- Chapter X -

The Rebellion of Mírzá Yaḥyá and the Proclamation of Bahá’u’lláh’s Mission in Adrianople

A twenty-year-old Faith had just begun to recover from a series of successive blows when a crisis of the first magnitude overtook it and shook it to its roots. Neither the tragic martyrdom of the Báb nor the ignominious attempt on the life of the sovereign, nor its bloody aftermath, nor Bahá’u’lláh’s humiliating banishment from His native land, nor even His two-year withdrawal to Kurdistán, devastating though they were in their consequences, could compare in gravity with this first major internal convulsion which seized a newly rearisen community, and which threatened to cause an irreparable breach in the ranks of its members. More odious than the unrelenting hostility which Abú-Jahl, the relative of Muḥammad, had exhibited, more shameful than the betrayal of Jesus Christ by His disciple, Judas Iscariot, more perfidious than the conduct of the sons of Jacob towards Joseph their brother, more abhorrent than the deed committed by one of the sons of Noah, more infamous than even the criminal act perpetrated by Cain against Abel, the monstrous behavior of Mírzá Yaḥyá, one of the half-brothers of Bahá’u’lláh, the nominee of the Báb, and recognized chief of the Bábí community, brought in its wake a period of travail which left its mark on the fortunes of the Faith for no less than half a century. This supreme crisis Bahá’u’lláh Himself designated as the Ayyám-i-Shidád (Days of Stress), during which “the most grievous veil” was torn asunder, and the “most great separation” was irrevocably effected. It immensely gratified and emboldened its external enemies, both civil and ecclesiastical, played into their hands, and evoked their unconcealed derision. It perplexed and confused the friends and supporters of Bahá’u’lláh, and seriously damaged the prestige of the Faith in the eyes of its western admirers. It had been brewing ever since the early days of Bahá’u’lláh’s sojourn in Baghdád, was temporarily suppressed by the creative forces which, under His as yet unproclaimed leadership, reanimated a disintegrating community, and finally broke out, in all its violence, in the years immediately preceding the proclamation of His Message. It brought incalculable sorrow to Bahá’u’lláh, visibly aged Him, and inflicted, through its repercussions, the heaviest blow ever sustained by Him in His lifetime. It was engineered throughout by the tortuous intrigues and incessant machinations of that same diabolical Siyyid Muḥammad, that vile whisperer who, disregarding Bahá’u’lláh’s advice, had insisted on accompanying Him to Constantinople and Adrianople, and was now redoubling his efforts, with unrelaxing vigilance, to bring it to a head.

Mírzá Yaḥyá had, ever since the return of Bahá’u’lláh from Sulaymáníyyih, either chosen to maintain himself in an inglorious seclusion in his own house, or had withdrawn, whenever danger threatened, to such places of safety as Ḥillih and Basra. To the latter town he had fled, disguised as a Baghdád Jew, and become a shoe merchant. So great was his terror that he is reported to have said on one occasion: “Whoever claims to have seen me, or to have heard my voice, I pronounce an infidel.” On being informed of Bahá’u’lláh’s impending departure for Constantinople, he at first hid himself in the garden of Huvaydar, in the vicinity of Baghdád, meditating meanwhile on the advisability of fleeing either to Abyssinia, India or some other country. Refusing to heed Bahá’u’lláh’s advice to proceed to Persia, and there disseminate the writings of the Báb, he sent a certain Ḥájí Muḥammad Káẓim, who resembled him, to the government-house to procure for him a passport in the name of Mírzá ‘Alíy-i-Kirmánsháhí, and left Baghdád, abandoning the writings there, and proceeded in disguise, accompanied by an Arab Bábí, named Ẓáhir, to Mosul, where he joined the exiles who were on their way to Constantinople.

A constant witness of the ever deepening attachment of the exiles to Bahá’u’lláh and of their amazing veneration for Him; fully aware of the heights to which his Brother’s popularity had risen in Baghdád, in the course of His journey to Constantinople, and later through His association with the notables and governors of Adrianople; incensed by the manifold evidences of the courage, the dignity, and independence which that Brother had demonstrated in His dealings with the authorities in the capital; provoked by the numerous Tablets which the Author of a newly-established Dispensation had been ceaselessly revealing; allowing himself to be duped by the enticing prospects of unfettered leadership held out to him by Siyyid Muḥammad, the Antichrist of the Bahá’í Revelation, even as Muḥammad Sháh had been misled by the Antichrist of the Bábí Revelation, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí; refusing to be admonished by prominent members of the community who advised him, in writing, to exercise wisdom and restraint; forgetful of the kindness and counsels of Bahá’u’lláh, who, thirteen years his senior, had watched over his early youth and manhood; emboldened by the sin-covering eye of his Brother, Who, on so many occasions, had drawn a veil over his many crimes and follies, this arch-breaker of the Covenant of the Báb, spurred on by his mounting jealousy and impelled by his passionate love of leadership, was driven to perpetrate such acts as defied either concealment or toleration.

Irremediably corrupted through his constant association with Siyyid Muḥammad, that living embodiment of wickedness, cupidity and deceit, he had already in the absence of Bahá’u’lláh from Baghdád, and even after His return from Sulaymáníyyih, stained the annals of the Faith with acts of indelible infamy. His corruption, in scores of instances, of the text of the Báb’s writings; the blasphemous addition he made to the formula of the adhán by the introduction of a passage in which he identified himself with the Godhead; his insertion of references in those writings to a succession in which he nominated himself and his descendants as heirs of the Báb; the vacillation and apathy he had betrayed when informed of the tragic death which his Master had suffered; his condemnation to death of all the Mirrors of the Bábí Dispensation, though he himself was one of those Mirrors; his dastardly act in causing the murder of Dayyán, whom he feared and envied; his foul deed in bringing about, during the absence of Bahá’u’lláh from Baghdád, the assassination of Mírzá ‘Alí-Akbar, the Báb’s cousin; and, most heinous of all, his unspeakably repugnant violation, during that same period, of the honor of the Báb Himself — all these, as attested by Áqáy-i-Kalím, and reported by Nabíl in his Narrative, were to be thrown into a yet more lurid light by further acts the perpetration of which were to seal irretrievably his doom.

Desperate designs to poison Bahá’u’lláh and His companions, and thereby reanimate his own defunct leadership, began, approximately a year after their arrival in Adrianople, to agitate his mind. Well aware of the erudition of his half-brother, Áqáy-i-Kalím, in matters pertaining to medicine, he, under various pretexts, sought enlightenment from him regarding the effects of certain herbs and poisons, and then began, contrary to his wont, to invite Bahá’u’lláh to his home, where, one day, having smeared His tea-cup with a substance he had concocted, he succeeded in poisoning Him sufficiently to produce a serious illness which lasted no less than a month, and which was accompanied by severe pains and high fever, the aftermath of which left Bahá’u’lláh with a shaking hand till the end of His life. So grave was His condition that a foreign doctor, named Shíshmán, was called in to attend Him. The doctor was so appalled by His livid hue that he deemed His case hopeless, and, after having fallen at His feet, retired from His presence without prescribing a remedy. A few days later that doctor fell ill and died. Prior to his death Bahá’u’lláh had intimated that doctor Shíshmán had sacrificed his life for Him. To Mírzá Áqá Ján, sent by Bahá’u’lláh to visit him, the doctor had stated that God had answered his prayers, and that after his death a certain Dr. Chúpán, whom he knew to be reliable, should, whenever necessary, be called in his stead.

On another occasion this same Mírzá Yaḥyá had, according to the testimony of one of his wives, who had temporarily deserted him and revealed the details of the above-mentioned act, poisoned the well which provided water for the family and companions of Bahá’u’lláh, in consequence of which the exiles manifested strange symptoms of illness. He even had, gradually and with great circumspection, disclosed to one of the companions, Ustád Muḥammad-‘Alíy-i-Salmání, the barber, on whom he had lavished great marks of favor, his wish that he, on some propitious occasion, when attending Bahá’u’lláh in His bath, should assassinate Him. “So enraged was Ustád Muḥammad-‘Alí,” Áqáy-i-Kalím, recounting this episode to Nabíl in Adrianople, has stated, “when apprized of this proposition, that he felt a strong desire to kill Mírzá Yaḥyá on the spot, and would have done so but for his fear of Bahá’u’lláh’s displeasure. I happened to be the first person he encountered as he came out of the bath weeping.… I eventually succeeded, after much persuasion, in inducing him to return to the bath and complete his unfinished task.” Though ordered subsequently by Bahá’u’lláh not to divulge this occurrence to any one, the barber was unable to hold his peace and betrayed the secret, plunging thereby the community into great consternation. “When the secret nursed in his (Mírzá Yaḥyá) bosom was revealed by God,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself affirms, “he disclaimed such an intention, and imputed it to that same servant (Ustád Muḥammad-‘Alí).”

The moment had now arrived for Him Who had so recently, both verbally and in numerous Tablets, revealed the implications of the claims He had advanced, to acquaint formally the one who was the nominee of the Báb with the character of His Mission. Mírzá Áqá Ján was accordingly commissioned to bear to Mírzá Yaḥyá the newly revealed Súriy-i-Amr, which unmistakably affirmed those claims, to read aloud to him its contents, and demand an unequivocal and conclusive reply. Mírzá Yaḥyá’s request for a one day respite, during which he could meditate his answer, was granted. The only reply, however, that was forthcoming was a counter-declaration, specifying the hour and the minute in which he had been made the recipient of an independent Revelation, necessitating the unqualified submission to him of the peoples of the earth in both the East and the West.

Repudiation by Mírzá Yaḥyá of the mission of Bahá’u’lláh

So presumptuous an assertion, made by so perfidious an adversary to the envoy of the Bearer of so momentous a Revelation was the signal for the open and final rupture between Bahá’u’lláh and Mírzá Yaḥyá — a rupture that marks one of the darkest dates in Bahá’í history. Wishing to allay the fierce animosity that blazed in the bosom of His enemies, and to assure to each one of the exiles a complete freedom to choose between Him and them, Bahá’u’lláh withdrew with His family to the house of Riḍá Big (Shavvál 22, 1282 A.H.), which was rented by His order, and refused, for two months, to associate with either friend or stranger, including His own companions. He instructed Áqáy-i-Kalím to divide all the furniture, bedding, clothing and utensils that were to be found in His home, and send half to the house of Mírzá Yaḥyá; to deliver to him certain relics he had long coveted, such as the seals, rings, and manuscripts in the handwriting of the Báb; and to insure that he received his full share of the allowance fixed by the government for the maintenance of the exiles and their families. He, moreover, directed Áqáy-i-Kalím to order to attend to Mírzá Yaḥyá’s shopping, for several hours a day, any one of the companions whom he himself might select, and to assure him that whatever would henceforth be received in his name from Persia would be delivered into his own hands.

“That day,” Áqáy-i-Kalím is reported to have informed Nabíl, “witnessed a most great commotion. All the companions lamented in their separation from the Blessed Beauty.” “Those days,” is the written testimony of one of those companions, “were marked by tumult and confusion. We were sore-perplexed, and greatly feared lest we be permanently deprived of the bounty of His presence.”

This grief and perplexity were, however, destined to be of short duration. The calumnies with which both Mírzá Yaḥyá and Siyyid Muḥammad now loaded their letters, which they disseminated in Persia and ‘Iráq, as well as the petitions, couched in obsequious language, which the former had addressed to Khurshíd Páshá, the governor of Adrianople, and to his assistant ‘Azíz Páshá, impelled Bahá’u’lláh to emerge from His retirement. He was soon after informed that this same brother had despatched one of his wives to the government house to complain that her husband had been cheated of his rights, and that her children were on the verge of starvation — an accusation that spread far and wide and, reaching Constantinople, became, to Bahá’u’lláh’s profound distress, the subject of excited discussion and injurious comment in circles that had previously been greatly impressed by the high standard which His noble and dignified behavior had set in that city. Siyyid Muḥammad journeyed to the capital, begged the Persian Ambassador, the Mushíru’d-Dawlih, to allot Mírzá Yaḥyá and himself a stipend, accused Bahá’u’lláh of sending an agent to assassinate Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, and spared no effort to heap abuse and calumny on One Who had, for so long and so patiently, forborne with him, and endured in silence the enormities of which he had been guilty.

