Nine Months at Máh-Kú

In A Traveler's Narrative, 'Abdu'l-Bahá follows the Báb from Iṣfáhán toward the capital. At Kinár-Gird a fresh order from the Prime Minister, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, sent Him instead to the village of Kulayn, where He stayed twenty days. He wrote to the Sháh asking for an audience. The Prime Minister advised against it: the royal train was about to set out, the doctors of the capital would behave as those of Iṣfáhán had done, and the Báb's presence would cause the gravest trouble. His advice was to place the Báb in the Castle of Máh-Kú while the Sháh was away. A letter in the Sháh's own hand then told the Báb to go to Máh-Kú and pray there for the victorious state, and promised to summon Him on the Sháh's return.

On the way the Báb wrote to the Prime Minister: "You summoned Me from Isfáhán to meet the doctors and for the attainment of a decisive settlement. What has happened now that this excellent intention has been changed for Mákú and Tabríz?"

He remained forty days in Tabríz, where the learned doctors would not come to meet Him. Then, 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes,

they sent Him off to the Castle of Mákú, and for nine months lodged Him in the inaccessible castle which is situated on the summit of that lofty mountain. And 'Alí Khán of Mákú, 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.

The Báb was a Siyyid, a descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad, and this was the ground of the warden's regard. Among those who came to Him at Máh-Kú was Mullá Ḥusayn. Nabíl's Dawn-Breakers records that he had vowed to walk the whole distance from Mashhad, and did so.

Across Persia, meanwhile, the Báb's Cause was the subject of every gathering. 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes that the Báb Himself attached no importance to the uproar, and that

alike on the road and in the castles of Mákú and Chihríq, 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 of His.

This is the Person the Báb had spoken of from the beginning, "some great Person still behind the veil of glory." 'Abdu'l-Bahá gives the purport of one of His passages about Him:

"Though the ocean of woe rageth on every side, and the bolts of fate follow in quick succession, and the darkness of griefs and afflictions invade soul and body, yet is My heart brightened by the remembrance of Thy countenance and My soul is as a rosegarden from the perfume of Thy nature."

When the divines of Ádhirbáyján saw the clamor that had risen around Tabríz, they asked the government to punish the Báb's followers and to remove Him to the Castle of Chihríq. He was sent there and placed in the keeping of Yaḥyá Khán the Kurd.

A retelling based on A Traveler's Narrative, with one detail from Nabíl's The Dawn-Breakers. For the fuller account, see the original.

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