# Mulla 'Abdu'l-Karim Qazvini (Mirza Ahmad Katib)

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: John Walbridge, Mulla 'Abdu'l-Karim Qazvini (Mirza Ahmad Katib), bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Mulla `Abdu'l-Karim Qazvini (Mirza Ahmad Katib)
> 
> John Walbridge
> 
> 1997
> 
> Note: Mirza Ahmad
> Katib was the intermediary for
> Bahá'u'lláh's communications with the Bab and was under Bahá'u'lláh's
> protection in Tehran after the Bab's death. He was also, in effect, Nabil
> Zarandi's teacher, who was also a hanger-on of Bahá'u'lláh at this time.
> Therefore, Nabil's account of him and of his role in the question of
> succession should be given serious weight. (For whatever it is worth, I
> think that Kalim was Nabil's other major source for Bahá'u'lláh's early
> Babi activities). [- J. Walbridge, October 9 1997]
> 
> Mulla Abdu'l-Karim-i-Qazvini, a secretary of the Bab. Also called Mirza
> Ahmad-i-Katib ("the Scribe") or Mirza Ahmad-i- Qazvini, he was a
> secretary
> of the Bab, the teacher of Nabil-i-Zarandi, the historian, and a friend of
> Bahá'u'lláh. Though of a merchant family, he studied law and theology in
> his home city of Qazvin with Mulla Abdu'l-Karim-i-Eravani. When his
> teacher
> proclaimed him a mujtahid, he doubted his worthiness. After a dream
> which
> the Shaykhi merchant Haji Allah-vardiy-i-Farhadi explained as being of
> Siyyid Kazim-i-Rashti, he went immediately to Karbala with his brother
> Abdu'l-Hamid and spent the winter in Siyyid Kazim's classes. After Naw-
> Ruz
> Siyyid Kazim sent him back to Qazvin where he worked as a merchant for a
> number of years. He was apparently married and had children.
> 
> Hearing of the Bab's proclamation, he set out for Shiraz--immediately and
> on foot, according to one report. Hearing in Tehran that the Bab had
> instructed his followers to meet him in Karbila, he went there, only to
> find that the Bab had in fact gone to Bushihr and Shiraz. He joined the
> party of Shaykhis seeking the Bab, waited for a time in Isfahan, and
> finally met the Bab with the first group of believers allowed to enter
> Shiraz. There he became a confirmed believer.
> 
> When his followers caused disturbances in the city, the Bab sent most of
> the believers away but ordered Mulla Abdu'l-Karim to stay and make fair
> copies of his writings as they were revealed, a task he shared with Shaykh
> Hasan-i-Zunuzi and Siyyid Husayn-i-Yazdi. Just before the Bab was sent to
> Isfahan, he sent these three ahead where they continued to act as his
> secretaries, receiving letters from believers and transcribing the replies.
> Later when the Bab was living secretly in the house of Manuchihr Khan,
> they
> continued this task and were the only believers allowed to see him. After
> the governor's death in 1847, he followed the Bab to Kashan, Qum, and
> Kulayn, where he probably remained for the two to three weeks until the
> Bab
> left. He did not see the Bab again.
> 
> Mirza Lutf-Ali (TSA 2:232-33) reports that Mulla Abdu'l-Karim tried to go
> to the fort of Shaykh Tabarsi with Aqa Muhammad-Jafar-i- Tabrizi but
> that
> they were detained in Shir-Gah. Hearing this, Mulla Husayn sent out a
> party under Mirza Muhammad-Baqir-i-Hirati that brought them to the fort.
> A
> few days later Mulla Husayn sent him to Sari to attend Quddus who was
> detained there. Quddus in turn sent him away with instruction to
> personally
> serve the Bab. Another report states that he took part in the disturbances
> in Khurasan but did not reach the fort (Z H). Both versions are open to
> doubt since they are not mentioned in Nabil, who otherwise has full
> particulars on his activities.
> 
> Soon after, he settled in Tehran where he lived under the protection of
> Bahá'u'lláh and worked as a scribe, spending his evenings making copies of
> the works of the Bab, which he gave as gifts. In late 1848 a young Babi,
> Nabil-i-Zarandi, arrived in Tehran and settled at the Madrasiy-i-
> Daru'sh-Shifay-i-Masjid-i-Shah where Mulla Abdu'l-Karim was then living.
> He
> befriended Nabil and introduced him to the leading Babis of Tehran,
> including Bahá'u'lláh and his family.
> 
> It was through Mulla Abdu'l-Karim that Bahá'u'lláh corresponded with the
> Bab after his return from Mazandaran. With him Bahá'u'lláh originated the
> plan to proclaim Mirza Yahya as the Bab's successor while keeping him in
> hiding--this in order to deflect attention from Bahá'u'lláh, who was well
> known to the authorities and the people. (TN 37/67-68. MMA 174. RG 1:53-
> 54,
> 2:247-48.)
> 
> During the persecutions of February 1850, Mulla Abdu'l-Karim took refuge
> in
> the Masjid-i-Shah, the royal mosque adjacent to the madrasih in which he
> was living. Warned by Bahá'u'lláh that the Amir-Nizam had ordered the
> Imam-Jumih to arrest him in the sanctuary, he escaped in disguise to Qum.