After a stay of about one year in the house of Riḍá Big Bahá’u’lláh returned to the house He had occupied before His withdrawal from His companions, and thence, after three months, He transferred His residence to the house of ‘Izzat Áqá, in which He continued to live until His departure from Adrianople. It was in this house, in the month of Jamádíyu’l-Avval 1284 A.H. (Sept. 1867) that an event of the utmost significance occurred, which completely discomfited Mírzá Yaḥyá and his supporters, and proclaimed to friend and foe alike Bahá’u’lláh’s triumph over them. A certain Mír Muḥammad, a Bábí of Shíráz, greatly resenting alike the claims and the cowardly seclusion of Mírzá Yaḥyá, succeeded in forcing Siyyid Muḥammad to induce him to meet Bahá’u’lláh face to face, so that a discrimination might be publicly effected between the true and the false. Foolishly assuming that his illustrious Brother would never countenance such a proposition, Mírzá Yaḥyá appointed the mosque of Sulṭán Salím as the place for their encounter. No sooner had Bahá’u’lláh been informed of this arrangement than He set forth, on foot, in the heat of midday, and accompanied by this same Mír Muḥammad, for the afore-mentioned mosque, which was situated in a distant part of the city, reciting, as He walked, through the streets and markets, verses, in a voice and in a manner that greatly astonished those who saw and heard Him.

“O Muḥammad!”, are some of the words He uttered on that memorable occasion, as testified by Himself in a Tablet, “He Who is the Spirit hath, verily, issued from His habitation, and with Him have come forth the souls of God’s chosen ones and the realities of His Messengers. Behold, then, the dwellers of the realms on high above Mine head, and all the testimonies of the Prophets in My grasp. Say: Were all the divines, all the wise men, all the kings and rulers on earth to gather together, I, in very truth, would confront them, and would proclaim the verses of God, the Sovereign, the Almighty, the All-Wise. I am He Who feareth no one, though all who are in heaven and all who are on earth rise up against me.… This is Mine hand which God hath turned white for all the worlds to behold. This is My staff; were We to cast it down, it would, of a truth, swallow up all created things.” Mír Muḥammad, who had been sent ahead to announce Bahá’u’lláh’s arrival, soon returned, and informed Him that he who had challenged His authority wished, owing to unforeseen circumstances, to postpone for a day or two the interview. Upon His return to His house Bahá’u’lláh revealed a Tablet, wherein He recounted what had happened, fixed the time for the postponed interview, sealed the Tablet with His seal, entrusted it to Nabíl, and instructed him to deliver it to one of the new believers, Mullá Muḥammad-i-Tabrízí, for the information of Siyyid Muḥammad, who was in the habit of frequenting that believer’s shop. It was arranged to demand from Siyyid Muḥammad, ere the delivery of that Tablet, a sealed note pledging Mírzá Yaḥyá, in the event of failing to appear at the trysting-place, to affirm in writing that his claims were false. Siyyid Muḥammad promised that he would produce the next day the document required, and though Nabíl, for three successive days, waited in that shop for the reply, neither did the Siyyid appear, nor was such a note sent by him. That undelivered Tablet, Nabíl, recording twenty-three years later this historic episode in his chronicle, affirms was still in his possession, “as fresh as the day on which the Most Great Branch had penned it, and the seal of the Ancient Beauty had sealed and adorned it,” a tangible and irrefutable testimony to Bahá’u’lláh’s established ascendancy over a routed opponent.

Bahá’u’lláh’s reaction to this most distressful episode in His ministry was, as already observed, characterized by acute anguish. “He who for months and years,” He laments, “I reared with the hand of loving-kindness hath risen to take My life.” “The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors,” He wrote, in allusion to these perfidious enemies, “have bowed Me down, and turned My hair white. Shouldst thou present thyself before My throne, thou wouldst fail to recognize the Ancient Beauty, for the freshness of His countenance is altered, and its brightness hath faded, by reason of the oppression of the infidels.” “By God!” He cries out, “No spot is left on My body that hath not been touched by the spears of thy machinations.” And again: “Thou hast perpetrated against thy Brother what no man hath perpetrated against another.” “What hath proceeded from thy pen,” He, furthermore, has affirmed, “hath caused the Countenances of Glory to be prostrated upon the dust, hath rent in twain the Veil of Grandeur in the Sublime Paradise, and lacerated the hearts of the favored ones established upon the loftiest seats.” And yet, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, a forgiving Lord assures this same brother, this “source of perversion,” “from whose own soul the winds of passion had risen and blown upon him,” to “fear not because of thy deeds,” bids him “return unto God, humble, submissive and lowly,” and affirms that “He will put away from thee thy sins,” and that “thy Lord is the Forgiving, the Mighty, the All-Merciful.”

The “Most Great Idol” had at the bidding and through the power of Him Who is the Fountain-head of the Most Great Justice been cast out of the community of the Most Great Name, confounded, abhorred and broken. Cleansed from this pollution, delivered from this horrible possession, God’s infant Faith could now forge ahead, and, despite the turmoil that had convulsed it, demonstrate its capacity to fight further battles, capture loftier heights, and win mightier victories.

A temporary breach had admittedly been made in the ranks of its supporters. Its glory had been eclipsed, and its annals stained forever. Its name, however, could not be obliterated, its spirit was far from broken, nor could this so-called schism tear its fabric asunder. The Covenant of the Báb, to which reference has already been made, with its immutable truths, incontrovertible prophecies, and repeated warnings, stood guard over that Faith, insuring its integrity, demonstrating its incorruptibility, and perpetuating its influence.

Though He Himself was bent with sorrow, and still suffered from the effects of the attempt on His life, and though He was well aware a further banishment was probably impending, yet, undaunted by the blow which His Cause had sustained, and the perils with which it was encompassed, Bahá’u’lláh arose with matchless power, even before the ordeal was overpast, to proclaim the Mission with which He had been entrusted to those who, in East and West, had the reins of supreme temporal authority in their grasp. The day-star of His Revelation was, through this very Proclamation, destined to shine in its meridian glory, and His Faith manifest the plenitude of its divine power.

Proclamation of the Message of Bahá’u’lláh

A period of prodigious activity ensued which, in its repercussions, outshone the vernal years of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry. “Day and night,” an eye-witness has written, “the Divine verses were raining down in such number that it was impossible to record them. Mírzá Áqá Ján wrote them as they were dictated, while the Most Great Branch was continually occupied in transcribing them. There was not a moment to spare.” “A number of secretaries,” Nabíl has testified, “were busy day and night and yet they were unable to cope with the task. Among them was Mírzá Báqir-i-Shírází.… He alone transcribed no less than two thousand verses every day. He labored during six or seven months. Every month the equivalent of several volumes would be transcribed by him and sent to Persia. About twenty volumes, in his fine penmanship, he left behind as a remembrance for Mírzá Áqá Ján.” Bahá’u’lláh, Himself, referring to the verses revealed by Him, has written: “Such are the outpourings … from the clouds of Divine Bounty that within the space of an hour the equivalent of a thousand verses hath been revealed.” “So great is the grace vouchsafed in this day that in a single day and night, were an amanuensis capable of accomplishing it to be found, the equivalent of the Persian Bayán would be sent down from the heaven of Divine holiness.” “I swear by God!” He, in another connection has affirmed, “In those days the equivalent of all that hath been sent down aforetime unto the Prophets hath been revealed.” “That which hath already been revealed in this land (Adrianople),” He, furthermore, referring to the copiousness of His writings, has declared, “secretaries are incapable of transcribing. It has, therefore, remained for the most part untranscribed.”

Already in the very midst of that grievous crisis, and even before it came to a head, Tablets unnumbered were streaming from the pen of Bahá’u’lláh, in which the implications of His newly-asserted claims were fully expounded. The Súriy-i-Amr, the Lawḥ-i-Nuqṭih, the Lawḥ-i-Aḥmad, the Súriy-i-Aṣḥáb, the Lawḥ-i-Sayyáḥ, the Súriy-i-Damm, the Súriy-i-Ḥajj, the Lawḥu’r-Rúḥ, the Lawḥu’r-Riḍván, the Lawḥu’t-Tuqá were among the Tablets which His pen had already set down when He transferred His residence to the house of ‘Izzat Áqá. Almost immediately after the “Most Great Separation” had been effected, the weightiest Tablets associated with His sojourn in Adrianople were revealed. The Súriy-i-Mulúk, the most momentous Tablet revealed by Bahá’u’lláh (Súrih of Kings) in which He, for the first time, directs His words collectively to the entire company of the monarchs of East and West, and in which the Sulṭán of Turkey, and his ministers, the kings of Christendom, the French and Persian Ambassadors accredited to the Sublime Porte, the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders in Constantinople, its wise men and inhabitants, the people of Persia and the philosophers of the world are separately addressed; the Kitáb-i-Badí‘, His apologia, written to refute the accusations levelled against Him by Mírzá Mihdíy-i-Rashtí, corresponding to the Kitáb-i-Íqán, revealed in defense of the Bábí Revelation; the Munájátháy-i-Ṣíyám (Prayers for Fasting), written in anticipation of the Book of His Laws; the first Tablet to Napoleon III, in which the Emperor of the French is addressed and the sincerity of his professions put to the test; the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán, His detailed epistle to Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, in which the aims, purposes and principles of His Faith are expounded and the validity of His Mission demonstrated; the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, begun in the village of Káshánih on His way to Gallipoli, and completed shortly after at Gyáwur-Kyuy — these may be regarded not only as the most outstanding among the innumerable Tablets revealed in Adrianople, but as occupying a foremost position among all the writings of the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation.

In His message to the kings of the earth, Bahá’u’lláh, in the Súriy-i-Mulúk, discloses the character of His Mission; exhorts them to embrace His Message; affirms the validity of the Báb’s Revelation; reproves them for their indifference to His Cause; enjoins them to be just and vigilant, to compose their differences and reduce their armaments; expatiates on His afflictions; commends the poor to their care; warns them that “Divine chastisement” will “assail” them “from every direction,” if they refuse to heed His counsels, and prophesies His “triumph upon earth” though no king be found who would turn his face towards Him.

The kings of Christendom, more specifically, Bahá’u’lláh, in that same Tablet, censures for having failed to “welcome” and “draw nigh” unto Him Who is the “Spirit of Truth,” and for having persisted in “disporting” themselves with their “pastimes and fancies,” and declares to them that they “shall be called to account” for their doings, “in the presence of Him Who shall gather together the entire creation.”

He bids Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz “hearken to the speech … of Him Who unerringly treadeth the Straight Path”; exhorts him to direct in person the affairs of his people, and not to repose confidence in unworthy ministers; admonishes him not to rely on his treasures, nor to “overstep the bounds of moderation” but to deal with his subjects with “undeviating justice”; and acquaints him with the overwhelming burden of His own tribulations. In that same Tablet He asserts His innocence and His loyalty to the Sulṭán and his ministers; describes the circumstances of His banishment from the capital; and assures him of His prayers to God on his behalf.

To this same Sulṭán He, moreover, as attested by the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, transmitted, while in Gallipoli, a verbal message through a Turkish officer named ‘Umar, requesting the sovereign to grant Him a ten minute interview, “so that he may demand whatsoever he would deem to be a sufficient testimony and would regard as proof of the veracity of Him Who is the Truth,” adding that “should God enable Him to produce it, let him, then, release these wronged ones and leave them to themselves.”

To Napoleon III Bahá’u’lláh addressed a specific Tablet, which was forwarded through one of the French ministers to the Emperor, in which He dwelt on the sufferings endured by Himself and His followers; avowed their innocence; reminded him of his two pronouncements on behalf of the oppressed and the helpless; and, desiring to test the sincerity of his motives, called upon him to “inquire into the condition of such as have been wronged,” and “extend his care to the weak,” and look upon Him and His fellow-exiles “with the eye of loving-kindness.”

To Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh He revealed a Tablet, the lengthiest epistle to any single sovereign, in which He testified to the unparalleled severity of the troubles that had touched Him; recalled the sovereign’s recognition of His innocence on the eve of His departure for ‘Iráq; adjured him to rule with justice; described God’s summons to Himself to arise and proclaim His Message; affirmed the disinterestedness of His counsels; proclaimed His belief in the unity of God and in His Prophets; uttered several prayers on the Sháh’s behalf; justified His own conduct in ‘Iráq; stressed the beneficent influence of His teachings; and laid special emphasis on His condemnation of all forms of violence and mischief. He, moreover, in that same Tablet, demonstrated the validity of His Mission; expressed the wish to be “brought face to face with the divines of the age, and produce proofs and testimonies in the presence of His Majesty,” which would establish the truth of His Cause; exposed the perversity of the ecclesiastical leaders in His own days, as well as in the days of Jesus Christ and of Muḥammad; prophesied that His sufferings will be followed by the “outpourings of a supreme mercy” and by an “overflowing prosperity”; drew a parallel between the afflictions that had befallen His kindred and those endured by the relatives of the Prophet Muḥammad; expatiated on the instability of human affairs; depicted the city to which He was about to be banished; foreshadowed the future abasement of the ‘ulamás; and concluded with yet another expression of hope that the sovereign might be assisted by God to “aid His Faith and turn towards His justice.”

To ‘Alí Páshá, the Grand Vizir, Bahá’u’lláh addressed the Súriy-i-Ra’ís. In this He bids him “hearken to the voice of God”; declares that neither his “grunting,” nor the “barking” of those around him, nor “the hosts of the world” can withhold the Almighty from achieving His purpose; accuses him of having perpetrated that which has caused “the Apostle of God to lament in the most sublime Paradise,” and of having conspired with the Persian Ambassador to harm Him; forecasts “the manifest loss” in which he would soon find himself; glorifies the Day of His own Revelation; prophesies that this Revelation will “erelong encompass the earth and all that dwell therein,” and that the “Land of Mystery (Adrianople) and what is beside it … shall pass out of the hands of the King, and commotions shall appear, and the voice of lamentation shall be raised, and the evidences of mischief shall be revealed on all sides”; identifies that same Revelation with the Revelations of Moses and of Jesus; recalls the “arrogance” of the Persian Emperor in the days of Muḥammad, the “transgression” of Pharaoh in the days of Moses, and of the “impiety” of Nimrod in the days of Abraham; and proclaims His purpose to “quicken the world and unite all its peoples.”

The ministers of the Sulṭán, He, in the Súriy-i-Mulúk, reprimands for their conduct, in passages in which He challenges the soundness of their principles, predicts that they will be punished for their acts, denounces their pride and injustice, asserts His integrity and detachment from the vanities of the world, and proclaims His innocence.

The French Ambassador accredited to the Sublime Porte, He, in that same Súrih, rebukes for having combined with the Persian Ambassador against Him; reminds him of the counsels of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Gospel of St. John; warns him that he will be held answerable for the things his hands have wrought; and counsels him, together with those like him, not to deal with any one as he has dealt with Him.

To the Persian Ambassador in Constantinople, He, in that same Tablet, addresses lengthy passages in which He exposes his delusions and calumnies, denounces his injustice and the injustice of his countrymen, assures him that He harbors no ill-will against him, declares that, should he realize the enormity of his deed, he would mourn all the days of his life, affirms that he will persist till his death in his heedlessness, justifies His own conduct in Ṭihrán and in ‘Iráq, and bears witness to the corruption of the Persian minister in Baghdád and to his collusion with this minister.

To the entire company of the ecclesiastical leaders of Sunní Islám in Constantinople He addresses a specific message in the same Súriy-i-Mulúk in which He denounces them as heedless and spiritually dead; reproaches them for their pride and for failing to seek His presence; unveils to them the full glory and significance of His Mission; affirms that their leaders, had they been alive, would have “circled around Him”; condemns them as “worshippers of names” and lovers of leadership; and avows that God will find naught acceptable from them unless they “be made new” in His estimation.

To the wise men of the City of Constantinople and the philosophers of the world He devotes the concluding passages of the Súriy-i-Mulúk, in which He cautions them not to wax proud before God; reveals to them the essence of true wisdom; stresses the importance of faith and upright conduct; rebukes them for having failed to seek enlightenment from Him; and counsels them not to “overstep the bounds of God,” nor turn their gaze towards the “ways of men and their habits.”

To the inhabitants of Constantinople He, in that same Tablet, declares that He “feareth no one except God,” that He speaks “naught except at His (God) bidding,” that He follows naught save God’s truth, that He found the governors and elders of the city as “children gathered about and disporting themselves with clay,” and that He perceived no one sufficiently mature to acquire the truths which God had taught Him. He bids them take firm hold on the precepts of God; warns them not to wax proud before God and His loved ones; recalls the tribulations, and extols the virtues, of the Imám Ḥusayn; prays that He Himself may suffer similar afflictions; prophesies that erelong God will raise up a people who will recount His troubles and demand the restitution of His rights from His oppressors; and calls upon them to give ear to His words, and return unto God and repent.

And finally, addressing the people of Persia, He, in that same Tablet, affirms that were they to put Him to death God will assuredly raise up One in His stead, and asserts that the Almighty will “perfect His light” though they, in their secret hearts, abhor it.

So weighty a proclamation, at so critical a period, by the Bearer of so sublime a Message, to the kings of the earth, Muslim and Christian alike, to ministers and ambassadors, to the ecclesiastical heads of Sunní Islám, to the wise men and inhabitants of Constantinople — the seat of both the Sultanate and the Caliphate — to the philosophers of the world and the people of Persia, is not to be regarded as the only outstanding event associated with Bahá’u’lláh’s sojourn in Adrianople. Other developments and happenings of great, though lesser, significance must be noted in these pages, if we would justly esteem the importance of this agitated and most momentous phase of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry.

It was at this period, and as a direct consequence of the rebellion and appalling downfall of Mírzá Yaḥyá, that certain disciples of Bahá’u’lláh (who may well rank among the “treasures” promised Him by God when bowed down with chains in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán), including among them one of the Letters of the Living, some survivors of the struggle of Ṭabarsí, and the erudite Mírzá Aḥmad-i-Azghandí, arose to defend the newborn Faith, to refute, in numerous and detailed apologies, as their Master had done in the Kitáb-i-Badí‘, the arguments of His opponents, and to expose their odious deeds. It was at this period that the limits of the Faith were enlarged, when its banner was permanently planted in the Caucasus by the hand of Mullá Abú-Ṭálib and others whom Nabíl had converted, when its first Egyptian center was established at the time when Siyyid Ḥusayn-i-Káshání and Ḥájí Báqir-i-Káshání took up their residence in that country, and when to the lands already warmed and illuminated by the early rays of God’s Revelation — ‘Iráq, Turkey and Persia — Syria was added. It was in this period that the greeting of “Alláh-u-Abhá” superseded the old salutation of “Alláh-u-Akbar,” and was simultaneously adopted in Persia and Adrianople, the first to use it in the former country, at the suggestion of Nabíl, being Mullá Muḥammad-i-Furúghí, one of the defenders of the Fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí. It was in this period that the phrase “the people of the Bayán,” now denoting the followers of Mírzá Yaḥyá, was discarded, and was supplanted by the term “the people of Bahá.” It was during those days that Nabíl, recently honored with the title of Nabíl-i-A‘ẓam, in a Tablet specifically addressed to him, in which he was bidden to “deliver the Message” of his Lord “to East and West,” arose, despite intermittent persecutions, to tear asunder the “most grievous veil,” to implant the love of an adored Master in the hearts of His countrymen, and to champion the Cause which his Beloved had, under such tragic conditions, proclaimed. It was during those same days that Bahá’u’lláh instructed this same Nabíl to recite on His behalf the two newly revealed Tablets of the Pilgrimage, and to perform, in His stead, the rites prescribed in them, when visiting the Báb’s House in Shíráz and the Most Great House in Baghdád — an act that marks the inception of one of the holiest observances, which, in a later period, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas was to formally establish. It was during this period that the “Prayers of Fasting” were revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, in anticipation of the Law which that same Book was soon to promulgate. It was, too, during the days of Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to Adrianople that a Tablet was addressed by Him to Mullá ‘Alí-Akbar-i-Shahmírzádí and Jamál-i-Burújirdí, two of His well-known followers in Ṭihrán, instructing them to transfer, with the utmost secrecy, the remains of the Báb from the Imám-Zádih Ma‘ṣúm, where they were concealed, to some other place of safety — an act which was subsequently proved to have been providential, and which may be regarded as marking another stage in the long and laborious transfer of those remains to the heart of Mt. Carmel, and to the spot which He, in His instructions to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was later to designate. It was during that period that the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn (Súrih of the Branch) was revealed, in which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s future station is foreshadowed, and in which He is eulogized as the “Branch of Holiness,” the “Limb of the Law of God,” the “Trust of God,” “sent down in the form of a human temple” — a Tablet which may well be regarded as the harbinger of the rank which was to be bestowed upon Him, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and which was to be later elucidated and confirmed in the Book of His Covenant. And finally, it was during that period that the first pilgrimages were made to the residence of One Who was now the visible Center of a newly-established Faith — pilgrimages which by reason of their number and nature, an alarmed government in Persia was first impelled to restrict, and later to prohibit, but which were the precursors of the converging streams of Pilgrims who, from East and West, at first under perilous and arduous circumstances, were to direct their steps towards the prison-fortress of ‘Akká — pilgrimages which were to culminate in the historic arrival of a royal convert at the foot of Mt. Carmel, who, at the very threshold of a longed-for and much advertised pilgrimage, was so cruelly thwarted from achieving her purpose.

These notable developments, some synchronizing with, and others flowing from, the proclamation of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, and from the internal convulsion which the Cause had undergone, could not escape the attention of the external enemies of the Movement, who were bent on exploiting to the utmost every crisis which the folly of its friends or the perfidy of renegades might at any time precipitate. The thick clouds had hardly been dissipated by the sudden outburst of the rays of a Sun, now shining from its meridian, when the darkness of another catastrophe — the last the Author of that Faith was destined to suffer — fell upon it, blackening its firmament and subjecting it to one of the severest trials it had as yet experienced.

Emboldened by the recent ordeals with which Bahá’u’lláh had been so cruelly afflicted, these enemies, who had been momentarily quiescent, began to demonstrate afresh, and in a number of ways, the latent animosity they nursed in their hearts. A persecution, varying in the degree of its severity, began once more to break out in various countries. In Ádhirbáyján and Zanján, in Níshápúr and Ṭihrán, the adherents of the Faith were either imprisoned, vilified, penalized, tortured or put to death. Among the sufferers may be singled out the intrepid Najaf-‘Alíy-i-Zanjání, a survivor of the struggle of Zanján, and immortalized in the “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,” who, bequeathing the gold in his possession to his executioner, was heard to shout aloud “Yá Rabbíya’l-Abhá” before he was beheaded. In Egypt, a greedy and vicious consul-general extorted no less than a hundred thousand túmáns from a wealthy Persian convert, named Ḥájí Abu’l-Qásim-i-Shírází; arrested Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-‘Alí and six of his fellow-believers, and instigated their condemnation to a nine year exile in Khartúm, confiscating all the writings in their possession, and then threw into prison Nabíl, whom Bahá’u’lláh had sent to appeal to the Khedive on their behalf. In Baghdád and Káẓimayn indefatigable enemies, watching their opportunity, subjected Bahá’u’lláh’s faithful supporters to harsh and ignominious treatment; savagely disemboweled ‘Abdu’r-Rasúl-i-Qumí, as he was carrying water in a skin, at the hour of dawn, from the river to the Most Great House, and banished, amidst scenes of public derision, about seventy companions to Mosul, including women and children.

No less active were Mírzá Ḥusayn-Khán, the Mushíru’d-Dawlih, and his associates, who, determined to take full advantage of the troubles that had recently visited Bahá’u’lláh, arose to encompass His destruction. The authorities in the capital were incensed by the esteem shown Him by the governor Muḥammad Pásháy-i-Qibrisí, a former Grand Vizir, and his successors Sulaymán Páshá, of the Qádiríyyih Order, and particularly Khurshíd Páshá, who, openly and on many occasions, frequented the house of Bahá’u’lláh, entertained Him in the days of Ramaḍán, and evinced a fervent admiration for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. They were well aware of the challenging tone Bahá’u’lláh had assumed in some of His newly revealed Tablets, and conscious of the instability prevailing in their own country. They were disturbed by the constant comings and goings of pilgrims in Adrianople, and by the exaggerated reports of Fu’ád Páshá, who had recently passed through on a tour of inspection. The petitions of Mírzá Yaḥyá which reached them through Siyyid Muḥammad, his agent, had provoked them. Anonymous letters (written by this same Siyyid and by an accomplice, Áqá Ján, serving in the Turkish artillery) which perverted the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, and which accused Him of having conspired with Bulgarian leaders and certain ministers of European powers to achieve, with the help of some thousands of His followers, the conquest of Constantinople, had filled their breasts with alarm. And now, encouraged by the internal dissensions which had shaken the Faith, and irritated by the evident esteem in which Bahá’u’lláh was held by the consuls of foreign powers stationed in Adrianople, they determined to take drastic and immediate action which would extirpate that Faith, isolate its Author and reduce Him to powerlessness. The indiscretions committed by some of its over-zealous followers, who had arrived in Constantinople, no doubt, aggravated an already acute situation.

