The Báb's Tablet to Mullá Ḥusayn on Departing Shíráz

In the early days following the Declaration of the Báb to Mullá Ḥusayn on the night of the 22nd of May, 1844, in the small upper room of the Báb's house in Shíráz, the Báb began to address Tablets to His first disciple. Mullá Ḥusayn would shortly leave Shíráz to carry the new Cause to other cities of Persia. The Báb provided him, by means of these early Tablets, with the spiritual orientation in which the work was to be carried out.

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One of the Tablets preserved in *Selections from the Writings of the Báb* sets out, in the Báb's characteristic elevated language, the bearing the disciple was to maintain through the journey ahead. The Báb addresses Mullá Ḥusayn by the title He had given him on the night of the Declaration — *Báb al-Báb,* the Gate of the Gate — and counsels him in the combined virtues he would need to carry into every encounter.

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> Be thou as a flame of fire to My enemies and a river of life > eternal to My loved ones.

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The image is the Báb's. The Tablet sets out the double quality the disciple is to embody. Toward the opponents of the Cause — those who would in time become its persecutors — the disciple is to be a *flame of fire,* a strength that does not yield, a witness that does not flinch under the threat of harm. Toward the friends of the Cause — the seekers, the poor, the faithful — the disciple is to be a *river of life eternal,* a sustaining current of hope and consolation.

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The Tablet continues with practical counsels: to teach with *meekness* of speech but with *firmness* of conviction; to remember the Sacred Names of God in every place visited; to hold the inner state of constant remembrance even amid the busy outward movement of travel; to leave behind, in every city visited, at least the seed of recognition that the Promised One has appeared.

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Mullá Ḥusayn carried the Tablet with him. He left Shíráz within days. He travelled by the long roads northward — through Yazd, through Tabas, through Mashhad, eventually to the city of his own birth and at last to Khurásán. He delivered the message in every place. He drew around himself the small first circle of believers. He returned, four years later, in time for the Conference of Badasht and the great events of the Bábí movement.

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He died at the siege of Shaykh Tabarsí in February 1849, having lived out, in the four short years of his ministry, the double quality the Báb had laid out for him in the Tablet of departure.

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