On 22nd May 1844
Mulla Husayn of Boshrueh in Khorasan, a prominent disciple of Siyyid Kázim,
entered Shirz following the instruction by his master to search for the
promised Qa'im. Soon after he arrived in Shiraz, Mullá Husayn came into contact
with the Báb. On the night of 22 May 1844 Mullá Husayn was invited by the Báb
to his home; on that night Mullá Husayn told him that he was searching for the
possible successor to Siyyid Kázim, the Promised One, and the Báb told Mullá
Husayn privately that he was Siyyid Kázim's successor and the bearer of divine
knowledge. Through the night of the 22nd to dawn of the 23rd, Mullá Husayn
became the first to accept the Báb's claims as the gateway to Truth and the
initiator of a new prophetic cycle; the Báb had replied in a satisfactory way
to all of Mullá Husayn's questions and had written in his presence, with
extreme rapidity, a long commentary of Surih of Joseph, which has come to be
known as the Qayyúmu'l-Asmá and is considered the Báb's first revealed work. Mullá Husayn reported:
He
took up His pen, and with incredible rapidity revealed the entire Surih of
Mulk, the first chapter of His commentary on the Surih of Joseph. The
overpowering effect of the manner in which He wrote was heightened by the
gentle intonation of His voice which accompanied His writing. Not for one
moment did He interrupt the flow of the verses which streamed from His pen. Not
once did He pause till the Surih of Mulk was finished. I sat enraptured by the
magic of His voice and the sweeping force of His revelation
After Mullá Husayn accepted the Báb's
claim, the Báb ordered him to wait until 17 others had independently recognized
the station of the Báb before they could begin teaching others about the new
revelation.
Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad
Shírází was the founder of
Bábism, and one of three central figures of the Bahá'í Faith. He was a merchant from Shiraz, Persia, who at the
age of twenty-four (on May 23, 1844) claimed to be the promised Qa'im (or
Mahdi). After his declaration he took the title of Báb meaning "Gate". He composed hundreds of letters and
books (often termed tablets) in which
he stated his messianic claims and defined his teachings, which constituted a
new sharí'ah or religious law. His movement eventually acquired tens of
thousands of supporters, was opposed by Iran's Shi'a clergy, and was suppressed
by the Iranian government, leading to the persecution and killing of thousands
of his followers, called Bábís. In 1850, at the age of thirty, the Báb was shot
by a firing squad in Tabríz.
“The gateway to Truth” How many prophets
have made this claim, to be the gateway to truth. In his book on Heidegger,
George Steiner states, inter alia:
The
Being of being(s) is the only proper object of ontological thought ... it is to
immerse oneself in the full ‘thereness’ of things, for it is only in their
unconcealment that Being, though hidden itself, is revealed. Every inanimate and animate presence,
ontologically wondered at and thought ‘through’ ... becomes a ‘clearing’, a Lichtung in which
Being declares itself. Like the light
which plays around objects in the dark of the wood even though we cannot place
its source.[…]Heidegger begins to give concealment ontological precedence over
unconcealment. It is the mark and nature of significant truth to stay hidden,
though radiant in and through this occlusion. Man, moreover, is not the
enforcer, the opener of truth ... but the ‘opening for it’, the ‘clearing’ or
Lichtung in which it will make its hiddenness manifest.
In short, we are each and every
one of us a gateway to the truth. Start with that, no one needs to be revered
and no one needs to get shot.
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