over. "He caught the scent of fresh flowers from the gardens of the splendor of God, and his heart was ashine with a ray from the Sun of Truth."

Then this man of comfort and station did an astonishing thing. "He turned his face away from his life, its peace, its blessings," the Master records, "and set out for the Most Great Prison." He left the palace of his old life behind and walked the long, hard miles to 'Akká — to a prison-city, to share in the captivity of his Lord. "He passed over the long miles, suffered intense hardships, exchanged a palace for a prison."

And what did he do when he arrived? He took up the lowliest work he could find. He became a servant at the hospice where the believers and the travelling pilgrims were received and cared for. Here is how 'Abdu'l-Bahá frames the greatness of it — and the whole meaning of the story lies in this single sentence: "He who had been waited upon, now waited on others; he who had been the master was now the servant, he who had once been a leader was now a captive."

He poured himself out in that humble service without rest. "He had no rest, no leisure, day or night," the Master writes. "To the travelers he was a trusted refuge; to the settlers, a companion without peer. He served beyond his strength, for he was filled with love of the friends." The scholar who had once held forth in the assemblies of the learned now kept silent and simply worked: "because he was continuously busy, he kept silent at all times." The travellers were devoted to him; the resident believers were grateful for him. So great was his love for Bahá'u'lláh that when the Blessed Beauty passed from this world, Mírzá Muḥammad could not bear the separation, and before long he too "took his flight to the world that has no end."

The world he was born into would have called his choice a fall — a man of family and learning sinking to the rank of a servant in a prison-town. 'Abdu'l-Bahá recorded it as a rising. In the Memorials of the Faithful, where the Master gathered up the names of the loved and honoured ones of God, this servant of the hospice has his enduring place, side by side with scholars and Hands of the Cause.

The Feast of Sharaf is the Feast of Honour. Mírzá Muḥammad's life answers the question of where honour truly lies. He had been a master; he chose to be a servant — and in that choosing, he found the one distinction that lasts. The honour the world hands out raises a person over others. The honour Bahá'u'lláh bestows is given to the one who kneels to serve them.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Memorials of the Faithful by 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1915). *Memorials of the Faithful*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/memorials-faithful/