All hail, [_Sh_]iraz, hail! Oh site without peer! May God be the Watchman before thy gate, That the feet of Misfortune enter not here! Lest my Ruknabad be left desolate.... --Ḥáfiẓ
In the afternoon of May 22nd 1844 a traveller stood outside the gates of [_Sh_]íráz. He had come from Karbilá, on a spiritual quest to his native land of Írán. A boat had taken him to Bú[_sh_]ihr on the Persian Gulf. From that insalubrious port his route had lain over forbidding mountains to the renowned city of [_Sh_]íráz. He was accompanied by his brother and his nephew, both barely twenty years old, and he himself but in his early thirties. They had undertaken this journey for a purpose which to many seemed fantastic. But for themselves and many more like them it was real and urgent.
This traveller was the same Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bu[_sh_]rú'í, who, after the accomplishment of his highly fruitful mission in Írán on behalf of Siyyid Káẓim-i-Ra[_sh_]tí, had reached Karbilá only to find his teacher dead. He had learned that Siyyid Káẓim's parting counsel to his disciples had been to leave their homes and their cloisters, to abandon their studies and their debates and go out into the world to seek 'the Lord of the Age' (Ṣáḥibu'z-Zamán) whose advent had for centuries been the hope of countless millions. His supernal light would soon break upon the world, Siyyid Káẓim had said. Mullá Ḥusayn together with a number of Siyyid Káẓim's disciples kept vigil for forty days in the old mosque of Kúfih, nearly in ruins, and then set out on different routes to do their master's bidding.
Mullá Ḥusayn was a man of profound scholarship and unbending will. Nothing daunted him. Now, reaching the gates of [_Sh_]íráz, he sent his companions into the city to obtain lodgings, but he himself tarried for a while in the fields. His mind was occupied with the object of his quest, a quest that had brought him all those wearisome miles to [_Sh_]íráz, the home and the resting-place of two of the greatest poets of Írán. Here, some five hundred years before, Ḥáfiẓ had composed his superb, ethereal lyrics. Here Sa`dí had lived a good part of his life and had written his lucid prose, his lambent verse. Here had worked and died a host of men celebrated both in their own days and thereafter. The air of [_Sh_]íráz, the plain of [_Sh_]íráz, the roses of [_Sh_]íráz, the cypresses of [_Sh_]íráz, have all been lavishly praised.