Mullá Hádí-i-Qazvini

Mullá Hádí-i-Qazvini
Declared	1844

Mullá Muhammad Hádí Qazvíní (Arabic: ملا هادي) was an early Persian Bábí named by Nabíl-i-A‘ẓam as a Letter of the Living. Unlike the majority of the Letters he avoided persecution and martyrdom by denying he was a Bábí and later became a supporter of Mírzá Yaḥyá.

Biography

Hádí was from Qazvín. He was born into a family of high-ranking mujtahids and his father was an eminent member of the clergy named Mullá ‘Abd al-Wahháb. Mullá Muḥammad-`Alí Qazvíní was his brother. He became a Shaykhí at some point and studied under Siyyid Káẓim. In The Dawn-Breakers Nabíl-i-A‘ẓam names him as one of the early Shaykhí's who traveled to Shiraz in mid-1844, met with the Báb and accepted His claims, and were appointed Letters of the Living, however other historical documents do not name him as a Letter.

As the Bábí community began to face increasingly violent persecution throughout the 1840's Hádí practiced Taqiyyah, a practice of formally denouncing ones beliefs in order to avoid persecution later forbidden by Bahá’u’lláh, and avoided involvement in the Bábí community. As a result he was among the few Letters of the Living to survive the period from 1848 to 1852 in which large amounts of Bábí's were martyred.

Some time after the martyrdom of Ṭáhirih in 1852 Hádí attempted to establish himself as the leader of the Bábí community in Qazvin securing the support of some of the community. After Bahá’u’lláh called on Mírzá Yaḥyá to renounce any claim to authority over the Bábí community in 1866 Hádí rejected Bahá’u’lláh's claim to be the Manifestation of God foretold by the Báb and supported Yaḥyá. He was named a Covenant-breaker by Bahá’u’lláh as a result.