His Banishment to ‘Akká

The fateful decision was eventually arrived at to banish Bahá’u’lláh to the penal colony of ‘Akká, and Mírzá Yaḥyá to Famagusta in Cyprus. This decision was embodied in a strongly worded Farmán, issued by Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz. The companions of Bahá’u’lláh, who had arrived in the capital, together with a few who later joined them, as well as Áqá Ján, the notorious mischief-maker, were arrested, interrogated, deprived of their papers and flung into prison. The members of the community in Adrianople were, several times, summoned to the governorate to ascertain their number, while rumors were set afloat that they were to be dispersed and banished to different places or secretly put to death.

Suddenly, one morning, the house of Bahá’u’lláh was surrounded by soldiers, sentinels were posted at its gates, His followers were again summoned by the authorities, interrogated, and ordered to make ready for their departure. “The loved ones of God and His kindred,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s testimony in the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, “were left on the first night without food … The people surrounded the house, and Muslims and Christians wept over Us… We perceived that the weeping of the people of the Son (Christians) exceeded the weeping of others — a sign for such as ponder.” “A great tumult seized the people,” writes Áqá Riḍá, one of the stoutest supporters of Bahá’u’lláh, exiled with him all the way from Baghdád to ‘Akká, “All were perplexed and full of regret … Some expressed their sympathy, others consoled us, and wept over us … Most of our possessions were auctioned at half their value.” Some of the consuls of foreign powers called on Bahá’u’lláh, and expressed their readiness to intervene with their respective governments on His behalf — suggestions for which He expressed appreciation, but which He firmly declined. “The consuls of that city (Adrianople) gathered in the presence of this Youth at the hour of His departure,” He Himself has written, “and expressed their desire to aid Him. They, verily, evinced towards Us manifest affection.”

The Persian Ambassador promptly informed the Persian consuls in ‘Iráq and Egypt that the Turkish government had withdrawn its protection from the Bábís, and that they were free to treat them as they pleased. Several pilgrims, among whom was Ḥájí Muḥammad Ismá‘íl-i-Káshání, surnamed Anís in the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís, had, in the meantime, arrived in Adrianople, and had to depart to Gallipoli, without even beholding the face of their Master. Two of the companions were forced to divorce their wives, as their relatives refused to allow them to go into exile. Khurshíd Páshá, who had already several times categorically denied the written accusations sent him by the authorities in Constantinople, and had interceded vigorously on behalf of Bahá’u’lláh, was so embarrassed by the action of his government that he decided to absent himself when informed of His immediate departure from the city, and instructed the Registrar to convey to Him the purport of the Sulṭán’s edict. Ḥájí Ja‘far-i-Tabrízí, one of the believers, finding that his name had been omitted from the list of the exiles who might accompany Bahá’u’lláh, cut his throat with a razor, but was prevented in time from ending his life — an act which Bahá’u’lláh, in the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, characterizes as “unheard of in bygone centuries,” and which “God hath set apart for this Revelation, as an evidence of the power of His might.”

On the twenty-second of the month of Rabí‘u’th-Thání 1285 A.H. (August 12, 1868) Bahá’u’lláh and His family, escorted by a Turkish captain, Ḥasan Effendi by name, and other soldiers appointed by the local government, set out on their four-day journey to Gallipoli, riding in carriages and stopping on their way at Uzún-Kúprú and Káshánih, at which latter place the Súriy-i-Ra’ís was revealed. “The inhabitants of the quarter in which Bahá’u’lláh had been living, and the neighbors who had gathered to bid Him farewell, came one after the other,” writes an eye-witness, “with the utmost sadness and regret to kiss His hands and the hem of His robe, expressing meanwhile their sorrow at His departure. That day, too, was a strange day. Methinks the city, its walls and its gates bemoaned their imminent separation from Him.” “On that day,” writes another eye-witness, “there was a wonderful concourse of Muslims and Christians at the door of our Master’s house. The hour of departure was a memorable one. Most of those present were weeping and wailing, especially the Christians.” “Say,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself declares in the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, “this Youth hath departed out of this country and deposited beneath every tree and every stone a trust, which God will erelong bring forth through the power of truth.”

Several of the companions who had been brought from Constantinople were awaiting them in Gallipoli. On his arrival Bahá’u’lláh made the following pronouncement to Ḥasan Effendi, who, his duty discharged, was taking his leave: “Tell the king that this territory will pass out of his hands, and his affairs will be thrown into confusion.” “To this,” Áqá Riḍá, the recorder of that scene has written, “Bahá’u’lláh furthermore added: ‘Not I speak these words, but God speaketh them.’ In those moments He was uttering verses which we, who were downstairs, could overhear. They were spoken with such vehemence and power that, methinks, the foundations of the house itself trembled.”

Even in Gallipoli, where three nights were spent, no one knew what Bahá’u’lláh’s destination would be. Some believed that He and His brothers would be banished to one place, and the remainder dispersed, and sent into exile. Others thought that His companions would be sent back to Persia, while still others expected their immediate extermination. The government’s original order was to banish Bahá’u’lláh, Áqáy-i-Kalím and Mírzá Muḥammad-Qulí, with a servant to ‘Akká, while the rest were to proceed to Constantinople. This order, which provoked scenes of indescribable distress, was, however, at the insistence of Bahá’u’lláh, and by the instrumentality of ‘Umar Effendi, a major appointed to accompany the exiles, revoked. It was eventually decided that all the exiles, numbering about seventy, should be banished to ‘Akká. Instructions were, moreover, issued that a certain number of the adherents of Mírzá Yaḥyá, among whom were Siyyid Muḥammad and Áqá Ján, should accompany these exiles, whilst four of the companions of Bahá’u’lláh were ordered to depart with the Azalís for Cyprus.

So grievous were the dangers and trials confronting Bahá’u’lláh at the hour of His departure from Gallipoli that He warned His companions that “this journey will be unlike any of the previous journeys,” and that whoever did not feel himself “man enough to face the future” had best “depart to whatever place he pleaseth, and be preserved from tests, for hereafter he will find himself unable to leave” — a warning which His companions unanimously chose to disregard.

On the morning of the 2nd of Jamádíyu’l-Avval 1285 A.H. (August 21, 1868) they all embarked in an Austrian-Lloyd steamer for Alexandria, touching at Madellí, and stopping for two days at Smyrna, where Jináb-i-Munír, surnamed Ismu’lláhu’l-Muníb, became gravely ill, and had, to his great distress, to be left behind in a hospital where he soon after died. In Alexandria they transhipped into a steamer of the same company, bound for Haifa, where, after brief stops at Port Said and Jaffa, they landed, setting out, a few hours later, in a sailing vessel, for ‘Akká, where they disembarked, in the course of the afternoon of the 12th of Jamádíyu’l-Avval 1285 A.H. (August 31, 1868). It was at the moment when Bahá’u’lláh had stepped into the boat which was to carry Him to the landing-stage in Haifa that ‘Abdu’l-Ghaffár, one of the four companions condemned to share the exile of Mírzá Yaḥyá, and whose “detachment, love and trust in God” Bahá’u’lláh had greatly praised, cast himself, in his despair, into the sea, shouting “Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá,” and was subsequently rescued and resuscitated with the greatest difficulty, only to be forced by adamant officials to continue his voyage, with Mírzá Yaḥyá’s party, to the destination originally appointed for him.

- Chapter XI -

Bahá’u’lláh’s Incarceration in ‘Akká

The arrival of Bahá’u’lláh in ‘Akká marks the opening of the last phase of His forty-year long ministry, the final stage, and indeed the climax, of the banishment in which the whole of that ministry was spent. A banishment that had, at first, brought Him to the immediate vicinity of the strongholds of Shí‘ah orthodoxy and into contact with its outstanding exponents, and which, at a later period, had carried Him to the capital of the Ottoman empire, and led Him to address His epoch-making pronouncements to the Sulṭán, to his ministers and to the ecclesiastical leaders of Sunní Islám, had now been instrumental in landing Him upon the shores of the Holy Land — the Land promised by God to Abraham, sanctified by the Revelation of Moses, honored by the lives and labors of the Hebrew patriarchs, judges, kings and prophets, revered as the cradle of Christianity, and as the place where Zoroaster, according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s testimony, had “held converse with some of the Prophets of Israel,” and associated by Islám with the Apostle’s night-journey, through the seven heavens, to the throne of the Almighty. Within the confines of this holy and enviable country, “the nest of all the Prophets of God,” “the Vale of God’s unsearchable Decree, the snow-white Spot, the Land of unfading splendor” was the Exile of Baghdád, of Constantinople and Adrianople condemned to spend no less than a third of the allotted span of His life, and over half of the total period of His Mission. “It is difficult,” declares ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “to understand how Bahá’u’lláh could have been obliged to leave Persia, and to pitch His tent in this Holy Land, but for the persecution of His enemies, His banishment and exile.”

Significance of His banishment to the Holy Land

Indeed such a consummation, He assures us, had been actually prophesied “through the tongue of the Prophets two or three thousand years before.” God, “faithful to His promise,” had, “to some of the Prophets” “revealed and given the good news that the ‘Lord of Hosts should be manifested in the Holy Land.’” Isaiah had, in this connection, announced in his Book: “Get thee up into the high mountain, O Zion that bringest good tidings; lift up thy voice with strength, O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings. Lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah: ‘Behold your God! Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him.’” David, in his Psalms, had predicted: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory.” “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence.” Amos had, likewise, foretold His coming: “The Lord will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither.”

‘Akká, itself, flanked by the “glory of Lebanon,” and lying in full view of the “splendor of Carmel,” at the foot of the hills which enclose the home of Jesus Christ Himself, had been described by David as “the Strong City,” designated by Hosea as “a door of hope,” and alluded to by Ezekiel as “the gate that looketh towards the East,” whereunto “the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the East,” His voice “like a noise of many waters.” To it the Arabian Prophet had referred as “a city in Syria to which God hath shown His special mercy,” situated “betwixt two mountains … in the middle of a meadow,” “by the shore of the sea … suspended beneath the Throne,” “white, whose whiteness is pleasing unto God.” “Blessed the man,” He, moreover, as confirmed by Bahá’u’lláh, had declared, “that hath visited ‘Akká, and blessed he that hath visited the visitor of ‘Akká.” Furthermore, “He that raiseth therein the call to prayer, his voice will be lifted up unto Paradise.” And again: “The poor of ‘Akká are the kings of Paradise and the princes thereof. A month in ‘Akká is better than a thousand years elsewhere.” Moreover, in a remarkable tradition, which is contained in Shaykh Ibnu’l-‘Arabí’s work, entitled “Futúḥát-i-Makkíyyih,” and which is recognized as an authentic utterance of Muḥammad, and is quoted by Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl in his “Fará’id,” this significant prediction has been made: “All of them (the companions of the Qá’im) shall be slain except One Who shall reach the plain of ‘Akká, the Banquet-Hall of God.”

Bahá’u’lláh Himself, as attested by Nabíl in his narrative, had, as far back as the first years of His banishment to Adrianople, alluded to that same city in His Lawḥ-i-Sayyáḥ, designating it as the “Vale of Nabíl,” the word Nabíl being equal in numerical value to that of ‘Akká. “Upon Our arrival,” that Tablet had predicted, “We were welcomed with banners of light, whereupon the Voice of the Spirit cried out saying: ‘Soon will all that dwell on earth be enlisted under these banners.’”

The banishment, lasting no less than twenty-four years, to which two Oriental despots had, in their implacable enmity and shortsightedness, combined to condemn Bahá’u’lláh, will go down in history as a period which witnessed a miraculous and truly revolutionizing change in the circumstances attending the life and activities of the Exile Himself, will be chiefly remembered for the widespread recrudescence of persecution, intermittent but singularly cruel, throughout His native country and the simultaneous increase in the number of His followers, and, lastly, for an enormous extension in the range and volume of His writings.

