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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 contexts, recipients, and circumstances of major Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá during his journey and sojourn through that Dominion obtained the utmost joy. Before My departure, many souls warned Me not to travel to Montreal, saying, the majority of the inhabitants are Catholics, and are in the utmost…
‘Abdu’l-Bahá has explained many things in His writings, in His tablets, in His addresses, and even in His oral conversations with people, the explanation of the difference between two elements is the most excellent ever written by any pen…
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, then only eight years old, was broken-hearted at the ruthless treatment of His adored Father. The child suffered agonies, as a description of the tortures was related in His hearing - the cruel scourging of the feet, the long…
Badasht is a village some distance from Tihrán in the northeast part of the country. The Conference of Badasht was held in July 1848. Eighty-one of the Báb’s most distinguished followers came together in this Conference. The principal…
He is the All-Glorious. The world’s great Light, once resplendent upon all mankind, has set to shine everlastingly from the Abhá horizon, His Kingdom of fadeless glory, shedding splendor upon His loved ones from on high, and breathing into…
You have questioned me about strikes. This question is and will be for a long time the subject of great difficulties. Strikes are due to two causes. One is the extreme sharpness and rapacity of the capitalists and manufacturers; the…
This wonderful age has rent asunder the veils of superstition and has condemned the prejudice of the people of the…
The greatest bestowal of God in the world of humanity is religion; for assuredly the divine teachings of religion are above all other sources of instruction and development to man. Religion confers upon man eternal life and guides his…
O ye beloved of God, know that steadfastness and firmness in this new and wonderful Covenant is indeed the spirit that quickeneth the hearts which are overflowing with the love of the Glorious Lord; verily, it is the power which…
O ye friends of…
Thou hast written that thou art a student in the progressive spiritual school. Happy is thy condition! If the various progressive schools join themselves to the universal university of the Kingdom, such knowledge and sciences will be…
This recent war has proved to the world and the people that war is destruction while Universal Peace is construction; war is death while peace is life; war is rapacity and bloodthirstiness while peace is beneficence and humaneness; war…
‘Abdu’l-Bahá spent His early years in an environment of privilege, wealth, and love. ** ‘Abdu’l-Bahá…
Mullá ‘Alí Ján and ‘Alavíyyih Khánum, not content with the conversion of the inhabitants of Máhfurúzak to the Bahá’í Faith, started to organize the life of the village on a spiritual basis. They encouraged each family to set aside a…
Over his mother's signature, but drafted by the Guardian, the following cable was sent to America: “Announce Assemblies celebration marriage beloved Guardian. Inestimable honour conferred upon handmaid of Baha'u'llah Ruhiyyih Khanum Miss…
Aqa Husayn-i-Ashchi (Ashchi in Farsi means cook or maker of broth) was Baha'u'llah's cook. His father died on his way to ask for the hand of his brother's daughter to wed 'Abdu'l-Baha. Aqa Husayn-i-Ashchi's uncle Ustad Ismail raised him…
Aqa Mirza Ali Muhammad came face to face with the Supreme Manifestation of God. These meetings left an abiding impression upon his soul and magnetized his whole being with the love of his newly-found Lord. **Aqa Mirza Ali-Muhammad…
Aqa Mirza Muhammad-Taqi Abhari (Ibn-i-Abhar) received many tablets from Baha'u'llah. For example, Ibn-i-Abhar had posed the question of the well-being and prosperity of the Baha'is of Persia. In a Tablet revealed in 1889 Baha'u'llah in…
He was a tradesman, and like the others who came in at the start, he cast everything away out of love for God, attaining in one leap the highest reaches of knowledge. ** Áqá Muhammad-Báqir and Áqá Muhammad-Ismá‘íl, the…
After Haji Mirza Musay-i-Javahari died in 1881, his son, Haji Mirza Musa inherited a portion of the estate. He owned the house where Baha’u’llah lived and was extremely happy to present it to Him as a gift. ** Haji Mirza…
Haji Muhammad Tihir was a brilliant debater and speaker. It is difficult to convey the pleasure one derived from his inspiring conversation which ranged from humorous trifles to weighty pronouncements. His knowledge of the history and…
Let lovers be warned by his story; let them know how he gambled away his life in his yearning after the Light of the World. May God give him to drink of a brimming cup in the everlasting gardens; in the Supreme Assemblage, may God shed…
When young, he joined the circle of the late Siyyid Kázim and became one of his disciples. He was known in Persia for his purity of life, winning fame as Mullá Ṣádiq the saintly. ** Ismu’lláhu’l-Asdaq (Mullá ****Ṣ****ádiq…
Bahá'í Chronicles records that in the late 1870s, Bahá'u'lláh dispatched Sulaymán Khán-i-Tunúkábání — known as Jamál Effendi — from 'Akká to India, with the charge to establish the Faith on the subcontinent. With Sayyid Muṣṭafá Rúmí, who would later carry the work into Burma, he founded the first Bahá'í communities of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.
Bahá'í Chronicles preserves the biographical record of Lua Aurelia Getsinger — the radiant Tennessee farm girl who, after the 1898 pilgrimage of fifteen Westerners to 'Akká, became the most celebrated travel-teacher of her generation, and whom 'Abdu'l-Bahá named *Livá* — *the Banner-Bearer.*
Bahá'í Chronicles preserves the biographical record of May Bolles Maxwell — one of the first pilgrims to 'Akká, the woman who established the Bahá'í community of Paris and of Montreal, the mother of Rúḥíyyih Khánum, and the travel-teacher whom Shoghi Effendi would name a martyr of the Faith after her death in Buenos Aires in 1940.
Mirzá ‘Abd’u’lláh had a modest music school in a district of Tihrán called Imám-zádeh Yahyá. A number of so called open minded pupils were following his classes. Music was forbidden in Islamic countries then, therefore the mob had a good…
Mirza Abu’l-Fadl was imprisioned on three different times.…
He was an early martyr of the Faith, was the recipient of the Tablet of the Verse of Light, as he had requested that Bahá'u'lláh interpret the isolated letters at the chapter beginnings of the Qur'an. ** Mirza…
An elaborate and exhaustive interrogation was conducted in the presence of the representatives of the Persian government and others during which Fadil had the opportunity to explain the purpose of his mission and defend the Bahá'í…
"he that was created by the light of Bahá" L: Mirza Mihdi with his brother ‘Abdu’l-Baha **Mírzá…
After he had received the endless bounties showered on him by Bahá’u’lláh, he was given leave to go, and he traveled to China. There, over a considerable period, he spent his days mindful of God and in a manner conformable to Divine good…
The Beloved of Martys and the King of Martyrs were approximately nine and eleven years old. They served the Bab and He paid special attention to them. During the dinner their father turned to the Bab and said, “My brother Mirza…
The farráshes hunted them down, and caught Mírzá Mustafá. But then the oppressors said, “Mírzá Mustafá had two long locks of hair. This cannot be the right man.” At once, Mírzá Mustafá took off his hat and down fell the locks of hair.…
During the nineteen days that he remained there he drank his fill from the life-giving draught of the presence of the Master and on daily basis paid homage to the Sacred Shrine of Baha’u’llah. **Mirza Yusuf Vahid Kashfi Born:**…
In the afternoons he would take his samovar, wrap it in a dark-colored pouch made from a saddlebag, and go off somewhere to a garden or meadow, or out in a field, and have his tea. **…
He stationed himself by the Holy Threshold, carefully sweeping it and keeping watch. Through his constant efforts, the square in front of Bahá’u’lláh’s house was at all times swept, sprinkled and immaculate. **…
He was young, far away from his loving father, and Mullá Muḥammad-‘Alí was his tutor and guardian. Bahá’u’lláh would refer to him with infinite grace and loving-kindness, and revealed a number of Tablets in his name. The Blessed Beauty…
He was designated by ‘Abdu’l-Baha as the “Moon of Guidance” and his “appearance the Revelation of St. John the Divine anticipated as one of the two ‘Witnesses’ into whom, ere the ‘second woe is past,’ the ‘spirit of life from God’ must…
** Sháh Muḥammad-Amín aka Haji Shah Muhammad…
Shaykh Hasan recognized in the Báb all those attributes his master had predicted, and he became His devoted disciple, travelling far and wide to be close to the newest Manifestation of God on earth. When the ulama of Isfahan issued the…
He received a long poem of which 127 of 2000 verses were preserved ** Shaykh…
He had remarkable powers of endurance. He traveled on foot, as a rule eating nothing but onions and bread; and in all that time, he moved about in such a way that he was never once held up and never once lost a letter or a Tablet.…
Siyyid Isma`ils writings are among the best known in the modern Shi`ism and the most important among them are: Hisnul-Hasin dar Sharh Baladul-Amin, a commentary on his grandfather's important work on statesmanship. ** Siyyid…
They were required to spit on Siyyid Jafar's face. Despite this degradation, "he remained calm and resigned throughout his ordeal and manifested a spirit of sublime joy and love and thankfulness towards those who offended him. **…
Siyyid Mirza Husayn-i-Mutavalli was the recipient of the Tablet Shikkar-Shikan-Shavand. This man was a Babi who had been with 300 others under the leadership of Quddus at the Tabarsi fort, where they were attacked and starved. **…
Ultimately he became the intermediary through whom Tablets could be sent away and mail from the believers could come in. ** Siyyid Muḥammad-Taqí…
