The Second of Seven – Page 2

occupy and the influence your words exercise, you are not much inferior to the Siyyid-i-Báb Himself. Had you claimed for yourself the position of leadership, better would it have been than to declare your allegiance to one who is certainly inferior to you in knowledge.

To this, Mírzá Qurbán-‘Alí boldly replied:

The knowledge which I have acquired, has led me to bow down in allegiance before Him whom I have recognised to be my Lord and Leader. Ever since I attained the age of manhood, I have regarded justice and fairness as the ruling motives of my life. I have judged Him fairly, and have reached the conclusion that should this Youth, to whose transcendent power friend and foe alike testify, be false, every Prophet of God, from time immemorial down to the present day, should be denounced as the very embodiment of falsehood!

And he added:

I am assured of the unquestioning devotion of over a thousand admirers, and yet I am powerless to change the heart of the least among them. This Youth, however, has proved Himself capable of transmuting, through the elixir of His love, the souls of the most degraded among His fellow men. Upon a thousand like me He has, unaided and alone, exerted such influence that, without even attaining His presence, they have flung aside their own desires and have clung passionately to His will.

On hearing this, the Amír remarked: “I am loth, whether your words be of God or not, to pronounce the sentence of death against the possessor of so exalted a station.”

Mírzá Qurbán-‘Alí immediately responded:

Why hesitate? Are you not aware that all names descend from Heaven? He whose name is ‘Alí [reference to the Báb ] in whose path I am laying down my life, has from time immemorial inscribed my name, Qurbán-‘Alí in the scroll of His chosen martyrs. [Qurbán means sacrifice, hence the name Qurbán-‘Alí means sacrifice for ‘Alí, that is the Báb]. This is indeed the day on which I celebrate the Qurbán festival, the day on which I shall seal with my life-blood my faith in His Cause. Be not, therefore, reluctant, and rest assured

445 / 803