Hardships suffered during the early years of His incarceration

His arrival at the penal colony of ‘Akká, far from proving the end of His afflictions, was but the beginning of a major crisis, characterized by bitter suffering, severe restrictions, and intense turmoil, which, in its gravity, surpassed even the agonies of the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán, and to which no other event, in the history of the entire century can compare, except the internal convulsion that rocked the Faith in Adrianople. “Know thou,” Bahá’u’lláh, wishing to emphasize the criticalness of the first nine years of His banishment to that prison-city, has written, “that upon Our arrival at this Spot, We chose to designate it as the ‘Most Great Prison.’ Though previously subjected in another land (Ṭihrán) to chains and fetters, We yet refused to call it by that name. Say: Ponder thereon, O ye endued with understanding!”

The ordeal He endured, as a direct consequence of the attempt on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, was one which had been inflicted upon Him solely by the external enemies of the Faith. The travail in Adrianople, the effects of which all but sundered the community of the Báb’s followers, was, on the other hand, purely internal in character. This fresh crisis which, during almost a decade, agitated Him and His companions, was, however, marked throughout not only by the assaults of His adversaries from without, but by the machinations of enemies from within, as well as by the grievous misdeeds of those who, though bearing His name, perpetrated what made His heart and His pen alike to lament.

‘Akká, the ancient Ptolemais, the St. Jean d’Acre of the Crusaders, that had successfully defied the siege of Napoleon, had sunk, under the Turks, to the level of a penal colony to which murderers, highway robbers and political agitators were consigned from all parts of the Turkish empire. It was girt about by a double system of ramparts; was inhabited by a people whom Bahá’u’lláh stigmatized as “the generation of vipers”; was devoid of any source of water within its gates; was flea-infested, damp and honey-combed with gloomy, filthy and tortuous lanes. “According to what they say,” the Supreme Pen has recorded in the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán, “it is the most desolate of the cities of the world, the most unsightly of them in appearance, the most detestable in climate, and the foulest in water. It is as though it were the metropolis of the owl.” So putrid was its air that, according to a proverb, a bird when flying over it would drop dead.

Explicit orders had been issued by the Sulṭán and his ministers to subject the exiles, who were accused of having grievously erred and led others far astray, to the strictest confinement. Hopes were confidently expressed that the sentence of life-long imprisonment pronounced against them would lead to their eventual extermination. The farmán of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, dated the fifth of Rabí‘u’th-Thání 1285 A.H. (July 26, 1868), not only condemned them to perpetual banishment, but stipulated their strict incarceration, and forbade them to associate either with each other or with the local inhabitants. The text of the farmán itself was read publicly, soon after the arrival of the exiles, in the principal mosque of the city as a warning to the population. The Persian Ambassador, accredited to the Sublime Porte, had thus assured his government, in a letter, written a little over a year after their banishment to ‘Akká: “I have issued telegraphic and written instructions, forbidding that He (Bahá’u’lláh) associate with any one except His wives and children, or leave under any circumstances, the house wherein He is imprisoned. ‘Abbás-Qulí Khán, the Consul-General in Damascus … I have, three days ago, sent back, instructing him to proceed direct to ‘Akká … confer with its governor regarding all necessary measures for the strict maintenance of their imprisonment … and appoint, before his return to Damascus, a representative on the spot to insure that the orders issued by the Sublime Porte will, in no wise, be disobeyed. I have, likewise, instructed him that once every three months he should proceed from Damascus to ‘Akká, and personally watch over them, and submit his report to the Legation.” Such was the isolation imposed upon them that the Bahá’ís of Persia, perturbed by the rumors set afloat by the Azalís of Iṣfahán that Bahá’u’lláh had been drowned, induced the British Telegraph office in Julfá to ascertain on their behalf the truth of the matter.

Having, after a miserable voyage, disembarked at ‘Akká, all the exiles, men, women and children, were, under the eyes of a curious and callous population that had assembled at the port to behold the “God of the Persians,” conducted to the army barracks, where they were locked in, and sentinels detailed to guard them. “The first night,” Bahá’u’lláh testifies in the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís, “all were deprived of either food or drink … They even begged for water, and were refused.” So filthy and brackish was the water in the pool of the courtyard that no one could drink it. Three loaves of black and salty bread were assigned to each, which they were later permitted to exchange, when escorted by guards to the market, for two of better quality. Subsequently they were allowed a mere pittance as substitute for the allotted dole of bread. All fell sick, except two, shortly after their arrival. Malaria, dysentery, combined with the sultry heat, added to their miseries. Three succumbed, among them two brothers, who died the same night, “locked,” as testified by Bahá’u’lláh, “in each other’s arms.” The carpet used by Him He gave to be sold in order to provide for their winding-sheets and burial. The paltry sum obtained after it had been auctioned was delivered to the guards, who had refused to bury them without first being paid the necessary expenses. Later, it was learned that, unwashed and unshrouded, they had buried them, without coffins, in the clothes they wore, though, as affirmed by Bahá’u’lláh, they were given twice the amount required for their burial. “None,” He Himself has written, “knoweth what befell Us, except God, the Almighty, the All-Knowing … From the foundation of the world until the present day a cruelty such as this hath neither been seen nor heard of.” “He hath, during the greater part of His life,” He, referring to Himself, has, moreover, recorded, “been sore-tried in the clutches of His enemies. His sufferings have now reached their culmination in this afflictive Prison, into which His oppressors have so unjustly thrown Him.”

The few pilgrims who, despite the ban that had been so rigidly imposed, managed to reach the gates of the Prison — some of whom had journeyed the entire distance from Persia on foot — had to content themselves with a fleeting glimpse of the face of the Prisoner, as they stood, beyond the second moat, facing the window of His Prison. The very few who succeeded in penetrating into the city had, to their great distress, to retrace their steps without even beholding His countenance. The first among them, the self-denying Ḥájí Abu’l-Ḥasan-i-Ardikání, surnamed Amín-i-Iláhí (Trusted of God), to enter His presence was only able to do so in a public bath, where it had been arranged that he should see Bahá’u’lláh without approaching Him or giving any sign of recognition. Another pilgrim, Ustád Ismá‘íl-i-Káshí, arriving from Mosul, posted himself on the far side of the moat, and, gazing for hours, in rapt adoration, at the window of his Beloved, failed in the end, owing to the feebleness of his sight, to discern His face, and had to turn back to the cave which served as his dwelling-place on Mt. Carmel — an episode that moved to tears the Holy Family who had been anxiously watching from afar the frustration of his hopes. Nabíl himself had to precipitately flee the city, where he had been recognized, had to satisfy himself with a brief glimpse of Bahá’u’lláh from across that same moat, and continued to roam the countryside around Nazareth, Haifa, Jerusalem and Hebron, until the gradual relaxation of restrictions enabled him to join the exiles.

To the galling weight of these tribulations was now added the bitter grief of a sudden tragedy — the premature loss of the noble, the pious Mírzá Mihdí, the Purest Branch, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s twenty-two year old brother, an amanuensis of Bahá’u’lláh and a companion of His exile from the days when, as a child, he was brought from Ṭihrán to Baghdád to join his Father after His return from Sulaymáníyyih. He was pacing the roof of the barracks in the twilight, one evening, wrapped in his customary devotions, when he fell through the unguarded skylight onto a wooden crate, standing on the floor beneath, which pierced his ribs, and caused, twenty-two hours later, his death, on the 23rd of Rabí‘u’l-Avval 1287 A.H. (June 23, 1870). His dying supplication to a grieving Father was that his life might be accepted as a ransom for those who were prevented from attaining the presence of their Beloved.

In a highly significant prayer, revealed by Bahá’u’lláh in memory of His son — a prayer that exalts his death to the rank of those great acts of atonement associated with Abraham’s intended sacrifice of His son, with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the martyrdom of the Imám Ḥusayn — we read the following: “I have, O my Lord, offered up that which Thou hast given Me, that Thy servants may be quickened, and all that dwell on earth be united.” And, likewise, these prophetic words, addressed to His martyred son: “Thou art the Trust of God and His Treasure in this Land. Erelong will God reveal through thee that which He hath desired.”

After he had been washed in the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, he “that was created of the light of Bahá,” to whose “meekness” the Supreme Pen had testified, and of the “mysteries” of whose ascension that same Pen had made mention, was borne forth, escorted by the fortress guards, and laid to rest, beyond the city walls, in a spot adjacent to the shrine of Nabí Ṣáliḥ, from whence, seventy years later, his remains, simultaneously with those of his illustrious mother, were to be translated to the slopes of Mt. Carmel, in the precincts of the grave of his sister, and under the shadow of the Báb’s holy sepulcher.

Nor was this the full measure of the afflictions endured by the Prisoner of ‘Akká and His fellow-exiles. Four months after this tragic event a mobilization of Turkish troops necessitated the removal of Bahá’u’lláh and all who bore Him company from the barracks. He and His family were accordingly assigned the house of Malik, in the western quarter of the city, whence, after a brief stay of three months, they were moved by the authorities to the house of Khavvám which faced it, and from which, after a few months, they were again obliged to take up new quarters in the house of Rábi‘ih, being finally transferred, four months later, to the house of ‘Údí Khammár, which was so insufficient to their needs that in one of its rooms no less than thirteen persons of both sexes had to accommodate themselves. Some of the companions had to take up their residence in other houses, while the remainder were consigned to a caravanserai named the Khán-i-‘Avámíd.

Their strict confinement had hardly been mitigated, and the guards who had kept watch over them been dismissed, when an internal crisis, which had been brewing in the midst of the community, was brought to a sudden and catastrophic climax. Such had been the conduct of two of the exiles, who had been included in the party that accompanied Bahá’u’lláh to ‘Akká, that He was eventually forced to expel them, an act of which Siyyid Muḥammad did not hesitate to take the fullest advantage. Reinforced by these recruits, he, together with his old associates, acting as spies, embarked on a campaign of abuse, calumny and intrigue, even more pernicious than that which had been launched by him in Constantinople, calculated to arouse an already prejudiced and suspicious populace to a new pitch of animosity and excitement. A fresh danger now clearly threatened the life of Bahá’u’lláh. Though He Himself had stringently forbidden His followers, on several occasions, both verbally and in writing, any retaliatory acts against their tormentors, and had even sent back to Beirut an irresponsible Arab convert, who had meditated avenging the wrongs suffered by his beloved Leader, seven of the companions clandestinely sought out and slew three of their persecutors, among whom were Siyyid Muḥammad and Áqá Ján.

The consternation that seized an already oppressed community was indescribable. Bahá’u’lláh’s indignation knew no bounds. “Were We,” He thus voices His emotions, in a Tablet revealed shortly after this act had been committed, “to make mention of what befell Us, the heavens would be rent asunder and the mountains would crumble.” “My captivity,” He wrote on another occasion, “cannot harm Me. That which can harm Me is the conduct of those who love Me, who claim to be related to Me, and yet perpetrate what causeth My heart and My pen to groan.” And again: “My captivity can bring on Me no shame. Nay, by My life, it conferreth on Me glory. That which can make Me ashamed is the conduct of such of My followers as profess to love Me, yet in fact follow the Evil One.”

He was dictating His Tablets to His amanuensis when the governor, at the head of his troops, with drawn swords, surrounded His house. The entire populace, as well as the military authorities, were in a state of great agitation. The shouts and clamor of the people could be heard on all sides. Bahá’u’lláh was peremptorily summoned to the Governorate, interrogated, kept in custody the first night, with one of His sons, in a chamber in the Khán-i-Shávirdí, transferred for the following two nights to better quarters in that neighborhood, and allowed only after the lapse of seventy hours to regain His home. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was thrown into prison and chained during the first night, after which He was permitted to join His Father. Twenty-five of the companions were cast into another prison and shackled, all of whom, except those responsible for that odious deed, whose imprisonment lasted several years, were, after six days, moved to the Khán-i-Shávirdí, and there placed, for six months, under confinement.

