2.5  Mirza Hadi And His Alleged Relationship to the Primal Point
According to the Dawn-Breakers, Nabil’s Narrative, P. 52, “Some years later the BÁB was united in wedlock with the sister of Mirza Sayyid Hassan, and Mirza Abdul Qasim.” No further information is given.

According to the Point’s work entitled the Kitab-i Awwal [the First Book], otherwise known as Ahsan-ul-Qisas (the Best of Stories), or Qayyum-al-Asma, a commentary on Sura-i Yusuf [see 4.5.1], the name of the woman referred to in Nabil’s narrative was the Point’s first wife was Sara who bore him a son named Ahmad who did not survive him. The Primal Point died without issue.

In his new book entitled the Payam-i Padar (The Father’s Message), Fazlulah (or Fayzullah) Muhtadi, nicknamed Subhi, author of the Kitab-i Subhi former Persian Scribe of Abdul Baha Abbas, “a channel of grace between god and his creation.” Writes as follows:

PP. 141-142: “As the BÁB had no near relatives save three maternal uncles, there is too much talk about his kinsmen. Mirza Hadi was not a son of the BÁB’s maternal uncles. Mirza Hadi was the son of Sayyid Hassan son of Sayyid Abdul Qasim Saqa Khaneh who was head of a gang of breast-beaters [i.e. members of mourning procession beating their breasts] of Shah-Chiraq and received forty Tumans as wages per annum as a servant of that institution. On dit, he had kinship with the woman [i.e. Sara] Sayyid BÁB had married in Shiraz. He did nor his sons, did take any step in the BÁBi cause much less self-sacrifice. After sometime, Mirza Hadi, his grandson showed up at Acre and destitute of any assets, he took to wife Abdul Baha’s daughter Ziyaiyya Khanum and begot Shoghi plus two other sons plus two daughters and today he himself and his children also stand expelled from Shoghi Effendi’s court.

He did nothing but to draw money out of Abdul Baha’s parse, to eat and to belch. He was a man whose beard will not grow, to boot. One day Abdul Baha sent for him. He was told he was shaving. Abdul Baha retorted: Whose beard is he shaving, his beard does not grow!”

P. 147 : A jolly, unconventional and humorous Bahai in Haifa in repartee: If Baha was pleased to confer and did confer the title of Afnan on “the litters torn in the house of Mirza Abul-Qasim Saqa-Khana to the entire exclusion of children of Baha’s brothers, it was not for his creatures to call the bestowal in question and “to ask why or wherefor or how?”

The foregoing quotation from Subhi’s Payam-i Padar trace out the pedigree of Shoghi Effendi’s father Mirza Hadi Afnan, one of the two hollowed and sacred Lote-Trees.” According to the genealogy of Sayyid Ali Muhammad the BÁB or the Point prepared by Shoghi Effendi, the Dawn-Breakers, Nabil Narrative, American Edition, pp. lviii-lix, Baha’s son-in-law Mirza Muhsin was the brother of Baha’s son-in-law Sayyid Ali, Sir Abbas Effendi’s son-in-law Mirza Hadi was the son of Sayyid Muhammad Husayn, son of Mirza Abu-al Qasim known as Saqa-Khaneh, head of a gang of breast-beaters (Sineh-Zanan; i.e. members of mourning procession beating their breasts) in the employ of the Shah-Cheragh Shrine in Shiraz. Sayyid Hasan and Mirza Abu-al-Qasim, according to the genealogy, were related to the Point through his wife Khadija-Baqum, their sister, whose only child by the Point died in infancy. Neither Sayyid Hasan nor Mirza Abu-al-Qasim were believers in the Point. Neither of these two nor their issues made any contribution to the Point’s cause.

The relationship of Baha’s son-law to the Primal Point is in the nature of seven cousins removed.
According to the bey attached to the genealogy, Sayyid Hasan appears to have married BiBi-Jan-Begum, daughter of Sayyid Muhammad, the Point’s maternal uncle. The genealogy does not specify the number of wives he had, and it is not clear whether all his eleven children were by that wife. The genealogy prepared by Shoghi Effendi has not been verified by any other source.

The only maternal uncle, who features prominently in the Point’s writings, and who was a believer in him, was Mirza Sayyid Ali surnamed the Most Great Maternal Uncle (Khal-i-Azam).

Mirza Hadi’s relationship to the Point is in the nature of several cousins removed. He turned up at Acre with the clothes he stood in to become Sir Abbas Effendi’s on-in-law. According to Subhi in Payam-i-Pedar Mirza Hadi métier was “to amass wealth at the expense of Sir Abbas Effendi, to eat and belch.”

In his hey-day when he basked in the smiles of Shoghi Effendi, he made obeisance to him, accompanied him in his constitutionals, walked behind him and kept a respectable distance from him to set an example to others. Mirza Hadi foresaw that history was to repeat itself as in the case of Sir Abbas Effendi and his brothers.

Without Shoghi Effendi’s prior permission he sold his garden in the German colony in Haifa for a huge sum of money and divided the proceeds among his other children. This sin of omission or commission sealed Mirza Hadi’s doom, banished from his home and accompanied by his wife, Mirza Hadi and his wife Ziyaiyya Khanum retired to their farm on the slopes of Mount Carmel, where they spent the rest of their term in life, forsaken by the believers and excommunicated by their own son. They are buried in the Bahai cemetery at the foot of Mt. Carmel. After Shoghi Effendi’s death, the heirs sold the farm and received the proceeds.

 

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