The Young Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʿAlí Walks the Snow

Mr. Furutan, in *Stories of Bahá’u’lláh,* preserves a number of recollections of the young Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʿAlí — the future Bahá’u’lláh — in the years before His Declaration. Many come from the family estate at Núr in the wild forested country of Mázandaran, where the household withdrew each summer from the court life of Tihrán.

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One of the recollections concerns a winter evening. The chronicle preserves that snow had been falling for two days. The mountain paths were impassable to ordinary travel. The servants and the hunters of the estate had been sent home to their houses; the great wooden doors had been barred against the cold.

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In the late afternoon, the recollection records, word came up to the estate from a small village on the lower slope. An old man of the village, a person known to the household for many years, had taken seriously ill. The family of the old man had sent a messenger up the path through the snow with the request that, if any medicine or food could be spared, it would be gratefully received.

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The young Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʿAlí, perhaps fifteen years old at this time, gathered what was needed from the household stores. He asked for no companion. He took a single lantern, wrapped Himself in His cloak, and set out down the path. The household remonstrated with Him; the snow was deep; the village was an hour's walk; He had no familiarity with the lower paths. He went on quietly.

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The next morning, a search-party from the estate descended at first light to the village. They expected to find Him snowed in somewhere on the path. They found Him, instead, sitting calmly on a wooden stool by the fire in the old man's cottage. The old man had been bathed, fed, dosed with the household medicine, and put into clean blankets. The young man was conversing quietly with the family.

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The household had been frightened; He had not been. The recollection preserves Him saying, on the way back up the mountain, only a few words: that the snow had been deep but not dangerous, and that the old man's family had been very polite. He did not, in His way, remark on the cold or on His own exertion. He had gone because someone had been ill. The going was, in His understanding, the natural thing. The sleeping through the night by the fire, while the old man was tended, was also the natural thing.

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Furutan offers the recollection, in his short chapter, without ornament. The young man who would one day reveal the laws of the Most Holy Book had already, at fifteen, the working disposition of those laws: that those whose own household is warm and whose own granary is full do not stay in them while the neighbour is in need.

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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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