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Vahíd’s stay in Shíráz was relatively brief. The Báb instructed him to go to his father and give him the new Message. In the words of Vahíd: “He urged me to exercise towards him [Vahíd’s father] the utmost forbearance and consideration.” Vahíd does go to his eminent and highly learned father and tell him about the appearance of the Báb. In Vahíd’s words: “From my confidential conversations with him I gathered that he was unwilling to repudiate the truth of the Message I had brought him. He preferred, however, to be left alone and to be allowed to pursue his own way.” 105ACT4
In the years that follow, Vahíd travels through many towns and cities of the land proclaiming the Cause of the Báb. 106ACT4 We shall return to his story [DB 22]. Vahíd will eventually be martyred in Nayríz on 29 June 1850, ten days before the martyrdom of the Báb [9 July 1850 in Tabríz]. Their first meeting had been a little over four years earlier in April/May 1846 in Shíráz. At that first meeting, Vahíd was thirty-five years old, while the Báb was twenty-seven years old. 107ACT4
“Amongst the proofs demonstrating the truth of this Revelation is this”
A Western historian’s account of the time relates this about the Báb’s followers:
It was a strange circumstance, that among those who adopted [the] Bab’s doctrine there should have been a large number of mullas, and even mujtahids, who hold a high rank as expounders of the law in the Muhammadan church. Many of these men sealed their faith with their blood. 108ACT4
Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Íqán [revealed in answer to the questions of the Báb’s eldest uncle about the Báb’s claims]109ACT4 refers to this topic of the learned becoming
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