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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
The Bahá’í month of
Kalimát — Words
16 Kalimát 183 BE
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Fáṭimih of Qazvín — the brilliant poet the world would come to know as Ṭáhirih, the Pure One — recognised the Báb without ever meeting Him. Hearing only that a voice had risen in Shíráz, she sent forward her written testimony of belief, and so became the only woman among the Báb's first eighteen disciples, the Letters of the Living — a light kindled by inner sight alone.
Quote of the day
“space and traverse the expanse of heaven, yet thou wouldst”
From Hidden Word, Arabic 32: Wert Thou to Speed Through the Immensity of Space
In 84 days
Celebrates the birth of Siyyid 'Alí Muhammad, the Báb, in Shíráz in 1819.
Readings for Birth of the Báb →The nineteenth and final month of the Bahá'í year, 'Alá' — Loftiness — is the month of the Fast. From sunrise to sunset for nineteen days the believer abstains from food and drink, but the heart of the Fast lies elsewhere: in abstinence from the desires of self, and in severance from all save God. This is what gives the month its name.
In the flower of his youth Nabíl-i-Zarandí bade farewell to his family in Zarand and set out to find the One his soul was seeking. From that day he never turned back. Poet, traveller, herald, recluse — he spent his whole life pouring himself out in service to Bahá'u'lláh, holding nothing of the world in reserve, until at the end he could endure separation no longer.
In a tender letter preserved among His Writings, 'Abdu'l-Bahá set the fading things of this world beside the one Beauty that never fades. Mortal charm passes, He wrote, roses give way to thorns, youth lives its day and is no more — but the Beauty of the True One endureth for ever. His counsel is the very lesson the month of the Fast was given to teach: where to fix the heart.
Pidar-Ján of Qazvín was a poor old man who emigrated to Baghdád to be near Bahá'u'lláh, and there gave his days and nights to prayer. So absorbed was he in the remembrance of God that thieves once lifted the goods from his open hands while he chanted, and he did not notice. 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembered him as a soul who walked the earth but travelled the heights of Heaven.
Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, was a small child when soldiers seized her Father and stripped her home. From that day she shared every exile and every imprisonment of the Holy Family, set aside the ordinary hopes of a woman of her time, and gave her whole long life to service. Lady Blomfield's *The Chosen Highway* preserves the memory of that quiet, unbroken renunciation.
For most of His life 'Abdu'l-Bahá had been a prisoner of the state. When He passed in Haifa in 1921, the very governments that had once exiled and confined Him hastened to do Him honour — telegrams of condolence from Winston Churchill and the British Crown, from Viscount Allenby, from the ministers of 'Iráq, and the High Commissioner himself standing among the mourners.