In May 1878, his travel teaching took Siyyid Mustafa Rumi to Myanmar (Burma). There he would, not yet knowing the local language, together with Jamal Effendi and Haji Siyyid Mihdi, lay the foundation for the Burmese Bahá’í community.…
On my arrival I found that Husayn Khan, who in the meantime had been searching for me, was eager to know whether I had fallen a victim to the Bab's magic influence. `No one but God,' I replied, `who alone can change the hearts of men, is…
Táhirih asked to borrow the writings and take them home. Mullá Javád violently objected, telling her: “Your father is an enemy of the Twin Luminous Lights, Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kázim. **…
Although the young merchant's given name was Siyyid 'Ali-Muhammad, He took the name "Báb"…
"‘Abdu’l-Bahá recognized Chase as "the first American believer," and Shoghi Effendi later described him as "indeed the first to embrace the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh in the Western world." ** Thornton Chase, Disciple of…
Before His wedding day, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made the necessary arrangements for the few guests. His mother and sister made a delicate bridal dress of white batiste. A white head-dress adorned Munirih Khánum’s hair, worn, as usual, in two braids.…
2 Let these exalted words be thy love-song on the tree of Bahá, O thou most holy and resplendent Leaf: ‘God, besides Whom is none other God, the Lord of this world and the next!’ Verily, We have elevated thee to the rank of one of the…
121 Concerning the remnants of the martyrs’ families, you have mentioned how eager they are to hear a word of commendation assuring them that this act of self-sacrifice and martyrdom will be acceptable in the sight of God. Therefore, I…
57 Moved by an unalterable devotion to the memory of the Greatest Holy Leaf, I feel prompted to share with you, and through you with the concourse of her steadfast lovers throughout the West, these significant passages58 which I have…
145 O God, my…
164 It is clear how that most dire of calamities, that most great disaster which was the ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, may our souls be sacrificed for His meekness, has set our hearts on fire and dissolved our very limbs and members in…
34 O ye who burn in the flames of bereavement! By the Day-star of the World, my bereaved and longing heart is afire with a grief that is beyond my description. The sudden, the grievous and calamitous news that the Most Exalted, the…
38 Brethren and fellow-mourners in the Faith of…
200 Your kind and loving letter written with an unbounded love and a sincere devotion for our beloved ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and His Cause has been duly received. It spoke of that painful story where earthly cares and physical illnesses have…
205 The Pen of the divine Ordainer has so decreed that this house of sorrows should be encompassed by unending calamity and pain. Even before the dark clouds of one disaster are scattered, the lowering storm of yet a new grief takes…
206 ‘O God, My God! Thou hast lighted the lamp of Thy Cause with the oil of wisdom; protect it from contrary winds. The lamp is Thine and the glass is Thine, and all things in the heavens and on earth are in the grasp of Thy power.’207…
224 Your letter, laden with many a graceful phrase, many a wondrous inner meaning, has been received. Its perusal brought composure and tranquillity to my soul and gladness to my heart, inasmuch as from between its lines I could…
Shoghi Effendi's tribute to Bahíyyih Khánum records the cost of the Adrianople exile to her own body — a winter of exceptional severity, a poor and unhealthy lodging, and dire financial distress that left her, as a young woman, with a permanent loss of vitality and a shadow on her face that would remain until the end of her life.
The endeavor in the following chapters will be to set forth, as far as possible, fairly and without prejudice, the salient features of the history and more especially of the teachings of the Bahá’í Cause, so that readers may be enabled…
In making appointments, the only criterion must be fitness for the position. Before this paramount consideration, all others, such as seniority, social or financial status, family connection or personal friendship, must give way.…
Training in arts, sciences, crafts and useful professions is regarded as important and necessary. Bahá’u’lláh says:— Knowledge is like unto wings for the being (of man) and is like a ladder for ascending. To acquire knowledge is…
Thus simply and serenely did Bahá’u’lláh pass the evening of His life on earth until, after an attack of fever, He passed away on the 29th of May, 1892, at the age of seventy-five. Among the last Tablets He revealed was His Will and…
In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, Esslemont preserves 'Abdu'l-Bahá's recollection of His Father's boyhood: by the age of thirteen or fourteen, the young Mírzá Ḥusayn-'Alí had already become known across the scholarly circles of the Núrí district for being able to converse on any subject and resolve any problem put to Him.
Abbás Effendi, Who afterwards assumed the title of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (i.e. Servant of Bahá), was the eldest son of Bahá’u’lláh. He was born in Ṭihrán before midnight on the eve of the 23rd of May, 1844,20 the very same night in which the…
The thing of paramount importance in education is character training. With regard to this, example is more effective than precept, and the lives and characters of the child’s parents, teachers and habitual associates are factors of the…
Amid these troublous times, however, the Cause of God will prosper. The calamities caused by selfish struggle for individual existence, or for party or sectarian or national gain, will induce the people to turn in despair to the remedy…
Bahá’u’lláh says:— O people of God! I exhort you to courtesy. Courtesy is indeed ... the lord of all virtues. Blessed is he who is adorned with the mantle of Uprightness and illumined with the light of Courtesy. He who is endowed…
In the matter of divorce, as in that of marriage, the instructions of the Prophets have varied in accordance with the circumstances of the times. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states the Bahá’í teaching, with regard to divorce, thus:— The friends…
Education—the instruction and guidance of men and the development and training of their innate faculties—has been the supreme aim of all the Holy Prophets since the world began, and in the Bahá’í teachings the fundamental importance…
Under the inspired guidance of Shoghi Effendi the Bahá’í Cause grew steadily in size and in the establishment of its Administrative Order, so that by 1951 there were eleven functioning National Spiritual Assemblies. At that point the…
The essential joyousness of the Bahá’í religion finds expression in numerous feasts and holidays throughout the…
The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh contain two different types of reference to the question of true social order. One type is exemplified in the tablets revealed to the Kings, which deal with the problem of government as existing in the…
He teaches that there are also many methods of healing without material means. There is a “contagion of health,” as well as a contagion of disease, although the former is very slow and has a small effect, while the latter is often…
The importance of the press as a means of diffusing knowledge and educating the people, and its power as a civilizing force, when rightly directed, are fully recognized by Bahá’u’lláh. He writes:— In this day the mysteries of this…
In the little book of Hidden Words, in which Bahá’u’lláh gives in brief the essence of the prophetic teachings, His first counsel refers to the individual life: “Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart.” The next indicates the…
Having in His earlier years of hardship shown how to glorify God in a state of poverty and ignominy, Bahá’u’lláh in His later years at Bahjí showed how to glorify God in a state of honor and affluence. The offering of hundreds of…
To know the Manifestation of God means also to love Him. One is impossible without the other. According to Bahá’u’lláh, the purpose of man’s creation is that he may know God and adore Him. He says in one of His Tablets:— The cause of…
As to the manner of His coming at the end of the age, Christ said:— And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet.... then…
Bahá’u’lláh left instructions that temples of worship should be built by His followers in every country and city. To these temples He gave the name of “Mashriqu’l-Adhkár,” which means “Dawning Place of God’s Praise.” The…
‘Abdu’l-Bahá attaches the greatest important to regular meetings of the believers for united worship, for the exposition and study of the teachings and for consultation regarding the progress of the Movement. In one of His Tablets He…
Bahá’u’lláh, like Muḥammad, forbids His followers to lead lives of monastic…
In the year 1869 Bahá’u’lláh wrote to Napoleon III, rebuking him for his lust of war and for the contempt with which he had treated a former letter from Bahá’u’lláh. The Epistle contains the following stern warning:— For what thou…
Devotion to God involves implicit obedience to His revealed Commands even when the reason for these Commands is not understood. The sailor implicitly obeys his captain’s orders, even when he does not know the reason for them, but his…
The unity of humanity as taught by Bahá’u’lláh refers not only to men still in the flesh, but to all human beings, whether embodied or disembodied. Not only all men now living on the earth, but all in the spiritual world as well, are…
The use of prayer is enjoined upon Bahá’ís in no uncertain terms. Bahá’u’lláh says in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas:— Chant (or recite) the Words of God every morning and evening. The one who neglects this has not been faithful to the Covenant…
In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, Esslemont preserves Bahá'u'lláh's own brief description of the Síyáh-Chál — the underground prison in Tihrán in which He was held in chains for four months in 1852. The dungeon was *foul beyond comparison*, dark, and crowded with nearly one hundred and fifty fellow-prisoners.
