a young age, perhaps in recognition for a leadership role he took on as a child. It is not part of his given name. His father Hajji Mulláh Abdullah was a dyer; his mother was a poet known for her piety and knowledge. They had five children, of whom three would become significant Bábís. Like most young boys of the era he received a minimal grammar school education at the local maktab (school) where he studied the Quran, reading, writing and basic arithmetic. Although he would later distinguish himself as a military leader, and traverse the entirety of Persia on foot multiple times, Mullá Husayn is reported to have been in poor health from a young age. Contemporary reports indicate that he received treatment for epilepsy and heart palpitations. A critic of the Bábí movement suggested that he received early training in swordsmanship, while childhood friends deny this, indicating he often had difficulty even with the physical exertion involved in lengthy writing sessions as a student and in his later work as a scribe and copyist. At the age of twelve he left school and pursued higher education in the madrasa (seminary) of Mashhad and Isfahan–which included lessons in Persian literature and the Qurʼan–while working to master the art of debate. Scholars have suggested that his family members practiced Ismaʻili Shiʻism, but in Mashhad and Isfahan he studied Muslim theology and jurisprudence under prominent teachers from the Usuli school. In Mashhad he studied at the madrasa of Mirzá Jaf'ar, which exists to this day as one college of the larger Razavi University of Islamic Sciences. By 21, he had been licensed as an Usuli mujtahid (cleric), granting him the publicly recognized right to preach in mosques, take on students of theology, and issue fatwas (authoritative legal opinion). During his studies in Mashhad he became attracted to the teachings of the Shaykhi school of Shia Islam, founded by Shaykh Ahmad Ahsá'í and led at the time by his successor, Siyyid Kázim Rashtí. His interest in Shayki teachings seems to have emerged in Mashhad, but the exact origin of his interest is unknown; an early mystical bent and a desire to fuse scholarship with "inner knowledge" may have attracted him to the intuitive hermeneutical techniques used by the Shaykis. On the completion of his studies he was offered a position of religious leadership in his hometown, but declined. After a brief period