Jináb-i-Quddús (Arabic: قدوس) (c.1820–1849), is the title of Mullá Muḥammad ʻAlí-i-Bárfurúshi, who was the most prominent disciple of the Báb. He was the eighteenth and final Letter of the Living.
Biography
Early life and education Quddús was born in Bárfurúsh (modern-day Babol), a city in Mazandaran Province near the Caspian Sea. At the time, Bárfurúsh had a population of approximately fifty thousand and was considered the largest city in Mazandaran. Quddús was born in a neighborhood named Chaharshanbeh-pish. His father's house was located near the eastern bank of the Áq-rúd River. Different sources offer slightly different years for his birth, between 1815 and 1822. Nabíl-i-Zarandí's hagiographic history The Dawn-Breakers states that he was born in 1822, and this date is often reproduced by Bahá'í sources, while Abbas Amanat concludes that 1819 is the most likely date, based on the evidence of Quddús' own writings and statements made by other primary sources about his age at the time of his death in 1849. However, in the book Ganj-i-Penhan (The Life and Works of Quddús), Hooshmand Dehghan determines the year 1822 based on various historical evidences.
His father, Áqá Muḥammad-Ṣáliḥ, was a small-scale, illiterate rice farmer. However, Dehqan notes that he was a broad bean farmer; as 'bakele' is the Mazandarani word for broad bean, he was known among the locals of Bárfurúsh as Áqá Muḥammad-Ṣáliḥ Bakele-kar. His mother—whose name is not recorded—was a descendant of Muhammad through his grandson Hasan, the second Imam of Shia Islam. His mother died when Quddús was still an infant. His father later remarried, and Quddús had a close relationship with his stepmother and his half-brothers by her. Neither his father or stepmother ever converted to Bábism or the Bahá'í Faith, but they received negative attention from local leaders because of their children's religious activities, and his stepmother developed close relationships with Baha'is in Qaem Shahr towards the end of her life. Quddús had two half-brothers—Mírzá Haydar and Áqá Muḥammad-Ṣádiq and a sister—Maryam. All of his siblings converted to Bábism, and at least Muhammad-Sádiq later became a Bahá'í. His parents and Muhammad-Sádiq outlived him, while Haydar was executed during the battle of Shaykh Tabarsi, and Maryam died shortly after Quddús and Haydar. During his lifetime, Babol was one of many Iranian cities where the resident of neighborhoods and villages were segregated according to each households allegiance to one of two moieties, known as the Haydarís and Ne'matis. Quddus' household and relatives were aligned with the Ne'mati faction. While the divide between Ne'matis and Haydarís was not fundamentally a religious divide, many Ne'mati's in Babol at the time were adherents of the nascent Shia school of Shaykhism, while the Haydarís largely remained aligned with the dominant Usuli school. The family of Quddús were supporters of the local Shayki cleric Mullá Muhammad-Hamza Sharíʻat-madár, who employed Quddús as an attendant in his youth and likely arranged for him to receive a basic education from other members of the cleric's retinue.
Clerical education After receiving a basic education in the house of Sharíʻat-madár, Quddús was sent to the town of Sárí for a madrassa education. After a few years in Sárí, he was sent to another madrassa in Mashad, where he became a member of a small group of Shaykhi students which included Mullá Husayn and a number of other future Bábís. When he was eighteen, Quddús left for the Shia holy city of Karbala in Iraq, where he spent four years studying under Sayyid Kázim, then the leader of the Shaykhi denomination. While living in Iraq he out religious retreats at the shrine of the ʻAtabát, and developed a particular devotion to the Imams. He returned to Bárfurúsh in March 1844, now a fully trained and licensed mullá—a Shia legal scholar endorsed by a teacher, and able to issue judgements on matters of religious law. Babol was disrupted by a conflict between Quddús childhood patron Sharī'atmadār and a cleric named Mulla Sa'id Bárfurúshi. Mullá Saʻíd-i-Bárfurúshí was called Sa'id al-ʻUlamá. Sharī'atmadār represented the Niʻmatí kinship group and the Shaykhi religious faction. The Sa'id al-ʻUlamá represented the Haydarís and the Usuli school. Sharī'atmadār and Quddús were supported by large numbers of residents in Niʻmatís areas. Quddús was described as charismatic and meticulously observant of religious rituals. The supporters of Sharī'atmadār and Quddús were largely peasants, while the Sa'id al-ʻUlamá had a wealthier set of supporters. He was described as a charismatic mullá (religious leader) with "affability, combined with dignity and bearing" and he became a notable person within his hometown. Mírzá Músá, who met him in 1846, said: "whoever was intimately associated with him was seized with an insatiable admiration for the charm of the youth".
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