house of Mirza
Musa, the Babi, an extremely modest residence, situated in the Kar_kh_
quarter, in the neighborhood of the western bank of the river, to which
Baha'u'llah's family had moved prior to His return from Kurdistan, had now
become the focal center of a great number of seekers, visitors and
pilgrims, including Kurds, Persians, Arabs and Turks, and derived from the
Muslim, the Jewish and Christian Faiths. It had, moreover, become a
veritable sanctuary to which the victims of the injustice of the official
representative of the Persian government were wont to flee, in the hope of
securing redress for the wrongs they had suffered.

At the same time an influx of Persian Babis, whose sole object was to
attain the presence of Baha'u'llah, swelled the stream of visitors that
poured through His hospitable doors. Carrying back, on their return to
their native country, innumerable testimonies, both oral and written, to
His steadily rising power and glory, they could not fail to contribute, in
a vast measure, to the expansion and progress of a newly-reborn Faith.
Four of the Bab's cousins and His maternal uncle, Haji Mirza Siyyid
Muhammad; a grand-daughter of Fath-'Ali _Sh_ah and fervent admirer of
Tahirih, surnamed Varaqatu'r-Ridvan; the erudite Mulla Muhammad-i-Qa'ini,
surnamed Nabil-i-Akbar; the already famous Mulla Sadiq-i-_Kh_urasani,
surnamed Ismu'llahu'l-Asdaq, who with Quddus had been ignominiously
persecuted in _Sh_iraz; Mulla Baqir, one of the Letters of the Living;
Siyyid Asadu'llah, surnamed Dayyan; the revered Siyyid Javad-i-Karbila'i;
Mirza Muhammad-Hasan and Mirza Muhammad-Husayn, later immortalized by the
titles of Sultanu'_sh_-_Sh_uhuda and Mahbubu'_sh_-_Sh_uhada (King of
Martyrs and Beloved of Martyrs) respectively; Mirza
Muhammad-'Aliy-i-Nahri, whose daughter, at a later date, was joined in
wedlock to 'Abdu'l-Baha; the immortal Siyyid Isma'il-i-Zavari'i; Haji
_Sh_ay_kh_ Muhammad, surnamed Nabil by the Bab; the accomplished Mirza
Aqay-i-Munir, surnamed Ismu'llahu'l-Munib; the long-suffering Haji
Muhammad-Taqi, surnamed Ayyub; Mulla Zaynu'l-Abidin, surnamed
Zaynu'l-Muqarrabin, who had ranked as a highly esteemed mujtahid--all these
were numbered among the visitors and fellow-disciples who crossed His
threshold, caught a glimpse of the splendor of His majesty, and
communicated far and wide the creative influences instilled into them
through their contact with His spirit. Mulla Muhammad-i-Zarandi, surnamed
N