“Is it proper,” the Commandant of the city, turning to Bahá’u’lláh, after He had arrived at the Governorate, boldly inquired, “that some of your followers should act in such a manner?” “If one of your soldiers,” was the swift rejoinder, “were to commit a reprehensible act, would you be held responsible, and be punished in his place?” When interrogated, He was asked to state His name and that of the country from which He came. “It is more manifest than the sun,” He answered. The same question was put to Him again, to which He gave the following reply: “I deem it not proper to mention it. Refer to the farmán of the government which is in your possession.” Once again they, with marked deference, reiterated their request, whereupon Bahá’u’lláh spoke with majesty and power these words: “My name is Bahá’u’lláh (Light of God), and My country is Núr (Light). Be ye apprized of it.” Turning then, to the Muftí, He addressed him words of veiled rebuke, after which He spoke to the entire gathering, in such vehement and exalted language that none made bold to answer Him. Having quoted verses from the Súriy-i-Mulúk, He, afterwards, arose and left the gathering. The Governor, soon after, sent word that He was at liberty to return to His home, and apologized for what had occurred.

A population, already ill-disposed towards the exiles, was, after such an incident, fired with uncontrollable animosity for all those who bore the name of the Faith which those exiles professed. The charges of impiety, atheism, terrorism and heresy were openly and without restraint flung into their faces. ‘Abbúd, who lived next door to Bahá’u’lláh, reinforced the partition that separated his house from the dwelling of his now much-feared and suspected Neighbor. Even the children of the imprisoned exiles, whenever they ventured to show themselves in the streets during those days, would be pursued, vilified and pelted with stones.

The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s tribulations was now filled to overflowing. A situation, greatly humiliating, full of anxieties and even perilous, continued to face the exiles, until the time, set by an inscrutable Will, at which the tide of misery and abasement began to ebb, signalizing a transformation in the fortunes of the Faith even more conspicuous than the revolutionary change effected during the latter years of Bahá’u’lláh’s sojourn in Baghdád.

Gradual relaxation of His restrictions imposed upon Him

The gradual recognition by all elements of the population of Bahá’u’lláh’s complete innocence; the slow penetration of the true spirit of His teachings through the hard crust of their indifference and bigotry; the substitution of the sagacious and humane governor, Aḥmad Big Tawfíq, for one whose mind had been hopelessly poisoned against the Faith and its followers; the unremitting labors of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, now in the full flower of His manhood, Who, through His contacts with the rank and file of the population, was increasingly demonstrating His capacity to act as the shield of His Father; the providential dismissal of the officials who had been instrumental in prolonging the confinement of the innocent companions — all paved the way for the reaction that was now setting in, a reaction with which the period of Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to ‘Akká will ever remain indissolubly associated.

Such was the devotion gradually kindled in the heart of that governor, through his association with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and later through his perusal of the literature of the Faith, which mischief-makers, in the hope of angering him, had submitted for his consideration, that he invariably refused to enter His presence without first removing his shoes, as a token of his respect for Him. It was even bruited about that his favored counselors were those very exiles who were the followers of the Prisoner in his custody. His own son he was wont to send to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for instruction and enlightenment. It was on the occasion of a long-sought audience with Bahá’u’lláh that, in response to a request for permission to render Him some service, the suggestion was made to him to restore the aqueduct which for thirty years had been allowed to fall into disuse — a suggestion which he immediately arose to carry out. To the inflow of pilgrims, among whom were numbered the devout and venerable Mullá Ṣádiq-i-Khurásání and the father of Badí‘, both survivors of the struggle of Ṭabarsí, he offered scarcely any opposition, though the text of the imperial farmán forbade their admission into the city. Muṣṭafá Ḍíyí Páshá, who became governor a few years later, had even gone so far as to intimate that his Prisoner was free to pass through its gates whenever He pleased, a suggestion which Bahá’u’lláh declined. Even the Muftí of ‘Akká, Shaykh Maḥmúd, a man notorious for his bigotry, had been converted to the Faith, and, fired by his newborn enthusiasm, made a compilation of the Muḥammadan traditions related to ‘Akká. Nor were the occasionally unsympathetic governors, despatched to that city, able, despite the arbitrary power they wielded, to check the forces which were carrying the Author of the Faith towards His virtual emancipation and the ultimate accomplishment of His purpose. Men of letters, and even ‘ulamás residing in Syria, were moved, as the years rolled by, to voice their recognition of Bahá’u’lláh’s rising greatness and power. ‘Azíz Páshá, who, in Adrianople, had evinced a profound attachment to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and had in the meantime been promoted to the rank of Válí, twice visited ‘Akká for the express purpose of paying his respects to Bahá’u’lláh, and to renew his friendship with One Whom he had learned to admire and revere.

Though Bahá’u’lláh Himself practically never granted personal interviews, as He had been used to do in Baghdád, yet such was the influence He now wielded that the inhabitants openly asserted that the noticeable improvement in the climate and water of their city was directly attributable to His continued presence in their midst. The very designations by which they chose to refer to him, such as the “august leader,” and “his highness” bespoke the reverence with which He inspired them. On one occasion, a European general who, together with the governor, was granted an audience by Him, was so impressed that he “remained kneeling on the ground near the door.” Shaykh ‘Alíy-i-Mírí, the Muftí of ‘Akká, had even, at the suggestion of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, to plead insistently that He might permit the termination of His nine-year confinement within the walls of the prison-city, before He would consent to leave its gates. The garden of Na‘mayn, a small island, situated in the middle of a river to the east of the city, honored with the appellation of Riḍván, and designated by Him the “New Jerusalem” and “Our Verdant Isle,” had, together with the residence of ‘Abdu’lláh Páshá, — rented and prepared for Him by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and situated a few miles north of ‘Akká — become by now the favorite retreats of One Who, for almost a decade, had not set foot beyond the city walls, and Whose sole exercise had been to pace, in monotonous repetition, the floor of His bed-chamber.

Two years later the palace of ‘Údí Khammár, on the construction of which so much wealth had been lavished, while Bahá’u’lláh lay imprisoned in the barracks, and which its owner had precipitately abandoned with his family owing to the outbreak of an epidemic disease, was rented and later purchased for Him — a dwelling-place which He characterized as the “lofty mansion,” the spot which “God hath ordained as the most sublime vision of mankind.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to Beirut, at the invitation of Midḥat Páshá, a former Grand Vizir of Turkey, occurring about this time; His association with the civil and ecclesiastical leaders of that city; His several interviews with the well-known Shaykh Muḥammad ‘Abdu served to enhance immensely the growing prestige of the community and spread abroad the fame of its most distinguished member. The splendid welcome accorded him by the learned and highly esteemed Shaykh Yúsuf, the Muftí of Nazareth, who acted as host to the válís of Beirut, and who had despatched all the notables of the community several miles on the road to meet Him as He approached the town, accompanied by His brother and the Muftí of ‘Akká, as well as the magnificent reception given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to that same Shaykh Yúsuf when the latter visited Him in ‘Akká, were such as to arouse the envy of those who, only a few years before, had treated Him and His fellow-exiles with feelings compounded of condescension and scorn.

The drastic farmán of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, though officially unrepealed, had by now become a dead letter. Though Bahá’u’lláh was still nominally a prisoner, “the doors of majesty and true sovereignty were,” in the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “flung wide open.” “The rulers of Palestine,” He moreover has written, “envied His influence and power. Governors and mutiṣarrifs, generals and local officials, would humbly request the honor of attaining His presence — a request to which He seldom acceded.”

It was in that same mansion that the distinguished Orientalist, Prof. E. G. Browne of Cambridge, was granted his four successive interviews with Bahá’u’lláh, during the five days he was His guest at Bahjí (April 15–20, 1890), interviews immortalized by the Exile’s historic declaration that “these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come.” “The face of Him on Whom I gazed,” is the interviewer’s memorable testimony for posterity, “I can never forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes seemed to read one’s very soul; power and authority sat on that ample brow.… No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself before one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might envy and emperors sigh for in vain.” “Here,” the visitor himself has testified, “did I spend five most memorable days, during which I enjoyed unparalleled and unhoped-for opportunities of holding intercourse with those who are the fountain-heads of that mighty and wondrous spirit, which works with invisible but ever-increasing force for the transformation and quickening of a people who slumber in a sleep like unto death. It was, in truth, a strange and moving experience, but one whereof I despair of conveying any save the feeblest impression.”

In that same year Bahá’u’lláh’s tent, the “Tabernacle of Glory,” was raised on Mt. Carmel, “the Hill of God and His Vineyard,” the home of Elijah, extolled by Isaiah as the “mountain of the Lord,” to which “all nations shall flow.” Four times He visited Haifa, His last visit being no less than three months long. In the course of one of these visits, when His tent was pitched in the vicinity of the Carmelite Monastery, He, the “Lord of the Vineyard,” revealed the Tablet of Carmel, remarkable for its allusions and prophecies. On another occasion He pointed out Himself to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as He stood on the slopes of that mountain, the site which was to serve as the permanent resting-place of the Báb, and on which a befitting mausoleum was later to be erected.

Properties, bordering on the Lake associated with the ministry of Jesus Christ, were, moreover, purchased at Bahá’u’lláh’s bidding, designed to be consecrated to the glory of His Faith, and to be the forerunners of those “noble and imposing structures” which He, in His Tablets, had anticipated would be raised “throughout the length and breadth” of the Holy Land, as well as of the “rich and sacred territories adjoining the Jordan and its vicinity,” which, in those Tablets, He had permitted to be dedicated “to the worship and service of the one true God.”

The enormous expansion in the volume of Bahá’u’lláh’s correspondence; the establishment of a Bahá’í agency in Alexandria for its despatch and distribution; the facilities provided by His staunch follower, Muḥammad Muṣṭafá, now established in Beirut to safeguard the interests of the pilgrims who passed through that city; the comparative ease with which a titular Prisoner communicated with the multiplying centers in Persia, ‘Iráq, Caucasus, Turkistán, and Egypt; the mission entrusted by Him to Sulaymán Khán-i-Tanakábuní, known as Jamál Effendi, to initiate a systematic campaign of teaching in India and Burma; the appointment of a few of His followers as “Hands of the Cause of God”; the restoration of the Holy House in Shíráz, whose custodianship was now formally entrusted by Him to the Báb’s wife and her sister; the conversion of a considerable number of the adherents of the Jewish, Zoroastrian and Buddhist Faiths, the first fruits of the zeal and the perseverance which itinerant teachers in Persia, India and Burma were so strikingly displaying — conversions that automatically resulted in a firm recognition by them of the Divine origin of both Christianity and Islám — all these attested the vitality of a leadership that neither kings nor ecclesiastics, however powerful or antagonistic, could either destroy or undermine.

Nor should reference be omitted to the emergence of a prosperous community in the newly laid out city of ‘Ishqábád, in Russian Turkistán, assured of the good will of a sympathetic government, enabling it to establish a Bahá’í cemetery and to purchase property and erect thereon structures that were to prove the precursors of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the Bahá’í world; or to the establishment of new outposts of the Faith in far-off Samarqand and Bukhárá, in the heart of the Asiatic continent, in consequence of the discourses and writings of the erudite Fáḍil-i-Qá’iní and the learned apologist Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl; or to the publication in India of five volumes of the writings of the Author of the Faith, including His “Most Holy Book” — publications which were to herald the vast multiplication of its literature, in various scripts and languages, and its dissemination, in later decades, throughout both the East and the West.

“Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz,” Bahá’u’lláh is reported by one of His fellow-exiles to have stated, “banished Us to this country in the greatest abasement, and since his object was to destroy Us and humble Us, whenever the means of glory and ease presented themselves, We did not reject them.” “Now, praise be to God,” He, moreover, as reported by Nabíl in his narrative, once remarked, “it has reached the point when all the people of these regions are manifesting their submissiveness unto Us.” And again, as recorded in that same narrative: “The Ottoman Sulṭán, without any justification, or reason, arose to oppress Us, and sent Us to the fortress of ‘Akká. His imperial farmán decreed that none should associate with Us, and that We should become the object of the hatred of every one. The Hand of Divine power, therefore, swiftly avenged Us. It first loosed the winds of destruction upon his two irreplaceable ministers and confidants, ‘Alí and Fu’ád, after which that Hand was stretched out to roll up the panoply of ‘Azíz himself, and to seize him, as He only can seize, Who is the Mighty, the Strong.”

“His enemies,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, referring to this same theme, has written, “intended that His imprisonment should completely destroy and annihilate the blessed Cause, but this prison was, in reality, of the greatest assistance, and became the means of its development.” “…This illustrious Being,” He, moreover has affirmed, “uplifted His Cause in the Most Great Prison. From this Prison His light was shed abroad; His fame conquered the world, and the proclamation of His glory reached the East and the West.” “His light at first had been a star; now it became a mighty sun.” “Until our time,” He, moreover has affirmed, “no such thing has ever occurred.”

