In about 1848, four years after recognizing the Báb and
becoming His first believer, and receiving the title of Bábu’l-Báb (the Gate of
the Gate), Mulla Husayn left the city of Mashhad, in the province of Khurasan,
north-east of Tihran, where he had lived since 1844. Desiring to see his Lord
Who was imprisoned in the castle of Mah-Ku in the province of Adhirbayjan,
north-west of Tihran, he told his friends: “I have vowed to walk the whole
distance that separates me from my Beloved.” (a distance of about 900 miles). “I shall not relax in my resolve
until I shall have reached my destination.”
His friends offered to arrange for a more conventional and
comfortable mode of travel for this long and arduous journey, but Mulla Husayn
declined their help. Upon his insistence, he finally allowed one of his friends
to accompany him and to act as his servant throughout his pilgrimage to
Ádhirbayján. On his way to Tihran, Mulla Husayn was enthusiastically greeted by
the believers in the towns through which he passed. They too offered him the same
assistance and received from him the same reply.
When Mulla Husayn arrived in Tihran he was visited by many
believers. Nabil, the great Baha’i historian, recorded what he heard from
Áqáy-i-Kalím, Bahá’u’lláh’s faithful brother, about Mulla Husayn:
“When Mulla Husayn arrived at Tihran, I, together with a
large number of believers, went to visit him. He seemed to us the very
embodiment of constancy, of piety and virtue. He inspired us with his rectitude
of conduct and passionate loyalty. Such were the force of his character and the
ardour of his faith that we felt convinced that he, unaided and alone, would be
capable of achieving the triumph of the Faith of God.”
