The Mufti Who Came to Insult and Stayed to Serve

Mr. Furutan, in *Stories of Bahá’u’lláh,* preserves the well-known recollection of Shaykh Maḥmúd-i-‘Arrábí — the Sunní mufti of ‘Akká in the years of Bahá’u’lláh’s arrival.

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The mufti, the recollection records, had been the leading religious authority of the city when news arrived that a band of Persian heretics, condemned by the Ottoman government, was being brought to ‘Akká for permanent imprisonment. The mufti preached, in the Friday sermon at the great mosque, that the arrival of the leader of these heretics — Bahá’u’lláh — would be a contamination of the city.

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He instructed the people not to look at Him, not to speak to Him, not to give Him bread or water. He himself, the recollection records, had taken a private vow that if circumstance permitted, he would put the arch-heretic to death with his own hand.

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After Bahá’u’lláh’s arrival the mufti waited some weeks. Then he made his way, with a concealed weapon, to the citadel where the prisoner was held. He arranged, by the mufti’s authority that the guards still owed him, to be brought into the cell.

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What happened in the cell, the witnesses preserve, was not what the mufti had planned. Bahá’u’lláh received him with the quiet courtesy He extended to all visitors. He invited him to sit. He asked after his health. He spoke, calmly and at some length, on the subject of the spiritual unity of the Manifestations of God. The mufti listened. He asked questions; they were answered. He raised objections; they were answered.

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He had come, by his own later admission, with a sword inside his cloak and a sermon already prepared in his throat. He walked out of the cell, the recollection records, with neither.

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He did not, the chronicle preserves, declare himself a Bahá’í in any public manner that might have cost him his office or his standing in the city. He served, however, as a friend of the household for the rest of his life. He intervened privately, and at considerable risk, with the Ottoman authorities to ease conditions for the family. He brought believers in to see Bahá’u’lláh when no other way could be found. He kept watch.

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Furutan reads the story, in his short chapter, as one of the most striking instances in the *‘Akká* period of the conversion that nearness to Bahá’u’lláh worked on those who had come to oppose Him. The mufti's vow had been the vow of an enemy. The service of his subsequent years was the quiet service of a friend.

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*Paraphrased from Stories of Bahá'u'lláh (Ali-Akbar Furutan, George Ronald, 1986); see original for full text.*

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