A great stumbling block to many, in the way of religious unity, is the difference between the Revelations given by the different Prophets. What is commanded by one is forbidden by another; how then can both be right, how can both be…
The Bahá’í doctrine of the unity of mankind strikes at the root of another cause of war, namely, racial prejudice. Certain races have assumed themselves to be superior to others and have taken for granted, on the principle of “survival…
He was then in His seventieth year, and His long and arduous labors, culminating in these strenuous Western tours, had worn out His physical frame. After His return He wrote the following pathetic Tablet to the believers in East and…
In concluding this chapter it will be well to recall ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s teaching as to the right use of physical health. In one of His Tablets to the Bahá’ís of Washington He says:— If the health and well-being of the body be expended in…
Bahá’u’lláh forbids tyranny and oppression in the most emphatic terms. In Hidden Words He writes:— O Oppressors of Earth! Withdraw your hands from tyranny, for I have pledged Myself not to forgive any man’s injustice. This is My…
Bahá’u’lláh enjoins justice on all His followers and defines it as:—“The freedom of man from superstition and imitation, so that he may discern the Manifestations of God with the eyes of Oneness, and consider all affairs with keen…
Both Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá also foretold a period of great social upheaval, conflict and calamity as an inevitable result of the irreligion and prejudices, the ignorance and superstition, prevalent throughout the world. The…
Before ‘Abdu’l-Bahá completed His earthly mission, He had laid a basis for the development of the administrative order established in Bahá’u’lláh’s Writings. To show the high importance to be attributed to the institution of the…
The real Bahá’í will not only believe in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, but find in them the guide and inspiration of his whole life and joyfully impart to others the knowledge that is the wellspring of his own being. Only thus will he…
According to the Bahá’í teachings, riches rightly acquired and rightly used are honorable and praiseworthy. Services rendered should be adequately rewarded. Bahá’u’lláh says in the Tablet of Tarazát:—“The people of Baha must not refuse…
The power of spiritual healing is doubtless common to all mankind in greater or less degree, but, just as some men are endowed with exceptional talent for mathematics or music, so others appear to be endowed with exceptional aptitude…
According to Bahá’í philosophy it follows from the doctrine of the unity of God that there can be no such thing as positive evil. There can only be one Infinite. If there were any other power in the universe outside of or opposed to the…
We live in a world, however, where from time immemorial obedience to the commands of the Prophets has been the exception rather than the rule; where love of self has been a more prevalent motive than love of God; where limited and party…
Like all the other Prophets, Bahá’u’lláh states His own Mission in the most unmistakable…
Bahá’u’lláh says in the Tablet of Tarazát:— Verily, Honesty is the door of tranquillity to all in the world, and the sign of glory from the presence of the Merciful One. Whosoever attains thereto has attained to treasures of wealth…
Having glanced at the principal causes of war and how they may be avoided, we may now proceed to examine certain constructive proposals made by Bahá’u’lláh with a view to achieving the Most Great…
One of the most important instructions of Bahá’u’lláh in regard to the economic question is that all must engage in useful work. There must be no drones in the social hive, no able-bodied parasites on society. He says:— It is…
The Hand of the Cause Tarázu'lláh Samandarí undertook his pilgrimage to the Holy Land when he was a youth. It took place during the last months of Bahá'u'lláh's life.
During the time that Bahá'u'lláh resided in the house of 'Abbud, His fellow exiles had fully settled down in the city of 'Akká, and most of them were successful in their humble professions.
Throughout our pilgrimage [1941] we visited the Shrines of the Báb and 'Abdu'l-Baha in the company of the beloved Guardian.
The love and admiration of the people of Baghdad for Bahá'u'lláh was fully demonstrated on the day of His departure from His 'Most Great House' in Baghdad.
One night we were in the presence of 'Abdu'l-Baha along with the rest of the pilgrims.
While on pilgrimage in 1906, Florence Khan, the wife of Ali-Kuli Khan [1] related the following heart-warming and incredible incident: One evening, after sunset, Khan [Ali-Kuli Khan] came in great…
The news of the tragic fate which had befallen the heroes of Tabarsí brought immeasurable sorrow to the heart of the Báb.
Here is a brief story of the early life of Mulla Husayn whose amazing station is summarized below by the beloved Guardian: “Mulla Husayn, the first Letter of the Living, surnamed the Bábu'l-Báb (the…
We know from the Baha’i Writings that Quddus, in addition to being the last Letter of the Living and the chosen companion of the Báb during His pilgrimage to Mecca, has a high station.
On a hot June day in the year 1892, a middle-aged woman sat in a crowded lecture hall. Despite the heat, her face looked peaceful as she listened to the speaker talk about the life of the spirit.
In 1919, 'Abdu'l-Baha, The Center of the Covenant of Baha’u’llah, sent Tablets (letters) to America outlining a great plan for a spiritual divine civilization for the whole world.
It was the end of June, 1848. Outside the village of Badasht, located about 400 Km northeast of Tehran, Persia, on the other side of the Elburz Mountains in the Province of Semnan, there was a great…
In the concluding passages of the Tablet which He [the Báb] was addressing to Hájí Mírzá Jání, He prayed in his behalf, supplicated the Almighty to illumine his heart with the light of Divine…
Hand of the Cause Mr Furutan 1953 Early in 1941, during the Second World War, means were miraculously provided for me and my family to go on pilgrimage.
It is beautiful to see the Master with the little children and observe his consideration for their childish troubles.
On that same night, [the night when the Báb arrived in Káshán] Siyyid Husayn-i-Yazdí, who had previously, in accordance with the directions of the Báb, come to Káshán, was invited to the house of…
The life of 'Abdu'l-Baha is very significant among the lives of the past heavenly educators.
The birth of Mary Sutherland Maxwell, on August 8th, in the Hahnemann Hospital, later known as The Fifth Avenue Hospital, in New York City, was the hottest news to hit the North American Baha'i…
In the whole range of Bahá'u'lláh's Writings, the Kitáb-i-Íqán (The Book of Certitude) has most importance, with the exception of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book).
A little under two years had passed since Bahá'u'lláh's confinement in the barracks, when suddenly a most tragic event occurred.
Mirza Aqa Jan embraced the religion of the Báb when he was about sixteen years old and became instantly “aflame with devotion.” He was neither learned nor rich and made his living in his hometown of…
On the First Day of Ridván, I and three other pilgrims were present, sitting on the floor, facing Bahá’u’lláh, Who was sitting on a chair.
Haji Muhammad-Tahir-i-Malmiri, who was a historian, a teacher of wide repute and the father of Adib Taherzadeh, attained the presence of Bahá'u'lláh in 'Akká.
On a hot summer day in 1901, a young man named Thomas Breakwell walked the quiet streets of Paris, France, where he was visiting. The day was very still.
'Abdu'l-Rahim was a fanatical Muslim. He was alarmed. The Baha'i Faith was growing in his town in Persia and he decided that it was time to ask the advice of a Muslim clergyman.
Badí was the name given to Aqá Buzurg by Bahá'u'lláh. It means "the Wonderful". Bahá'u'lláh didn't just hand out names without reason.
A long time ago there lived an old man in the town of Nayshábúr in eastern Persia. He made a living by selling turquoise stones and pure wool. He was Hájí ‘Abdu'l-Majíd.
Baha'u'llah had sent my father and his friends to Egypt as pioneer settlers. When they arrived in Egypt, they did not have much money. Money was not in abundance among the Baha'is.
Once Baha'u'llah had passed from this earthly realm, there remained at least one special way to honor Him. 'Abdu'l-Baha grieved for His Father.
As the neighborhood was preparing for the Muslim Fast of Ramadan, one household near the prison of 'Akka was already celebrating a happy event.
It was the summer of 1848. The followers of the Báb, the Bábís, were fiercely persecuted in Persia, the birthplace of their Faith. They needed guidance and support.
But it was not the same with Thornton Chase. That great man, who had been a captain in the Civil War, a student at Brown University, and later Superintendent of Agencies for the Union Mutual Life Company, and was 'the first to embrace the…
In Bahá'í World Faith, a short passage of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's writings sets out one of His characteristic teachings: the same sun shines on every object, but the mirror that has been polished receives the light, and the mirror that is dusty does not. Spiritual receptivity, the Master insists, is a matter of the inward instrument we have made ourselves.
In Bahá'í World Faith, 'Abdu'l-Bahá uses the simple image of a seed unfolding into a tree, and the tree producing seeds that will become more trees, to teach that each human being carries within itself the same potential of multiplication — capable of becoming, in due time, a source of life to many.
Nabíl's chronicle records the conference at Badasht in the summer of 1848 — the meeting at which the eighty-one principal Bábí teachers of the time gathered in three small gardens to consult on the relation of the new Faith to the Islamic past. The decisive moment came when Ṭáhirih appeared before the assembled men with her veil removed.
During the few years of his adult life, Mirza Mihdi had acted as an amanuensis of his Father, and Bahá’u’lláh's Tablets in his distinguished handwriting are extant. According to Aqa Rida's testimony, who had seen him grow up to young…
During those days one hundred years ago Bahá’u’lláh was enduring His imprisonment in the Barracks of 'Akká. Upon the tribulations which weighed Him down was heaped the fatal accident which befell His young son, His companion and…
In the *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*, Bahá'u'lláh devotes a substantial passage to the spiritual significance of trustworthiness — naming it as the foundation of the Cause's standing in the world and as the mark by which the true believer is recognised.
In the *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*, Bahá'u'lláh recounts the persecutions launched against the believers of Iṣfáhán by Áqá Najafí, the powerful Iṣfahání cleric who instigated the martyrdoms of the *King of Martyrs* and the *Beloved of Martyrs* in 1879.
In the *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*, Bahá'u'lláh briefly recalls the conditions of His four-month imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál of Tihrán in 1852 — the underground dungeon in which the first intimations of His Revelation came to Him.
For long weeks and months, it was not clear whether He would go to California or not. In April, Bahá’ís on the West Coast feared that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would not be visiting them, so they went to visit Him . . . Filled with humility and…
A seventeen-year-old boy asked for one thing: to carry a letter from Bahá'u'lláh to the king of Persia. He walked for months to deliver it — and gave his life with a smile that no one who saw it could forget.
After the destruction of the defenders of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, Bahá'u'lláh — who had set out to join them — was arrested in the town of Ámul, beaten in the local mosque until His feet bled, and stoned in the streets. Shoghi Effendi reads this episode as the moment Bahá'u'lláh stepped into the centre of the stage left vacant by the Báb.
Shoghi Effendi's account, in *God Passes By*, of Bahá'u'lláh's most consequential undertaking of the Adrianople period (1863-1868) — the composition and transmission of the great Tablets to the rulers of His era, addressing each by name and summoning the world's governors to recognise the new Day of God.
