Nine Months at Máh-Kú: The Báb in the Mountain Castle

In A Traveler's Narrative, 'Abdu'l-Bahá traces the Báb's journey from Shíráz through Iṣfáhán, then northward to Tabríz, and then onward to His most isolated confinement: the small castle of Máh-Kú, perched on a peak at the very northwestern edge of Persia, almost on the borders of Russia and the Ottoman empire.

The castle had been chosen for its remoteness. The Persian authorities, alarmed by the speed at which the Báb's message had spread across the country and unwilling to give Him any platform, hoped that by removing Him to a stronghold far from the population centres they could quietly extinguish the influence of His Cause. He was committed to the warden of the fortress, ‘Alí Khán of Máh-Kú, and held there for nine months.

For nine months [they] lodged Him in the inaccessible castle which is situated on the summit of that lofty mountain.

The strict orders given to ‘Alí Khán were that the Báb should have no visitors and should be permitted no correspondence with His followers. The orders were not, however, fully carried out. The Master notes the reason carefully:

‘Alí Khán of Máh-Kú, because of his excessive love for the family of the Prophet, paid Him such attention as was possible, and gave permission to some persons to converse with Him.

‘Alí Khán was a Sunni Kurd, but his personal devotion to the descendants of the Prophet of Islam was great. The Báb, by ancestry a Siyyid (a descendant of Muhammad), fell under that devotion. ‘Alí Khán found himself unable to maintain the absolute prohibition. He admitted Bábí pilgrims to the foot of the castle, then within its walls, then to the room of the Prisoner Himself. Mullá Ḥusayn made the long winter journey on foot from Mashhad to Máh-Kú and was received. Other believers followed.

Inside the small chamber to which He had been confined, the Báb continued His Revelation. The Master's account of the inner life of those nine months is brief but precise:

Evening and morning, nay, day and night, in extremest rapture and amazement, He would restrict Himself to repeating and meditating on the qualities and attributes of that absent-yet-present, regarded-and-regarding Person.

The absent-yet-present Person is a veiled reference to Him Whom God shall make manifest — the One whose advent the Báb's Cause was preparing. In the confinement of the castle on the mountain, in the months of silence the Persian state had imposed, the Báb spent His hours in the inward contemplation of the greater Manifestation soon to come. The state had hoped to extinguish a small Persian movement. It had only, in fact, given the Báb an unexpected opportunity for the deepest stretch of His inner work.

In due course the authorities — alarmed that even the remoteness of Máh-Kú had not stopped the visits — moved Him on, to the even harsher castle of Chihríq. The chain of His confinements would end, in 1850, only at the Tabríz barracks-square where He was finally martyred.

Source: 'Abdu'l-Bahá, A Traveler's Narrative (translated by E.G. Browne, Cambridge University Press, 1891), pages 21-40. Public domain text from Project Gutenberg eBook #19300.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1886). *A Traveler's Narrative*. Cambridge University Press. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19300