“Withdrawn within himself, always absorbed in pious
practices, of extreme simplicity of manner, of a fascinating gentleness, those
gifts further heightened by his great youth and his marvellous charm, he drew
about himself a number of persons who were deeply edified. People then began to
speak of his science and of the penetrating eloquence of his discourses. He
could not open his lips (we are assured by those who knew him) without stirring
the hearts to their very depths.
“Speaking, moreover, with a profound reverence regarding the
Prophet, the Imáms and their holy companions, he fascinated the severely
orthodox while, at the same time, in more intimate addresses, the more ardent
and eager minds were happy to find that there was no rigidity in his profession
of traditional opinions which they would have found boring. His conversations,
on the contrary, opened before them unlimited horizons, varied, colored,
mysterious, with shadows broken here and there by patches of blinding light
which transported those imaginative people of Persia into a state of ecstasy.”
(Comte de Gobineau’s “Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Centrale,”
p. 118.)
(Footnotes to Chapter 3 of ‘The Dawn-Breakers’, provided by Shoghi
Effendi)
