While Baha’u’llah was spreading the Divine Message of the
Báb in the district of Nur in northern Iran in 1844, an amazing incident
took place which Nabil recorded:
One day, in the course of one of His riding excursions into
the country, Bahá’u’lláh, accompanied by His companions, saw, seated by the
roadside, a lonely youth. His hair was dishevelled, and he wore the dress of a
dervish. [1] By the side of a brook he had kindled a fire, and was cooking his
food and eating it. Approaching him, Bahá’u’lláh most lovingly enquired: “Tell
Me, dervish, what is it that you are doing?” “I am engaged in eating God,” he
bluntly replied. “I am cooking God and am burning Him.” The unaffected
simplicity of his manners and the candour of his reply pleased Bahá’u’lláh extremely.
He smiled at his remark and began to converse with him with unrestrained
tenderness and freedom. Within a short space of time, Bahá’u’lláh had changed
him completely. Enlightened as to the true nature of God, and with a mind
purged from the idle fancy of his own people, he immediately recognised the
Light which that loving Stranger had so unexpectedly brought him. That dervish,
whose name was Muṣṭafá, became so enamoured with the teachings which had been
instilled into his mind that, leaving his cooking utensils behind, he
straightway arose and followed Bahá’u’lláh. On foot, behind His horse, and
inflamed with the fire of His love, he chanted merrily verses of a love-song
which he had composed on the spur of the moment and had dedicated to his Beloved.
“Thou art the Day-Star of guidance,” ran its glad refrain. “Thou art the Light
of Truth. Unveil Thyself to men, O Revealer of the Truth.” Although, in later
years, that poem obtained wide circulation among his people, and it became
known that a certain dervish, surnamed Majdhúb, and whose name was Mustafá
Big-i-Sanandají, had, without premeditation, composed it in praise of his
Beloved, none seemed to be aware to whom it actually referred, nor did anyone
suspect, at a time when Bahá’u’lláh was still veiled from the eyes of men, that
this dervish alone had recognised His station and discovered His glory.
- Nabil (‘The Dawn-Breakers’, translated and edited by Shoghi Effendi)
[1] Poor one, Religious mendicant, Islamic mystic