Little wonder that, in view of so remarkable a reversal in the circumstances attending the twenty-four years of His banishment to ‘Akká, Bahá’u’lláh Himself should have penned these weighty words: “The Almighty … hath transformed this Prison-House into the Most Exalted Paradise, the Heaven of Heavens.”

- Chapter XII -

Bahá’u’lláh’s Incarceration in ‘Akká (Continued)

While Bahá’u’lláh and the little band that bore Him company were being subjected to the severe hardships of a banishment intended to blot them from the face of the earth, the steadily expanding community of His followers in the land of His birth were undergoing a persecution more violent and of longer duration than the trials with which He and His companions were being afflicted. Though on a far smaller scale than the blood baths which had baptized the birth of the Faith, when in the course of a single year, as attested by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “more than four thousand souls were slain, and a great multitude of women and children left without protector and helper,” the murderous and horrible acts subsequently perpetrated by an insatiable and unyielding enemy covered as wide a range and were marked by an even greater degree of ferocity.

Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, stigmatized by Bahá’u’lláh as the “Prince of Oppressors,” as one who had “perpetrated what hath caused the denizens of the cities of justice and equity to lament,” was, during the period under review, in the full tide of his manhood and had reached the plenitude of his despotic power. The sole arbiter of the fortunes of a country “firmly stereotyped in the immemorial traditions of the East”; surrounded by “venal, artful and false” ministers whom he could elevate or abase at his pleasure; the head of an administration in which “every actor was, in different aspects, both the briber and the bribed”; allied, in his opposition to the Faith, with a sacerdotal order which constituted a veritable “church-state”; supported by a people preeminent in atrocity, notorious for its fanaticism, its servility, cupidity and corrupt practices, this capricious monarch, no longer able to lay hands upon the person of Bahá’u’lláh, had to content himself with the task of attempting to stamp out in his own dominions the remnants of a much-feared and newly resuscitated community. Next to him in rank and power were his three eldest sons, to whom, for purposes of internal administration, he had practically delegated his authority, and in whom he had invested the governorship of all the provinces of his kingdom. The province of Ádhirbáyján he had entrusted to the weak and timid Muẓaffari’d-Dín Mírzá, the heir to his throne, who had fallen under the influence of the Shaykhí sect, and was showing a marked respect to the mullás. To the stern and savage rule of the astute Mas‘úd Mírzá, commonly known as Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán, his eldest surviving son, whose mother had been of plebeian origin, he had committed over two-fifths of his kingdom, including the provinces of Yazd and Iṣfahán, whilst upon Kámrán Mírzá, his favorite son, commonly called by his title the Náyibu’s-Salṭanih, he had bestowed the rulership of Gílán and Mázindarán, and made him governor of Ṭihrán, his minister of war and the commander-in-chief of his army. Such was the rivalry between the last two princes, who vied with each other in courting the favor of their father, that each endeavored, with the support of the leading mujtahids within his jurisdiction, to outshine the other in the meritorious task of hunting, plundering and exterminating the members of a defenseless community, who, at the bidding of Bahá’u’lláh, had ceased to offer armed resistance even in self-defense, and were carrying out His injunction that “it is better to be killed than kill.” Nor were the clerical firebrands, Ḥájí Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Kaní and Siyyid Ṣádiq-i-Ṭabáṭabá’í, the two leading mujtahids of Ṭihrán, together with Shaykh Muḥammad-Báqir, their colleague in Iṣfahán, and Mír Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, the Imám-Jum‘ih of that city, willing to allow the slightest opportunity to pass without striking, with all the force and authority they wielded, at an adversary whose liberalizing influences they had even more reason to fear than the sovereign himself.

Little wonder that, confronted by a situation so full of peril, the Faith should have been driven underground, and that arrests, interrogations, imprisonment, vituperation, spoliation, tortures and executions should constitute the outstanding features of this convulsive period in its development. The pilgrimages that had been initiated in Adrianople, and which later assumed in ‘Akká impressive proportions, together with the dissemination of the Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh and the circulation of enthusiastic reports through the medium of those who had attained His presence served, moreover, to inflame the animosity of clergy and laity alike, who had foolishly imagined that the breach which had occurred in the ranks of the followers of the Faith in Adrianople and the sentence of life banishment pronounced subsequently against its Leader, would seal irretrievably its fate.

Fresh outbreak of persecutions in Persia

In Ábádih a certain Ustád ‘Alí-Akbar was, at the instigation of a local Siyyid, apprehended and so ruthlessly thrashed that he was covered from head to foot with his own blood. In the village of Tákur, at the bidding of the Sháh, the property of the inhabitants was pillaged, Ḥájí Mírzá Riḍá-Qulí, a half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh, was arrested, conducted to the capital and thrown into the Síyáh-Chál, where he remained for a month, whilst the brother-in-law of Mírzá Ḥasan, another half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh, was seized and branded with red-hot irons, after which the neighboring village of Dár-Kalá was delivered to the flames.

Áqá Buzurg of Khurásán, the illustrious “Badí‘” (Wonderful); converted to the Faith by Nabíl; surnamed the “Pride of Martyrs”; the seventeen-year old bearer of the Tablet addressed to Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh; in whom, as affirmed by Bahá’u’lláh, “the spirit of might and power was breathed,” was arrested, branded for three successive days, his head beaten to a pulp with the butt of a rifle, after which his body was thrown into a pit and earth and stones heaped upon it. After visiting Bahá’u’lláh in the barracks, during the second year of His confinement, he had arisen with amazing alacrity to carry that Tablet, alone and on foot, to Ṭihrán and deliver it into the hands of the sovereign. A four months’ journey had taken him to that city, and, after passing three days in fasting and vigilance, he had met the Sháh proceeding on a hunting expedition to Shimírán. He had calmly and respectfully approached His Majesty, calling out, “O King! I have come to thee from Sheba with a weighty message”; whereupon at the Sovereign’s order, the Tablet was taken from him and delivered to the mujtahids of Ṭihrán who were commanded to reply to that Epistle — a command which they evaded, recommending instead that the messenger should be put to death. That Tablet was subsequently forwarded by the Sháh to the Persian Ambassador in Constantinople, in the hope that its perusal by the Sulṭán’s ministers might serve to further inflame their animosity. For a space of three years Bahá’u’lláh continued to extol in His writings the heroism of that youth, characterizing the references made by Him to that sublime sacrifice as the “salt of My Tablets.”

Abá-Baṣír and Siyyid Ashraf, whose fathers had been slain in the struggle of Zanján, were decapitated on the same day in that city, the former going so far as to instruct, while kneeling in prayer, his executioner as to how best to deal his blow, while the latter, after having been so brutally beaten that blood flowed from under his nails, was beheaded, as he held in his arms the body of his martyred companion. It was the mother of this same Ashraf who, when sent to the prison in the hope that she would persuade her only son to recant, had warned him that she would disown him were he to denounce his faith, had bidden him follow the example of Abá-Baṣír, and had even watched him expire with eyes undimmed with tears. The wealthy and prominent Muḥammad-Ḥasan Khán-i-Káshí was so mercilessly bastinadoed in Burújird that he succumbed to his ordeal. In Shíráz Mírzá Áqáy-i-Rikáb-Sáz, together with Mírzá Rafí‘-i-Khayyáṭ and Mashhadí Nabí, were by order of the local mujtahid simultaneously strangled in the dead of night, their graves being later desecrated by a mob who heaped refuse upon them. Shaykh Abu’l-Qásim-i-Mázkání in Káshán, who had declined a drink of water that was offered him before his death, affirming that he thirsted for the cup of martyrdom, was dealt a fatal blow on the nape of his neck, whilst he was prostrating himself in prayer.

Mírzá Báqir-i-Shírází, who had transcribed the Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh in Adrianople with such unsparing devotion, was slain in Kirmán, while in Ardikán the aged and infirm Gul-Muḥammad was set upon by a furious mob, thrown to the ground, and so trampled upon by the hob-nailed boots of two siyyids that his ribs were crushed in and his teeth broken, after which his body was taken to the outskirts of the town and buried in a pit, only to be dug up the next day, dragged through the streets, and finally abandoned in the wilderness. In the city of Mashhad, notorious for its unbridled fanaticism, Ḥájí ‘Abdu’l-Majíd, who was the eighty-five year old father of the afore-mentioned Badí‘ and a survivor of the struggle of Ṭabarsí, and who, after the martyrdom of his son, had visited Bahá’u’lláh and returned afire with zeal to Khurásán, was ripped open from waist to throat, and his head exposed on a marble slab to the gaze of a multitude of insulting onlookers, who, after dragging his body ignominiously through the bazaars, left it at the morgue to be claimed by his relatives.

In Iṣfahán Mullá Káẓim was beheaded by order of Shaykh Muḥammad-Báqir, and a horse made to gallop over his corpse, which was then delivered to the flames, while Siyyid Áqá Ján had his ears cut off, and was led by a halter through the streets and bazaars. A month later occurred in that same city the tragedy of the two famous brothers Mírzá Muḥammad-Ḥasan and Mírzá Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, the “twin shining lights,” respectively surnamed “Sulṭánu’sh-Shuhadá” (King of Martyrs) and “Maḥbúbu’sh-Shuhadá” (Beloved of Martyrs), who were celebrated for their generosity, trustworthiness, kindliness and piety. Their martyrdom was instigated by the wicked and dishonest Mír Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, the Imám-Jum‘ih, stigmatized by Bahá’u’lláh as the “she-serpent,” who, in view of a large debt he had incurred in his transactions with them, schemed to nullify his obligations by denouncing them as Bábís, and thereby encompassing their death. Their richly-furnished houses were plundered, even to the trees and flowers in their gardens, all their remaining possessions were confiscated; Shaykh Muḥammad-Báqir, denounced by Bahá’u’lláh as the “wolf,” pronounced their death-sentence; the Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán ratified the decision, after which they were put in chains, decapitated, dragged to the Maydán-i-Sháh, and there exposed to the indignities heaped upon them by a degraded and rapacious populace. “In such wise,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written, “was the blood of these two brothers shed that the Christian priest of Julfá cried out, lamented and wept on that day.” For several years Bahá’u’lláh in His Tablets continued to make mention of them, to voice His grief over their passing and to extol their virtues.

Mullá ‘Alí Ján was conducted on foot from Mázindarán to Ṭihrán, the hardships of that journey being so severe that his neck was wounded and his body swollen from the waist to the feet. On the day of his martyrdom he asked for water, performed his ablutions, recited his prayers, bestowed a considerable gift of money on his executioner, and was still in the act of prayer when his throat was slit by a dagger, after which his corpse was spat upon, covered with mud, left exposed for three days, and finally hewn to pieces. In Námiq Mullá ‘Alí, converted to the Faith in the days of the Báb, was so severely attacked and his ribs so badly broken with a pick-axe that he died immediately. Mírzá Ashraf was slain in Iṣfahán, his corpse trampled under foot by Shaykh Muḥammad Taqíy-i-Najafí, the “son of the wolf,” and his pupils, savagely mutilated, and delivered to the mob to be burnt, after which his charred bones were buried beneath the ruins of a wall that was pulled down to cover them.

In Yazd, at the instigation of the mujtahid of that city, and by order of the callous Maḥmúd Mírzá, the Jalúlu’l-Dawlih, the governor, a son of Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán, seven were done to death in a single day in horrible circumstances. The first of these, a twenty-seven year old youth, ‘Alí-Aṣghar, was strangled, his body delivered into the hands of some Jews who, forcing the dead man’s six companions to come with them, dragged the corpse through the streets, surrounded by a mob of people and soldiers beating drums and blowing trumpets, after which, arriving near the Telegraph Office, they beheaded the eighty-five year old Mullá Mihdí and dragged him in the same manner to another quarter of the city, where, in view of a great throng of onlookers, frenzied by the throbbing strains of the music, they executed Áqá ‘Alí in like manner. Proceeding thence to the house of the local mujtahid, and carrying with them the four remaining companions, they cut the throat of Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Sabzivárí, who had been addressing the crowd and glorying in his imminent martyrdom, hacked his body to pieces with a spade, while he was still alive, and pounded his skull to a pulp with stones. In another quarter, near the Mihríz gate, they slew Muḥammad-Báqir, and afterwards, in the Maydán-i-Khán, as the music grew wilder and drowned the yells of the people, they beheaded the survivors who remained, two brothers in their early twenties, ‘Alí-Aṣghar and Muḥammad-Ḥasan. The stomach of the latter was ripped open and his heart and liver plucked out, after which his head was impaled on a spear, carried aloft, to the accompaniment of music, through the streets of the city, and suspended on a mulberry tree, and stoned by a great concourse of people. His body was cast before the door of his mother’s house, into which women deliberately entered to dance and make merry. Even pieces of their flesh were carried away to be used as a medicament. Finally, the head of Muḥammad-Ḥasan was attached to the lower part of his body and, together with those of the other martyrs, was borne to the outskirts of the city and so viciously pelted with stones that the skulls were broken, whereupon they compelled the Jews to carry the remains and throw them into a pit in the plain of Salsabíl. A holiday was declared by the governor for the people, all the shops were closed by his order, the city was illuminated at night, and festivities proclaimed the consummation of one of the most barbarous acts perpetrated in modern times.