Shoghi Effendi's narration, in *God Passes By*, of the Master's laying of the cornerstone of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár at Wilmette in May 1912 — a moment the Guardian describes as the inauguration of the construction of the first House of Worship of the Bahá'í Dispensation in the Western world.
Haji Muhammad-Baqir was a well-known merchant, foremost among the believers in faith, certitude and enthusiasm, and was serving the Cause with devotion and self-sacrifice. This man attained the presence of Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdad. There He…
From 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Memorials of the Faithful: when Bahá'u'lláh ascended in 1892 at Bahjí, His chronicler Nabíl-i-Zarandí was inconsolable. He calculated the numerical value of the word "shidád" — "year of stress" — at 309, and found that Bahá'u'lláh had foretold the date in His own writings.
After His ascension, Bahá'u'lláh appointed 'Abdu'l-Bahá as the Centre of His Covenant. When friends in the East asked if a day might be observed in the Master's honor, He refused — His birthday already belonged to the Declaration of the Báb — and gave them, instead, the day of His own appointment as Centre of the Covenant. Here is a tablet from that period in which He calls the friends to be firm in that Covenant.
In 1912, on the Feast of Naw-Rúz in Alexandria, Egypt, 'Abdu'l-Bahá explained the meaning of the blessed days appointed in every dispensation — days for rejoicing together, for unity, and for leaving "tangible philanthropic or ideal traces" reaching all mankind.
The fifth Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's image of the human heart as His own mansion, and His invitation to sanctify it for His descent.
The opening Hidden Word in Persian — Bahá'u'lláh's foundational description of the human temple as the residence of His remembrance, the place where His mention shall be made.
I am so delighted by these news that my dear friend and colleague in Bahá’í studies, Hossain Achtchi has enthusiastically agreed to speak at our first cloud conference. What an extraordinary life. His father was Aqa Husayn-i Ashchi,…
I have stated that my brother [‘Abdu’l-Bahá]was deeply attached to his father [Bahá’u’lláh]; this attachment seemed to strengthen with his growth. After our father's departure he fell into great despondency. He would go away by himself,…
I remember as though it were yesterday another illustration of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's divine technique. I was not at all well that summer. A relapse was threatening a return of a condition which had necessitated a major operation the year before.…
I remember when I was a girl the news came to Isfahan from Nabil that Jamal-i-Mubarak [Bahá’u’lláh] was imprisoned in the fortress town of `Akká, shut in behind iron doors, never going out! As I thought of Him in that poisonous climate -…
I was asked to say a few words to the dear South African believers who are here today. I thought I could tell you about a tablet, a very short tablet, revealed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The contents of this Tablet are as follows: the Master says…
Ibn-i-Asdaq often accompanied his father on his teaching tours throughout Persia. Thus he became imbued with the spirit of service to the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh and eventually developed a passionate love for Him, a love that knew no bounds.…
In the early days of the Faith in Isfahan, when I began to study the Tablets and Writings of the Báb, and listen to the explanations of the friends, I found the proofs of His Revelation convincing and conclusive and the testimonies…
In the very early days Loulie Mathews came into the Faith while ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was yet imprisoned in Acca. She came in very quickly immediately, really, upon hearing of it, and she came in aflame with enthusiasm. She had been told that…
It was the last four months of the nine-year plan and I [Jenabe Caldwell] had just come out of India. As usual when I was anywhere near Israel, I would stop for a three day visit, go to the Shrines and thank Bahá’u’lláh for His blessings…
Jinab-i-Haji Amin was a shining star who served the Cause as the Trustee of Huququ'lláh for forty-seven years with eagerness and zeal, showing magnanimity, courage and incredible steadfastness. During the Ministry of Bahá’u’lláh he was…
John David Bosch was a Swiss from Canton St. Gall who emigrated to the United States in 1879. Later he returned to Europe and studied wine-making in Germany, France, and Spain . . . And John became a Bahá’í. On May 29, 1905, he went down…
A devoted believer kept asking Bahá'u'lláh what he should do — and was lovingly taught one of the most important lessons of all: to sit down with wise friends and decide together.
When angry crowds led him through the streets with a rope around his neck, Mullá Ṣádiq did not stop smiling — or stop speaking the truth he loved.
A famous musician knew songs that no one had ever written down — and he spent his whole life making sure they would never be lost.
A man in Shíráz loved the Báb with all his heart, and he carried one big question all the way to Bahá'u'lláh.
From a rooftop at sunset, 'Abdu'l-Bahá saw a carriage far away and somehow knew a holy soul was coming — a faithful traveler whose face seemed made of light.
Two young brothers helped serve a special guest at their family's table — and grew up to be among the kindest, bravest believers of all.
A man named Mirza Yusuf searched for the truth for many years, and when he finally found it, he gave up everything to travel the world and share it.
From a city of exile, Bahá'u'lláh wrote letters to the most powerful kings, queens, and rulers on earth, calling each one by name to recognize a new Day of God.
When friends wanted a special day to honor 'Abdu'l-Bahá, He gave His own birthday away and chose, instead, the day He promised to keep everyone together.
Nothing famous happened on this ordinary spring day with the Master — and that is exactly why someone thought it was worth writing down forever.
Mahmúd's Diary preserves the final weeks of July and the opening weeks of August 1912, when 'Abdu'l-Bahá retired from the cities of the East Coast to the small artists' colony at Dublin, New Hampshire. The mornings were spent in dictation; the afternoons in walks through pine and fir; and the evenings in talks for the summer residents who came up the road to listen.
Mahmúd's Diary preserves the small domestic record of an ordinary day in the New York apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Kinney — the Master at His correspondence, at His tea, in brief conversation with the household, the rhythm of the hours unmarked by any public event.
Mahmúd's Diary records the long quiet stretches of the transcontinental train journey from Chicago to the Pacific in September-October 1912 — the Master at His prayers in the parlour car, the night plains rolling past, the small acts of hospitality to the train staff.
Among those who emigrated and were companions in the Most Great Prison was Áqá ‘Abdu’s-Ṣáliḥ. This excellent soul, a child of early believers, came from Iṣfáhán. His noble-hearted father died, and this child grew up an orphan. There…
This eminent man had high ambitions and aims. He was to a supreme degree constant, loyal and firmly rooted in his faith, and he was among the earliest and greatest of the believers. At the very dawn of the new Day of Guidance he became…
1.For the author of The Dawn-Breakers, see Nabíl-i-Zarandí.2.Cf. Nabíl, The Dawn-Breakers, p. 395, note 1.3.Cf. Qur’án 19:98.4.Qur’án 3:91.5.Qur’án 54:55.6.1849–1850.7.1853; 1892.8.Áqá Ján. Cf. Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p.…
Mírzá Áqá of Káshán — known to the Bahá'í community as Jináb-i-Muníb — was a calligrapher, poet, and singer who left his daughter and his livelihood to walk on foot beside Bahá'u'lláh from Baghdád to Constantinople. He died, ill, in a Smyrna hospital during the exile to 'Akká, his last act being to drag himself to Bahá'u'lláh's feet and weep.
Sháh-Muḥammad, who had the title of Amín, the Trusted One, was among the earliest of believers, and most deeply enamored. He had listened to the Divine summons in the flower of his youth, and set his face toward the Kingdom. He had…
Mrs. Gibbons, a Bahá’í, had written the Master before His coming to the United States, requesting that her own daughter be allowed to paint His portrait. In His reply He consented to this request and added, according to Mrs. Gibbons, that…
Muhammad-Hadi was from Isfahan, and as a binder and illuminator of books he had no peer. When he gave himself up to the love of God he was alert on the path and fearless. He abandoned his home and began a dreadful journey, passing with…
My mother, my Aunt Khánum, my three sisters, and I lived in the bigger house at `Akká with our beloved Father; Bahá’u’lláh lived at Bahji. At this time the people of the place greatly respected and honoured Him and the Master, and we were…
Nabil, who was asked by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to select from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh those passages which constitute the text of the Tablet of Visitation, which nowadays is usually recited in the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb, was…
When the Great War ended, the partial freedom of His last years brought 'Abdu'l-Bahá not rest but an even heavier round of labour — pilgrims streaming back to His door, Tablets flowing out to the believers of every land, the poor of Haifa still waiting each morning. He poured out the last of His strength in the work of the Cause until, worn and longing for home, He laid the burden down.
On the Friday before His passing in 1921, 'Abdu'l-Bahá rose, attended the noonday congregational prayer, and then — as He had done for as long as anyone could remember — distributed alms to the poor of Haifa with His own hand. It was His last public act of the service that had filled His whole life.
At three in the morning on the anniversary of His ascension, and whenever a pilgrim enters the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh, Bahá'ís chant the Tablet of Visitation. Adib Taherzadeh recounts how this most beloved of devotional texts came to be — gathered, in the days of mourning, by the grief-stricken chronicler Nabíl from Bahá'u'lláh's own revealed words, and given authority by 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
For years Bahá'u'lláh was a prisoner within the barred gates of 'Akká. Yet His earthly life ended not behind those walls but in a green and gracious house in the countryside beyond — the Mansion of Bahjí. Adib Taherzadeh recounts how the prison terms eased, how 'Abdu'l-Bahá secured the Mansion for His Father, and how the closing years unfolded in a place that fulfilled a prophecy spoken long before.