> From about this time he was generally known as Mirza Ahmad-i-Katib
> "the
> scribe"--a name given him by Bahá'u'lláh, probably as an alias rather than
> as an honorific. In Qum, shortly before the Bab's martyrdom, he received a
> coffer from the Bab containing the last of his writings and his pen-case,
> seals, rings, and the famous pentacle tablet containing 350 derivatives of
> the word Baha. He left the same day for Tehran, explaining that the Bab's
> accompanying letter ordered him to deliver it to Bahá'u'lláh.
> 
> After the Bab's martyrdom he and Bahá'u'lláh brother, Mirza Musa Kalim,
> received the remains of the Bab and his disciple. These they hid first in
> the Imam-Zadih Hasan, then in the house of Haji Sulayman Khan in Tehran,
> and finally in the Imamzadih Masum, where they remained hidden until
> 1284/1867-68 (DB 521, RB 3:424-25). In spring of 1851 Nabil found him
> living incognito in Kirmanshah. During Ramadan in the summer of 1851
> Bahá'u'lláh visited them and sent them both back to Tehran.
> 
> A letter survives from about August, 1851, soon after Bahá'u'lláh
> had arrived in Karbala, from Mulla Abdu'l-Karim to Sayyid Javad
> Karbala'i, in which he complains that a secret shared by himself
> and the Bab's other major scribe, Aqa Husayn Katib, was
> being widely divulged by the Babis. He says that the Babis should
> cease discussing Bahá'u'lláh's station, according to the latter's own
> wish, and identifies Bahá'u'lláh's good-pleasure with God's own: "He
> said that first of all, tell absolutely everyone that his station should
> not be divulged more than this. It is only fair that there
> be a period of silence. God willing, this is incumbent today,
> In one passage, Qazvini writes of Bahá'u'lláh, in Juan Cole's translation:
> 
> "But it is requested, according to his command,
> that the friends should desist from hinting around
> (shivih-ha) about him, as they had in the
> past, in such a way that they provoked troubles
> for the friends of God; and that they should avoid
> bringing sorrow upon that gentleman, who is of gentle
> disposition. Insofar as he has been in those parts for
> several days, let them behave in such a manner that
> he will not experience the dust of perturbation, and conduct
> themselves in accordance with his good-pleasure,
> which is, in truth, the good-pleasure of God Himself.
> Let them not provoke investigations or cause the encounter
> with God to become more distant, or become a veil of
> chains and manacles between the servants and the Lord of
> Lords any more than they already have been. For we have
> wronged ourselves by virtue of our regrettable actions."
> (`Andalib, vol. 16 (Spring 1997):30-31; see Juan R.I. Cole, "A Letter
> from
> `Abdu'l-Karim Qazvini to Sayyid Javad Karbala'i concerning Bahá'u'lláh in
> Iraq,
> dated August, 1851: Text,
> Translation, Commentary, Translations of Shaykhi, Babi and Bahá'í Texts no. 8 (October, 1997).
> 
> Mulla Abdu'l-Karim spent the winter of 1851-52 living in a caravansary
> outside
> the New Gate of Tehran where he spent his time copying the Bab's works.
> 
> When he and Nabil fell under suspicion once more, he fled to Qum. By
> summer
> he was back in Tehran and was arrested at the time of the attempt on the
> life of the Shah. His brother Abdu'l-Hamid, who had come to urge him to
> return to Qazvin, was arrested with him. The two brothers were
> imprisoned
> in the Siyah-Chal with Bahá'u'lláh until sometime between Aug. 22-26,
> when
> both were hacked to pieces with sword by the artillerymen of the royal
> bodyguard, probably in the present Maydan-i-Arg, adjacent to the
> artillerymen's camp and the passage to the Siyah-Chal.
> 
> Mirza Ahmad was important as an authority on the writings of the Bab.
> Several manuscripts in his hand of the Arabic and Persian Bayans survive.
> He handled the private correspondence of the Bab, Bahá'u'lláh, and Mirza
> Yahya with discretion. He was also one of Nabil's principal informants for
> the inner history of the early Babi period. Modern Bahá'ís know him best as
> the source through which Mulla Husayn's famous account of the Bab's
> declaration reached Nabil.
> 
> The sincerity of his spiritual search is apparent from his own account
> preserved in Nabil, from the trust placed in him by the Bab and
> Bahá'u'lláh, and from his own actions: his contentment with the modest
> stations of merchant and scribe when his learning and piety would have
> given him an honored place among the ulama, his abrupt departures in
> search
> of Siyyid Kazim and the Bab, and his refusal to rejoin his family in
> Qazvin. He enjoyed the respect and affection of Bahá'u'lláh and his family
> and the obvious devotion of Nabil.
> 
> Sources
> Dawnbreakers, xxxvii, lxiii, 52,
> 159-69, 176, 189, 192, 212, 214, 227-28, 331, 439, 504-6, 587-88, 592,
> 654.
> 
> TSA 2:232-33, 3:295-309
> 
> BBR 142
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views15193 views since posted 1998; last edit 2025-04-27 09:06 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../walbridge_encyclopedia_abdul-karim_qazvini;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Citation: ris/449
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> — *Mulla 'Abdu'l-Karim Qazvini (Mirza Ahmad Katib) (Used by permission of the curator)*