The one to whom the Bab declared His mission and the first
to believe in the Him as the Promised One fell as a martyr at the Fort of
Shaykh Tabarsi on 2 February 1849 at the age of thirty-five. He was the first
of the Bab's eighteen disciples who were called the Letters of the Living, and
was designated by the Báb as Bábu'l-Báb which means the 'Gate of the Gate'.
Mulla Husayn was born in the hamlet of Zirak near the small
town of Bushruyih in the north-eastern Iranian province of Khurasan. His father
appears to have been a wealthy cloth dyer who was also a local cleric. His
mother was a respected poet. We know that he had at least one brother and
sister. He furthered his own religious studies in Mashhad and Isfahan, and then
at the age of eighteen went to Karbali as one of the students of the Shaykhi
leader Siyyid Kazim Rashti. He became so highly respected that some thought
that he might be his teacher’s successor. One of Mulla Husayn’s major
assignments was to meet a preeminent Shi’ih cleric of his age and defend the
Shaykhi views. - - Read
more
(Adapted from: ‘Basic Baha’i Dictionary’ by Wendi Momen, ‘A
Concise Encyclopedia of the Baha’i Faith’ by Peter Smith, and ‘Release the Sun’
by William Sears)