In The Chosen Highway, the women of the Holy Family remember the days that followed Bahá'u'lláh's ascension in 1892. Their grief was beyond words — yet through it all moved one steady figure. 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the Most Great Branch, took upon Himself the care of the family, the friends, and the Cause, chanting the funeral prayer, feeding hundreds for nine days, and giving to the poor.
Bahá'ís do not call the twenty-ninth of May the day of Bahá'u'lláh's death. They call it His Ascension. Drawing on Esslemont's Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era, this retelling reflects on the serene close of His earthly life, on the Tomb at Bahjí that became the Qiblih of a world religion, and on why the language of a rising Sun and a homeward journey, rather than of ending, is the truer way to speak of His passing.
In the small hours of the twenty-ninth of May, 1892, Bahá'u'lláh ascended at Bahjí in the seventy-fifth year of His age. A telegram bearing the words "the Sun of Bahá has set" carried the news to the Sultan; and for a full week, mourners of every faith and station — Muslim and Christian, Jew and Druze, rich and poor — gathered at the Mansion to grieve and to pay tribute.
In His final year at Bahjí, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the last major work of His pen — the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf — addressed to a cleric of Isfáhán whose father had ordered the deaths of two of the most beloved believers. Into it Bahá'u'lláh gathered passages from across His own Writings, leaving, near the end of His life, a summing-up of the Cause He had brought.
Long before His ascension, Bahá'u'lláh had begun to unveil the station of His eldest Son. In the Tablet of the Branch — the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn, revealed years earlier in Adrianople — He called 'Abdu'l-Bahá "the Limb of the Law of God" and "the Trust of God." When the Book of the Covenant was opened after His passing, it brought to fruition what this Tablet had quietly sown.
Bahá'u'lláh bestowed upon His eldest Son a constellation of titles unique in religious history — the Most Great Branch, the Master, and, most mysterious of all, Sirru'lláh, the Mystery of God. Shoghi Effendi unfolds what these names mean, and how the One on whom they were conferred chose, in the end, to be known by a single humble name of His own.
A respected jurist of Najaf-Ábád gave up rank and safety to follow Bahá'u'lláh, and devoted the rest of his life to copying out the sacred Writings in a hand so exact that his transcriptions became the standard by which others are verified to this day. Bahá'u'lláh named him Zaynu'l-Muqarrabín — the Ornament of the Near Ones.
From a borrowed house in the Ottoman town of Adrianople, an exile stripped of homeland, wealth, and freedom revealed the Súriy-i-Mulúk — the Tablet of the Kings — and, addressing the whole concourse of the world's sovereigns at once, bade the rulers of the earth lay down their pride, deal justly with their peoples, and turn to the Day of God. Shoghi Effendi ranks it among the most momentous Tablets of the entire Bahá'í Revelation.
In 1912 'Abdu'l-Bahá laid with His own hand the foundation stone of the first Bahá'í House of Worship of the Western world, on the shore of Lake Michigan at Wilmette. Over the next forty years a community of working people — giving in dimes and dollars, across two world wars and a great depression — raised above that stone a temple of lacelike grandeur, a gift that most of its builders gave knowing they would never see it finished.
From within the prison-city of 'Akká — held under a sentence of perpetual confinement — Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book: the charter of a future world civilization, set down by a Prisoner whom the powers of the earth had meant to silence forever.
In 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Súrih of the Temple — the Súriy-i-Haykal — and gathered into its body the mighty messages He had already sent to the Pope, the Emperor of France, the Sháh, the Czar, the Queen, and the rulers of the earth, fashioning of His proclamation a living "Temple" of the Word.
On Naw-Rúz 1909, after the sacred remains of the Báb had been hidden and moved for sixty years, 'Abdu'l-Bahá laid them with His own hands in the Shrine He had built on Mount Carmel — and, overcome, wept so that all who were present wept with Him. The greatest victory, He called it, of a long-deferred hope.
In the closing years of His life, from the neighbourhood of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Tablet of Ishráqát — the "Splendours" — setting forth, like rays breaking from a single rising Sun, the principles by which a divided world might be remade. Bahá'ís keep the very first month of their year, and its Feast, under the name this Tablet exalts: Bahá, the Splendour.
Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl was reckoned among the most learned men of Persia — head of a great religious college, master of philosophy and theology. The proofs of the new Faith could not move him. What moved him, in the end, was a plain question from an unlettered believer that all his learning could not answer — and through it he came to recognise the glory of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation.
When Bahá'u'lláh lay chained in the Black Pit of Ṭihrán, condemned without cause and surrounded by the executions of His fellow-prisoners, help came from an unlooked-for quarter: the Russian Minister at the Persian court, who took up His case, pressed for His release, and afterward offered Him the protection of his government. Nabíl records it as one of the signs that no power on earth could extinguish the Cause of God.
From within His imprisonment, on the death of one of the Ottoman ministers who had persecuted Him, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Tablet of Fu'ád — and in it foretold, in order, the downfall of the other minister who shared the guilt and of the Sulṭán above them both. Within a few years it had all come to pass. The sovereignty of His Word over the mightiest powers of the age is a splendour the Feast of Bahá remembers.
From within the prison-city of 'Akká — where the world's authorities had hoped His Cause would die — Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book. Out of the most desolate confinement came the charter of a future world civilization: its laws, its institutions, and its summons to the unity of humankind.
In the bitterest days of His imprisonment in 'Akká — His sons fallen, His companions scattered, the gates barred against Him — Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Lawḥ-i-Qad-Iḥtaraqa'l-Mukhliṣún, the Fire Tablet. Its verses move through a long lament over the world's wrongs and then break, at the end, into the certainty of the dawn: the glory of His Cause shining out from the very depth of His affliction.
Across forty years of exile, imprisonment, and persecution, Bahá'u'lláh poured forth a sea of revealed verses unmatched in religious history — Tablets, prayers, and books in such abundance that those who tried to record them could scarcely keep pace. Shoghi Effendi gathers the testimony of that torrent as one of the surest signs of the glory of His Revelation.
The friends longed to keep 'Abdu'l-Bahá's birthday as a festival of His own. He refused — that day, the twenty-third of May, belonged wholly to the Declaration of the Báb — and turned their devotion instead toward the Covenant, giving them the fourth of Qawl as the day of His appointment as its Centre. Years later, Star of the West would carry word of a Convention of the Covenant in which that same redirection of love bore extraordinary fruit.
For some forty years Shaykh Salmán walked, once each year, from Persia to the Holy Land and back — carrying the believers' letters to Bahá'u'lláh and bearing His Tablets home again, never losing a single one. In Memorials of the Faithful, 'Abdu'l-Bahá honours him as a courier without equal, a living thread of the Covenant binding the scattered friends to their Lord.
During His 1912 journey across America, 'Abdu'l-Bahá gathered the friends in New York to speak to them of the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh, and gave that city a name it has carried ever since — the City of the Covenant. The talks of that journey, collected in The Promulgation of Universal Peace, show the Centre of the Covenant pointing the new Western believers toward firmness, unity, and the great work of teaching the Cause to all the world.
Years before He named 'Abdu'l-Bahá the Centre of His Covenant, Bahá'u'lláh revealed in Adrianople the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn — the Tablet of the Branch — in which His eldest Son is extolled as the "Branch of Holiness," the "Limb of the Law of God," and the "Trust of God," a Tablet that foreshadowed the rank later to be conferred upon Him.
In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book, Bahá'u'lláh wrote a single luminous verse pointing the believers, after His passing, toward "Him Whom God hath purposed, Who hath branched from this Ancient Root." In His Book of the Covenant He made the meaning unmistakable: the object of that verse was none other than 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the Most Mighty Branch.
Between 1904 and 1906, at the dinner table of His house in 'Akká, 'Abdu'l-Bahá answered the questions of an American believer, Laura Clifford Barney, on the deepest matters of God and the soul. He corrected the notes twice in His own hand — and in doing so showed the world the very office Bahá'u'lláh's Covenant had conferred on Him: the authorized, unerring Interpreter of the Word of God.
Years before the Declaration, in the shrine-city of Karbilá, Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Zunúzí was led by his teacher Siyyid Káẓim to the door of a young Pilgrim of radiant countenance, and watched Him weep in prayer at the shrine of the Imám Ḥusayn. When the Call rang out from Shíráz in 1844, the memory of that Youth flashed back to him — and he knew at once that the Báb and the Pilgrim of Karbilá were one and the same.
Before Bahá'u'lláh ever reached the Garden of Riḍván, He had to walk out of His house and through the streets of Baghdád — and the city wept. Men and women of every station crowded the route to the river, and a small child ran from the crowd and clung to His robe, begging Him not to go.
Years before the Garden of Riḍván, the Báb had filled His writings with promises of "Him Whom God shall make manifest" — and had pointed, in veiled and exact words, to "the year nine" and to nineteen years that must elapse before the Promised One would appear. In April 1863, nineteen years after the Báb's own Declaration, that promise was kept.
Late in His life in the Holy Land, Bahá'u'lláh answered a question put to Him by the learned Bábí scholar Nabíl-i-Akbar about the place the philosophy of Greece and Persia should hold among the believers. The reply, the Tablet of Wisdom, surveys the great philosophers by name, traces the lineage of their light, and sets out the proper relation between human inquiry and divine Revelation — a charter for the life of the mind.
A young American woman travelled again and again to the prison-city of 'Akká, sat at 'Abdu'l-Bahá's table, and asked Him question after question — about God, the soul, the prophets, the meaning of the Scriptures. Out of three years of patient asking came *Some Answered Questions,* a book that includes the Master's teaching on the four ways human beings try to know the truth — and why only one of them is sure.