Nor were the Jews and the Pársís who had been newly converted to the Faith, and were living, the former in Hamadán, and the latter in Yazd, immune to the assaults of enemies whose fury was exasperated by the evidences of the penetration of the light of the Faith in quarters they had fondly imagined to be beyond its reach. Even in the city of ‘Ishqábád the newly established Shí‘ah community, envious of the rising prestige of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh who were living in their midst, instigated two ruffians to assault the seventy-year old Ḥájí Muḥammad-Riḍáy-i-Iṣfahání, whom, in broad day and in the midst of the bazaar, they stabbed in no less than thirty-two places, exposing his liver, lacerating his stomach and tearing open his breast. A military court dispatched by the Czar to ‘Ishqábád established, after prolonged investigation, the guilt of the Shí‘ahs, sentencing two to death and banishing six others — a sentence which neither Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, nor the ‘ulamás of Ṭihrán, of Mashhad and of Tabríz, who were appealed to, could mitigate, but which the representatives of the aggrieved community, through their magnanimous intercession which greatly surprised the Russian authorities, succeeded in having commuted to a lighter punishment.

Such are some typical examples of the treatment meted out by the adversaries of the Faith to the newly resurgent community of its followers during the period of Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to ‘Akká — a treatment which it may be truly said testified alternately to “the callousness of the brute and the ingenuity of the fiend.”

The “inquisition and appalling tortures,” following the attempt on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, had already, in the words of no less eminent an observer than Lord Curzon of Kedleston, imparted to the Faith “a vitality which no other impulse could have secured.” This recrudescence of persecution, this fresh outpouring of the blood of martyrs, served to further enliven the roots which that holy Sapling had already struck in its native soil. Careless of the policy of fire and blood which aimed at their annihilation, undismayed by the tragic blows rained upon a Leader so far removed from their midst, uncorrupted by the foul and seditious acts perpetrated by the Arch-Breaker of the Báb’s Covenant, the followers of Bahá’u’lláh were multiplying in number and silently gathering the necessary strength that was to enable them, at a later stage, to lift their heads in freedom, and rear the fabric of their institutions.

Soon after his visit to Persia in the autumn of 1889 Lord Curzon of Kedleston wrote, in the course of references designed to dispel the “great confusion” and “error” prevailing “among European and specially English writers” regarding the Faith, that “the Bahá’ís are now believed to comprise nineteen-twentieths of the Bábí persuasion.” Count Gobineau, writing as far back as the year 1865, testified as follows: “L’opinion générale est que les Bábís sont répandus dans toutes les classes de la population et parmi tous les religionnaires de la Perse, sauf les Nuṣayrís et les Chrétiens; mais ce sont surtout les classes éclairées, les hommes pratiquant les sciences du pays, qui sont donnés comme très suspects. On pense, et avec raison, ce semble, que beaucoup de mullás, et parmi eux des mujtahids considérables, des magistrats d’un rang élevé, des hommes qui occupent à la cour des fonctions importantes et qui approchent de près la personne du Roi, sont des Bábís. D’après un calcul fait récemment, il y aurait a Ṭihrán cinq milles de ces religionnaires sur une population de quatre-vingt milles âmes a peu près.” Furthermore: “…Le Bábisme a pris une action considérable sur l’intelligence de la nation persane, et, se rependant même au delâ des limites du territoire, il a débordé dans le pachalik de Baghdád, et passé aussi dans l’Inde.” And again: “…Un mouvement religieux tout particulier dont l’Asie Centrale, c’est-à-dire la Perse, quelques points de l’Inde et une partie de la Turquie d’Asie, aux environs de Baghdád, est aujourd’hui vivement préoccupée, mouvement remarquable et digne d’être étudié à tous les titres. Il permet d’assister à des développements de faits, à des manifestations, à des catastrophes telles que l’on n’est pas habitué à les imaginer ailleurs que dans les temps reculés où se sont produites les grandes religions.”

“These changes, however,” Lord Curzon, alluding to the Declaration of the Mission of Bahá’u’lláh and the rebellion of Mírzá Yaḥyá, has, moreover written, “have in no wise impaired, but appear on the contrary, to have stimulated its propaganda, which has advanced with a rapidity inexplicable to those who can only see therein a crude form of political or even of metaphysical fermentation. The lowest estimate places the present number of Bábís in Persia at half a million. I am disposed to think, from conversations with persons well qualified to judge, that the total is nearer one million.” “They are to be found,” he adds, “in every walk of life, from the ministers and nobles of the Court to the scavenger or the groom, not the least arena of their activity being the Musulmán priesthood itself.” “From the facts,” is another testimony of his, “that Bábism in its earliest years found itself in conflict with the civil powers, and that an attempt was made by Bábís upon the life of the Sháh, it has been wrongly inferred that the movement was political in origin and Nihilist in character … At the present time the Bábís are equally loyal with any other subjects of the Crown. Nor does there appear to be any greater justice in the charges of socialism, communism and immorality that have so freely been levelled at the youthful persuasion … The only communism known to and recommended by Him (the Báb) was that of the New Testament and the early Christian Church, viz., the sharing of goods in common by members of the Faith, and the exercise of alms-giving, and an ample charity. The charge of immorality seems to have arisen partly from the malignant inventions of opponents, partly from the much greater freedom claimed for women by the Báb, which in the oriental mind is scarcely dissociable from profligacy of conduct.” And, finally, the following prognostication from his pen: “If Bábism continues to grow at its present rate of progression, a time may conceivably come when it will oust Muḥammadanism from the field in Persia. This, I think, it would be unlikely to do, did it appear upon the ground under the flag of a hostile faith. But since its recruits are won from the best soldiers of the garrison whom it is attacking, there is greater reason to believe that it may ultimately prevail.”

Bahá’u’lláh’s incarceration in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká, the manifold tribulations He endured, the prolonged ordeal to which the community of His followers in Persia was being subjected, did not arrest, nor could they even impede, to the slightest degree, the mighty stream of Divine Revelation, which, without interruption, had been flowing from His pen, and on which the future orientation, the integrity, the expansion and the consolidation of His Faith directly depended. Indeed, in their scope and volume, His writings, during the years of His confinement in the Most Great Prison, surpassed the outpourings of His pen in either Adrianople or Baghdád. More remarkable than the radical transformation in the circumstances of His own life in ‘Akká, more far-reaching in its spiritual consequences than the campaign of repression pursued so relentlessly by the enemies of His Faith in the land of His birth, this unprecedented extension in the range of His writings, during His exile in that Prison, must rank as one of the most vitalizing and fruitful stages in the evolution of His Faith.

The tempestuous winds that swept the Faith at the inception of His ministry and the wintry desolation that marked the beginnings of His prophetic career, soon after His banishment from Ṭihrán, were followed during the latter part of His sojourn in Baghdád, by what may be described as the vernal years of His Mission — years which witnessed the bursting into visible activity of the forces inherent in that Divine Seed that had lain dormant since the tragic removal of His Forerunner. With His arrival in Adrianople and the proclamation of His Mission the Orb of His Revelation climbed as it were to its zenith, and shone, as witnessed by the style and tone of His writings, in the plenitude of its summer glory. The period of His incarceration in ‘Akká brought with it the ripening of a slowly maturing process, and was a period during which the choicest fruits of that mission were ultimately garnered.

Sequel to the Proclamation of His mission in Adrianople

The writings of Bahá’u’lláh during this period, as we survey the vast field which they embrace, seem to fall into three distinct categories. The first comprises those writings which constitute the sequel to the proclamation of His Mission in Adrianople. The second includes the laws and ordinances of His Dispensation, which, for the most part, have been recorded in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy Book. To the third must be assigned those Tablets which partly enunciate and partly reaffirm the fundamental tenets and principles underlying that Dispensation.

The Proclamation of His Mission had been, as already observed, directed particularly to the kings of the earth, who, by virtue of the power and authority they wielded, were invested with a peculiar and inescapable responsibility for the destinies of their subjects. It was to these kings, as well as to the world’s religious leaders, who exercised a no less pervasive influence on the mass of their followers, that the Prisoner of ‘Akká directed His appeals, warnings, and exhortations during the first years of His incarceration in that city. “Upon Our arrival at this Prison,” He Himself affirms, “We purposed to transmit to the kings the messages of their Lord, the Mighty, the All-Praised. Though We have transmitted to them, in several Tablets, that which We were commanded, yet We do it once again, as a token of God’s grace.”

To the kings of the earth, both in the East and in the West, both Christian and Muslim, who had already been collectively admonished and warned in the Súriy-i-Mulúk revealed in Adrianople, and had been so vehemently summoned by the Báb, in the opening chapter of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, on the very night of the Declaration of His Mission, Bahá’u’lláh, during the darkest days of His confinement in ‘Akká, addressed some of the noblest passages of His Most Holy Book. In these passages He called upon them to take fast hold of the “Most Great Law”; proclaimed Himself to be “the King of Kings” and “the Desire of all Nations”; declared them to be His “vassals” and “emblems of His sovereignty”; disclaimed any intention of laying hands on their kingdoms; bade them forsake their palaces, and hasten to gain admittance into His Kingdom; extolled the king who would arise to aid His Cause as “the very eye of mankind”; and finally arraigned them for the things which had befallen Him at their hands.

In His Tablet to Queen Victoria He, moreover, invites these kings to hold fast to “the Lesser Peace,” since they had refused “the Most Great Peace”; exhorts them to be reconciled among themselves, to unite and to reduce their armaments; bids them refrain from laying excessive burdens on their subjects, who, He informs them, are their “wards” and “treasures”; enunciates the principle that should any one among them take up arms against another, all should rise against him; and warns them not to deal with Him as the “King of Islám” and his ministers had dealt.

To the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, the most prominent and influential monarch of his day in the West, designated by Him as the “Chief of Sovereigns,” and who, to quote His words, had “cast behind his back” the Tablet revealed for him in Adrianople, He, while a prisoner in the army barracks, addressed a second Tablet and transmitted it through the French agent in ‘Akká. In this He announces the coming of “Him Who is the Unconstrained,” whose purpose is to “quicken the world” and unite its peoples; unequivocally asserts that Jesus Christ was the Herald of His Mission; proclaims the fall of “the stars of the firmament of knowledge,” who have turned aside from Him; exposes that monarch’s insincerity; and clearly prophesies that his kingdom shall be “thrown into confusion,” that his “empire shall pass” from his hands, and that “commotions shall seize all the people in that land,” unless he arises to help the Cause of God and follow Him Who is His Spirit.

In memorable passages addressed to “the Rulers of America and the Presidents of the Republics therein” He, in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, calls upon them to “adorn the temple of dominion with the ornament of justice and of the fear of God, and its head with the crown of remembrance” of their Lord; declares that “the Promised One” has been made manifest; counsels them to avail themselves of the “Day of God”; and bids them “bind with the hands of justice the broken” and “crush” the “oppressor” with “the rod of the commandments of their Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.”

To Nicolaevitch Alexander II, the all-powerful Czar of Russia, He addressed, as He lay a prisoner in the barracks, an Epistle wherein He announces the advent of the promised Father, Whom “the tongue of Isaiah hath extolled,” and “with Whose name both the Torah and the Evangel were adorned”; commands him to “arise … and summon the nations unto God”; warns him to beware lest his sovereignty withhold him from “Him Who is the Supreme Sovereign”; acknowledges the aid extended by his Ambassador in Ṭihrán; and cautions him not to forfeit the station ordained for him by God.