Another of those who left their homes and came to settle in the neighborhood of
Bahá’u’lláh was
Ḥájí Muḥammad
Khán. This distinguished man, a native of Sístán, was a
Balúch. When he was very young, he caught fire and became a mystic—an árif, or adept. As a wandering dervish, completely selfless, he went out from his home and, following the dervish rule, traveled about in search of his mur
shíd, his perfect leader. For he yearned, as the Qalandar dervishes would say, to discover that “priest of the Magi,” or spiritual guide.
Far and wide, he carried on his search. He would speak to everyone he met. But what he longed for was the sweet scent of the love of God, and this he was unable to detect in anyone, whether Gnostic or philosopher, or member of the
Shaykhí sect. All he could see in the dervishes was their tufted beards, and their palms-up religion of beggary. They were “dervish”—poor in all save God—in name only; all they cared about, it seemed to him, was whatever came to hand. Nor did he find illumination among the Illuminati; he heard nothing from them but idle argument. He observed that their grandiloquence was not eloquence and that their subtleties were but windy figures of speech. Truth was not there; the core of inner meaning was absent.