ʻAlí-Muḥammad Varqá, a poet and devoted teacher of the Faith, was imprisoned in Ṭihrán with his twelve-year-old son Rúḥu'lláh and a company of believers. When the murder of the Sháh was used as a pretext to crush them, father and son were threatened, tormented, and at last killed — the boy bearing witness with a serenity and courage before overwhelming power that astonished even his executioners.
Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl of Gulpáygán was among the most learned men in Persia — head of a religious college before he ever heard the name of Bahá'u'lláh. Won to the Faith by the proofs he had once tried to refute, he was imprisoned three times for it and stripped of his worldly standing. He gave the rest of his life to defending the Cause with his pen and his voice across three continents, the very power of his learning laid at the feet of the Faith he had embraced.
From His prison in 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed a Tablet to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh, the king of Persia. A seventeen-year-old believer named Badíʻ asked for the honour of carrying it. Alone and on foot he crossed an empire, stood in plain sight before the royal camp, and delivered it — then bore three days of torture with a serenity his executioners could not break.
Mullá Ṣádiq — known in Persia as "the saintly," and remembered as Ismu'lláhu'l-Asdaq — was one of the most honoured divines of his day. When he began to teach the new Faith openly in Shíráz, his enemies hung a halter on him and led him through the streets and bázárs to shame him into silence. 'Abdu'l-Bahá recorded what happened: composed and smiling, he kept on speaking, and was not silenced.
In Memorials of the Faithful, 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembers Mullá Ṣádiq — famed across Persia for his saintliness and known to history as Ismu'lláhu'l-Asdaq, "the Most Truthful Name of God." Hung with a halter and led through the bazaars of Shíráz, he kept on teaching the Faith; starved for eighteen days at Fort Ṭabarsí, he kept his courage; through a whole lifetime of persecution he never once slackened or fell silent.
In Iṣfahán in 1879, two brothers — merchants famed throughout the city for their honesty and their boundless generosity to the poor — were stripped of their wealth, falsely accused, and put to death at the instigation of two powerful clergymen. Bahá'u'lláh, who had named them the King of Martyrs and the Beloved of Martyrs, mourned them as among the most precious souls to give their lives for His Cause.
On pilgrimage to 'Akká, Lua Getsinger longed to serve 'Abdu'l-Bahá. He gave her the chance — and sent her to a poor, sick, friendless man in the filthiest quarter of the city. When she recoiled from the squalor, the Master taught her the hardest and most beautiful lesson of her life: whoever would serve God must serve his fellow man, for in every human being is the image and likeness of God.
In the years of His exile in Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh received a letter of spiritual questions from a Ṣúfí leader, a judge named Shaykh Muḥyi'd-Dín. In answer He revealed the Seven Valleys — a mystical Tablet that traces the soul's ascent to God through seven stages, from the first Valley of Search to the last Valley of true poverty and nothingness. A single revealed letter became one of the most beloved descriptions of the inner journey ever written.
As the First World War ended, an organization in The Hague devoted to building a durable peace wrote to 'Abdu'l-Bahá. From the Holy Land, only newly released from a lifetime of confinement, He answered with one of the great Tablets of His ministry — setting out, for the world's peace-workers, the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh on the oneness of humanity and the true foundations on which a lasting peace must rest.
The vast ocean of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation lay almost entirely in Persian and Arabic, beyond the reach of the growing communities of the West. Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Faith, set himself to gather from that ocean and to render its waters into a stately, faithful English — producing, in *Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh*, a book through which the West could at last drink directly from the Word.
Late in His ministry, from the neighbourhood of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Kalimát-i-Firdawsíyyih — the "Words of Paradise" — a Tablet of luminous leaves of counsel on the fear of God, the building of a just society, education, the trustworthiness that adorns the human race, and the world-renewing power of His Word.
From the Holy Land, during the dark years of the First World War, 'Abdu'l-Bahá wrote a series of Tablets to the Bahá'ís of North America summoning them to carry the Faith to the ends of the earth. Unveiled in New York in 1919, these Words transformed a small community into a teaching force that would belt the globe.
An eminent Swiss scientist, long an unbeliever, sent his deepest questions about God and the soul to 'Abdu'l-Bahá. The reply — one of the last great Tablets of the Master's life — answered him so fully that Auguste Forel, near the end of his days, embraced the Faith whose Word had reached him.
Quddús was the youngest and the last of the Báb's first eighteen disciples, the Letters of the Living — and the one He raised highest. A youth of luminous refinement, learning, courtesy, and serenity, Quddús was chosen as the Báb's sole companion on the pilgrimage to Mecca, poured out commentaries of astonishing depth even under arrest and siege, and bore himself through every ordeal with a perfection of character that his companions never forgot.
Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, brought to everything he touched a standard of exactness and beauty that those closest to him never forgot. The Priceless Pearl preserves the portrait: a young man who taught himself English to perfection in quiet Oxford rooms, then laboured year after year by lamplight to render the Sacred Writings in cadenced, faultless prose — showing that the patient pursuit of excellence can itself be a form of worship.
Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl had perfected nearly every branch of human knowledge — theology, philosophy, history, the sciences — and headed a renowned college before he was thirty. When he became a Bahá'í, he did not lay his learning aside; he laid it at the feet of the Cause, becoming its peerless scholar and carrying its proofs from Cairo to Paris to Green Acre, where Harvard and Columbia professors came to listen.
In the bazaars of Iṣfáhán two brothers built one of the most prosperous trading houses in the city — yet they were renowned not for their wealth but for their character: trustworthy, honest, compassionate, and so generous that they fed the starving in famine and quietly sustained Bahá'u'lláh's exiled company. They came to be called the King and the Beloved of Martyrs, "shining embodiments of all Bahá'í ideals."
Forty days before He was led from His mountain prison to be martyred, the Báb quietly gathered up all that He possessed — His writings, His pen-case, His seals, and His rings — and placed them in trusted hands, with instructions that they be carried in secret to Bahá'u'lláh in Ṭihrán. On the threshold of death, His last act of provision looked not backward in grief but forward to the One whose coming He had lived and would die to herald.
Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zanjání was among the boldest and most independent-minded religious leaders of Persia — a man unafraid to break with the crowd of clerics when his own judgment told him otherwise. When word of the Báb reached Zanján, he did not rush to condemn or to follow. He sent a trusted messenger to investigate — and when the answer came back, he was ready to act on the truth whatever it cost him.
For forty years 'Abdu'l-Bahá was a prisoner of the Ottoman state, and through every threat of exile to the deserts of North Africa and every renewed tightening of His confinement He remained serene, accepting each turn as the will of God. When in 1908 the gates of 'Akká at last swung open and He walked free, He met the long-awaited liberation with the very same tranquillity He had shown in captivity.
Scattered across an enormous continent, the early American believers could not build a House of Worship one city at a time. So in 1909 the delegates of their far-flung communities met in Chicago and brought into being Bahá'í Temple Unity — the first national institution of the Western Faith, the instrument through which a whole people could act as one to raise the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár of the West.
Near the end of His earthly life, from the green countryside outside the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Lawḥ-i-Dunyá — the Tablet of the World — a charter for the ordering and betterment of human society, in which the Lord of manifest dominion turned the eyes of His followers away from themselves and toward the welfare of all mankind.
In the prison-city of 'Akká and later in Haifa, 'Abdu'l-Bahá kept the festivals of the Bahá'í year — and Naw-Rúz above all — in a way that turned joy outward: toward the hungry, the sick, the widow and the stranger. The Greatest Holy Leaf and the ladies of the household, whose memories Lady Blomfield gathered, remembered a home where the new year was a season of open doors and open hands.
In His writings Bahá'u'lláh gave Naw-Rúz a meaning far deeper than the turning of a season. In a prayer revealed for the festival, He blessed the day He had ordained for those who had kept the Fast for love of Him; and through His larger teaching, traced by Adib Taherzadeh, the spring equinox becomes a sign of the spiritual resurrection that the coming of a Manifestation works upon a dead world.
Esslemont, gathering the ordinances of the Bahá'í year, shows how Bahá'u'lláh framed Naw-Rúz with exquisite care: a handful of intercalary days given to hospitality and the poor, then the nineteen-day Fast of inward devotion, and then, at the spring equinox, the new year breaking in joy. The festival is the bright morning that the whole shape of the year is built to reach.
From the mountain prison of Chihríq, in the last spring of His earthly life, the Báb sent a beloved attendant on a long and perilous errand — bearing Tablets to the shrine of the Tabarsí martyrs and a message to Bahá'u'lláh in Ṭihrán — with a single tender instruction: to hurry back in time to keep Naw-Rúz at His side, "that festival, the only one I probably shall ever see again."
In the spring of 1863, in the last weeks of His decade in Baghdád and only days before He would declare His mission in the Garden of Riḍván, Bahá'u'lláh kept the two-week festival of Naw-Rúz with His companions at the Mazraʻiy-i-Vashshásh, a farm in the countryside outside the city — a final, joyous new year on the eve of the greatest of all proclamations.
Across the years of His ministry, 'Abdu'l-Bahá wrote to the believers of East and West at the turning of each Bahá'í year, drawing again and again on a single great image: that as the material world is renewed at the spring equinox, so the coming of a Manifestation of God renews the whole inner world of humanity. "The new year hath appeared," He wrote, "and the spiritual springtime is at hand."
The festival of Riḍván lasts twelve days, and of these the first, the ninth, and the twelfth are kept as holy days on which work is set aside. Drawing on the early Bahá'í periodical Star of the West, this retelling looks at how the ninth day — the day the Holy Family crossed to join Bahá'u'lláh in the Garden — came to be hallowed, and how the friends keep it.
When Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris on the afternoon of 22 April 1863 to enter the Garden of Riḍván, the river ran so high that His wife and household could not follow Him. For nine days they waited on the far bank; then, on the Ninth Day, they crossed at last and were reunited with Him among the roses. The Ninth Day of Riḍván commemorates that homecoming of the Holy Family.
In His own words, in the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, Bahá'u'lláh recalls the four months He spent chained in the lightless underground dungeon of Ṭihrán — and how, in that very darkness, the first intimations of His Revelation broke upon Him like a dawn, a Voice calling from above His head and a sense that the whole creation had been set astir.
When the Sháh of Persia came to Paris in 1902, 'Abdu'l-Bahá charged the young American teacher Lua Getsinger to carry to him a message protesting the persecution of the Bahá'ís in his realm. She — a farmer's daughter with no rank and no standing — found her way to the monarch and delivered the Master's word, a single act of bold testimony that earned her the name of Banner-Bearer.
When Bahá'u'lláh returned to Baghdád from the mountains of Kurdistan, He found the exiled Bábí community in ruins — leaderless, demoralized, fallen into disrepute, its very name a byword for lawlessness. Within a few years, by no worldly means whatever, He had transformed that broken remnant into a community renowned for its dignity, its purity, and its love.
Withdrawing alone into the mountains of Kurdistán to spare His companions from discord, Bahá'u'lláh lived for two years among proud and warlike tribes and the learned of Sulaymáníyyih as a nameless stranger. He asked nothing of them and pressed His claims on no one; yet His gentleness, wisdom, and unfailing kindness so won their hearts that the whole region came to revere Him — and grieved to lose Him when at last He was called back.
In the last great Tablet of His life, Bahá'u'lláh wrote to a man whose family had hounded and slain His followers — Shaykh Muḥammad-Taqí, son of the cleric remembered as "the Wolf." He neither flattered the persecutor nor cursed him. He counselled him, reasoned with him, called him to justice and to God, and held open to him, even then, the door of forgiveness.
An unlettered villager of no rank or wealth, Shaykh Salmán walked on foot from Persia to Baghdád, to Adrianople, and to the prison of 'Akká once every year for some forty years, carrying the letters of the believers and the Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh — until 'Abdu'l-Bahá declared there had never in history been a courier so worthy of trust.
From His exile in Adrianople and 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed the most powerful monarch in Europe — Napoleon III of France — twice. The first message the Emperor is said to have cast aside with a contemptuous word; in the second Tablet Bahá'u'lláh warned him plainly that for what he had done his kingdom would be thrown into confusion and his empire pass from his hands. Within a few short years the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter, while the Cause the exile proclaimed continued to spread.
From the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed the supreme spiritual sovereign of the West — Pope Pius IX, who reigned over the Catholic world from Rome. In the Lawḥ-i-Páp He called the Pontiff to leave his palace, sell the jewelled ornaments of his office for the sake of God, and arise to recognize the Day of God. It was a summons from a Prisoner with nothing to a prelate with everything — and within a few years the Pope's own temporal kingdom had vanished from the earth.
Two empires shut Bahá'u'lláh inside the prison-city of 'Akká, meaning to bury His Cause behind stone. Yet within those very walls a sovereignty shone that no decree could touch: governors and generals came humbly to His door, pilgrims crossed the world to reach Him, and from His captivity He addressed the emperors who held Him as a King addresses His subjects. Esslemont's account shows that the Captive of 'Akká was, in reality, no prisoner at all, but a King of Kings.
In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book revealed in the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh turned to the assembled monarchs of the earth and addressed them in words of staggering majesty. He told them that the sovereign Lord of all had come, that they were but vassals, and that the King of Kings had appeared and was summoning them unto Himself. A reflection on the verses in which the sovereignty of God is proclaimed over every throne on earth.
From His prison in 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed a Tablet to the Emperor of all the Russias — one of the great Tablets to the Kings. It acknowledged a past kindness shown by the Russian minister in the darkest hour of the Síyáh-Chál, summoned the Czar to recognise the One Who had appeared, and warned that earthly sovereignty endures only when it bows to the sovereignty of God.
The longest of all the Tablets Bahá'u'lláh addressed to a single sovereign was sent from His prison to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh, the king of Persia. In it the Prisoner sought nothing for Himself, pleaded the cause of the oppressed believers, and made the king an astonishing offer — to be brought face to face with the divines, that the truth might be settled before the throne itself.
When Bahá'u'lláh rode out of the Garden of Riḍván on the twelfth day, He did not step into freedom but onto a road — more than a thousand miles of mountain and plain, north and then west, to the Ottoman capital. With His family and twenty-six companions He set out on a march of more than three months, and at every stage along the way the people met Him not as a banished prisoner but as an honored guest.
In the very days of the Riḍván festival, on the eve of His banishment from Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh revealed one of the great Tablets of His early ministry — the Súriy-i-Ṣabr, the Tablet of Patience, also called the Tablet of Job. Sent in honor of a survivor of the Nayríz upheaval whom He named Ayyúb, it lifts up the steadfastness of those who suffered for the Báb and crowns the Festival of joy with a hymn to patient endurance.
The banishment that began on the twelfth day of Riḍván was meant to humble Bahá'u'lláh, yet the long road north became a procession of homage. Town after town received Him with reverence, recalling the love of the people of Baghdád; and as the caravan neared the Black Sea, He revealed the Tablet of the Howdah, in which the majesty of His Cause shone out over the very road of His exile.
On the [day] of the first Naw-Rúz (1909), which He celebrated after His release from His confinement, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had the marble sarcophagus transported with great labor to the vault prepared for it, and in the evening, by the light of a…
On the night of 20 August, a horrifying young man came to a meeting at the Kinney's house. From head to foot he was covered with soot. His blue eyes stared out from a dark gray face. This was Fred Mortensen, a reformed criminal. When…
One day during a school vacation, some Bahá’í students who were attending school in Beirut were visiting Haifa. One of them had a geography book. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá looked at it and asked if He could keep it, and the student gladly consented.…
One July evening in 1919 a pilgrim held a sumptuous banquet at Bahji. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself served about forty guests. Bedouins camping nearby also received a generous share. When their children came, the Master gave a coin to each. In…
One of the most striking examples of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s imperturbability was His reaction to possible personal tragedy, further exile or execution. His troubles stemmed from the Covenant-breakers, those Bahá’ís who did not accept…
One of those 'unspiritual people' was at that moment a member of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's party, Dr. Amin Fareed, who had already tried to fraudulently get money out of her [Phoebe Hearst]. It was probably during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's stay at the Hearst…
In *The Promised Day Is Come*, Shoghi Effendi surveys the decline of the established religious authorities — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Sunní, Shi'í — across the early twentieth century, reading the decline as the parallel of the political collapses that had been visible since 1914.
In *The Promised Day Is Come*, Shoghi Effendi surveys the fall of the great monarchies of Europe and the Middle East during the cataclysm of the First World War — reading the collapses as the historical fulfilment of the warnings Bahá'u'lláh had sent to those same monarchs in the Adrianople period.
In *The Promised Day Is Come* (1941), with Europe in flames and the world at war for the second time in a generation, Shoghi Effendi diagnosed the upheavals of the twentieth century as a single judgment-and-redemption: a tempest unprecedented in its violence, unimaginably glorious in its ultimate consequence.
In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum describes the years of patient nightly labour by which Shoghi Effendi rendered Nabíl's Persian chronicle of the Bábí period into the cadenced English that became *The Dawn-Breakers* — the volume that, more than any other, made the heroic story of the Báb's followers available to the Western world.
In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum describes the slow, exacting labour by which Shoghi Effendi rendered Bahá'u'lláh's *Hidden Words* into the English in which generations of Western believers have come to know them — a translation built one aphorism at a time, in the silent hours of his Haifa office.
November 7th ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said: I will speak to you today of Bahá’u’lláh. In the third year after the Báb had declared his Mission, Bahá’u’lláh, being accused by fanatical Mullás of believing in the new doctrine, was arrested and thrown…
Adib Taherzadeh's account, in the closing chapters of *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh*, of the ascension of Bahá'u'lláh on 29 May 1892 in the mansion of Bahjí — the closing of the prophetic ministry of which the rest of Bahá'í history would become the unfolding.
Adib Taherzadeh's account, in *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh*, of the Tablet known as the *Lawḥ-i-Aqdas* — the *Most Holy Tablet* — addressed by Bahá'u'lláh from the prison-city of 'Akká to the Christians of the world.
In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the revelation in Adrianople of the Súriy-i-Mulúk, the Súrih of the Kings — Bahá'u'lláh's first general address to the rulers of the world collectively, calling them to recognise the One Who had appeared in their midst and to lay down the arms with which they oppressed their peoples.
In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the pilgrimage of Aḥmad-i-Yazdí — a believer of about sixty who walked, on foot, the 1,700 kilometres from Baghdád to Constantinople in search of Bahá'u'lláh in Adrianople. The Tablet that reached him by the wayside, the *Tablet of the Nightingale,* turned him from pilgrim into teacher and sent him another 2,240 kilometres back into Persia.
In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the Tablet of Carmel — the Tablet revealed by Bahá'u'lláh on one of His four visits to Mount Carmel in the closing years of His life. The Tablet is read as the charter of the future Bahá'í World Centre.
Adib Taherzadeh's account, in *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh*, of the revelation of the *Tablet of the Holy Mariner* in Baghdád shortly before the Riḍván declaration of 1863 — and of the dread the Tablet's imagery cast over the believers who heard it chanted in their gathering.
Adib Taherzadeh's account, in *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh*, of the *Lawḥ-i-Ḥikmat* — the *Tablet of Wisdom* — addressed by Bahá'u'lláh to Nabíl-i-Akbar in Egypt, in which He surveys the lineage of Greek and Persian philosophy and the proper relation between divine Revelation and human inquiry.
In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the second of two Tablets that Bahá'u'lláh addressed to Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. The first had been received with disdain. The second, sent in 1869, contained the explicit prophecy that Napoleon's empire would be wrested from him by failure of arms. Within a year the prophecy was fulfilled.
In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the Tablet that Bahá'u'lláh, prisoner in the fortress of 'Akká, addressed in 1868 to Pope Pius IX in the Vatican. The Tablet proclaimed that the Father had come, summoned the Pope to recognise Him, and counselled him to renounce temporal authority in favour of the spiritual ministry of his calling.
In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the context of one of the great Tablets to the Kings: the Tablet addressed by Bahá'u'lláh from 'Akká to Queen Victoria of Britain in the early 1870s. The Tablet praised her abolition of slavery and her elective parliamentary system, and called upon all rulers to lay down their arms in favour of collective security.
Ridvaniyyih Khánum related that when her child was ill, the Master came and gave two pink roses to the little one, then, turning to the mother, He said in His musical voice so full of love: "Be patient." That evening the child passed…
From Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, a Tablet on the spiritual practice of detachment — not the rejection of the world but the freedom of the soul from the bondage of its desires, so that the heart may be ready for the indwelling of the Beloved.
From Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, a Tablet setting out the central purpose of religion: not the formal observance of ritual, but the unification of hearts, the elevation of human character, and the establishment of the kingdom of justice and fellowship in the visible world.
From Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, a Tablet on the proper character of the spiritual meeting — the gathering of believers in private homes for prayer and consultation, which the Master holds out as the true seedbed of the Bahá'í community life.
From Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, a Tablet addressed to the women of the East and the West setting out the principle of the equality of women and men as a foundational teaching of the Bahá'í Dispensation.
Question.—If God has knowledge of an action which will be performed by someone, and it has been written on the Tablet of Fate, is it possible to resist…
This is an Epistle from Him Who is the true, the undoubted Leader. Herein is revealed the law of all things for those who fain would heed His Call or wish to be reckoned among them that are guided aright. Herein is enshrined the law of…
God testifieth that there is none other God but Him. His are the kingdoms in the heavens and on the earth and all that is between them. He is exalted above the comprehension of all things, and is inscrutable to the mind of every created…
Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants and all abide by His bidding! Footnotes 1.This is the first letter of ‘Thamárih’ which means ‘fruit’. Shoghi Effendi, in…
O Thou the Supreme Word of God! Fear not, nor be Thou grieved, for indeed unto such as have responded to Thy Call, whether men or women, We have assured forgiveness of sins, as known in the presence of the Best Beloved and in conformity…
O Thou who art the chosen one among…
O ye kinsmen of the Most Great Remembrance! This Tree of Holiness, dyed crimson with the oil of servitude, hath verily sprung forth out of your own soil in the midst of the Burning Bush, yet ye comprehend nothing whatever thereof,…
A passage from Selections from the Writings of the Báb drawn from the Qayyúm al-Asmá' — the great commentary on the Surah of Joseph that the Báb began to reveal on the night of His Declaration in May 1844 and that constitutes His first major work.
From Selections from the Writings of the Báb, a prayer revealed during the Báb's confinement in the mountain fortress of Máh-Kú in northwest Persia from 1847 to 1848 — a period of severe isolation during which the Báb composed many of His major works.
In the early days of His Declaration in 1844, the Báb addressed a Tablet to Mullá Ḥusayn, His first disciple, on the eve of Mullá Ḥusayn's departure from Shíráz to begin the work of teaching the new Cause across Persia. The Tablet preserved in Selections from the Writings of the Báb sets out the spirit in which that mission was to be carried out.
O ye who have peace of soul! Among the divine Texts as set forth in the Most Holy Book and also in other Tablets is this: it is incumbent upon the father and mother to train their children both in good conduct and the study of books;…
The Sunday school for the children in which the Tablets and Teachings of Bahá’u’lláh are read, and the Word of God is recited for the children is indeed a blessed thing. Thou must certainly continue this organized activity without…
O thou dear handmaid of God! Praise thou God, because thou art favoured at His Holy Threshold, and cherished in the Kingdom of His might. Thou art the head of an assembly which is the very imprint of the Company on high, the…
O thou sincere and loyal handmaid of the Lord! I have read thy letter. Thou art truly attached to the Kingdom and devoted to the All-Glorious Horizon. I beg of God in His bounty to make thee to burn ever more brightly in the fire of His…
O ye who are the chosen ones of the Abhá Kingdom! Praise ye the Lord of Hosts for He, riding upon the clouds, hath come down to this world out of the heaven of the invisible realm, so that East and West were lit by the glory of the Sun…
Praise be to Him through Whose splendours the earth and the heavens are aglow, through Whose fragrant breathings the gardens of holiness that adorn the hearts of the chosen are trembling for joy, to Him Who hath shed His light and…
O thou who art enamoured of the breaths of God! I have read thy letter, which cried out with thy love for God and thine irresistible attraction to His Beauty, and its wondrous theme did cheer my…
O my Lord! I have drawn nigh unto Thee, in the depths of this darksome night, confiding in Thee with the tongue of my heart, trembling with joy at the sweet scents that blow from Thy realm, the All-Glorious, calling unto Thee,…
O ye who have turned your faces toward the Exalted Beauty! By night, by day, at morningtide and sunset, when darkness draweth on, and at early light I remember, and ever have remembered, in the realms of my mind and heart, the loved…
O ye roses in the garden of God’s love! O ye bright lamps in the assemblage of His knowledge! May the soft breathings of God pass over you, may the Glory of God illumine the horizon of your hearts. Ye are the waves of the deep sea of…
O ye faithful friends, O ye sincere servants of Bahá’u’lláh! Now, in the midwatches of the night, when eyes are closed in slumber and all have laid their heads upon the couch of rest and deep sleep, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is wakeful within the…
O thou who art captivated by the truth and magnetized by the Heavenly Kingdom! Thy long letter hath come and it brought great joy, as it clearly betokened thy strenuous efforts and high purposes. Praised be God, thou wishest well to…
O thou who art dear, and wise! Thy letter dated 27 May 1906 hath been received and its contents are most pleasing and have brought great…
The world’s great Light, once resplendent upon all mankind, hath set, to shine everlastingly from the Abhá Horizon, His Kingdom of fadeless glory, shedding splendour upon His loved ones from on high and breathing into their hearts and…
O thou ignited candle! Thy letter was received. Its contents imparted spiritual gladness, for they were pervaded by spiritual sentiments and indicated the attraction of thy heart, attachment to the Kingdom of God and love for His divine…
O thou beloved maidservant of God! Thy letter was received and its contents revealed the fact that the friends, in perfect energy and vitality are engaged in the propagation of the heavenly teachings. This news hath caused intense joy…
O daughter of the Kingdom! Thy letter hath come and its contents make clear the fact that thou hast directed all thy thoughts toward acquiring light from the realms of mystery. So long as the thoughts of an individual are scattered he…
O bird that singeth sweetly of the Abhá Beauty! In this new and wondrous dispensation the veils of superstition have been torn asunder and the prejudices of eastern peoples stand condemned. Among certain nations of the East, music was…
An excerpt from the Báb's earliest book, the Qayyúmu'l-Asmá' — a commentary on the Súrih of Joseph revealed in the first hours of His Declaration in May 1844. In this passage, the Báb summons the kings of the world to carry His verses to the peoples of Turkey, India, and the lands of East and West.
Among the household recollections Mr. Furutan preserves in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the simple memory of how Bahá'u'lláh, in His own house, would set aside His writing to receive the children — would ask after their small concerns, would laugh at their jokes, and would send them away with blessings they remembered to the end of their lives.
In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* the Hand of the Cause Mr. 'Alí-Akbar Furútan preserves two early memories of the Blessed Beauty's childhood: His unusual composure as an infant, who almost never cried, and a prophetic dream He described at age five or six in which He stood unharmed amid attacking sea creatures and birds — interpreted by a noted dream-reader as a foreshadowing of His future Cause.
Among the childhood stories Hand of the Cause Furutan gathered into his *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the recollection of how the young Mírzá Ḥusayn -‘Alí — long before His Declaration — would refuse to settle a quarrel among His playmates without first hearing both sides, and how the household began to recognize a quiet authority in the boy.
In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* Mr. Furutan preserves the household memory of how Bahá'u'lláh, during the years in Bahjí, would step out into the small garden each afternoon with a handful of grain in His hand for the wild pigeons of the plain — and the gentleness of a creature who, in His own words, *did not wish to disappoint* the birds.
In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* Mr. Furutan recalls the circumstances in which the Tablet of Aḥmad — recited by Bahá'ís throughout the world in seasons of difficulty — was revealed for a single Persian believer who had become discouraged in his journey, and the consolation it carried back to him on the road.
In April 1913 'Abdu'l-Bahá visited Budapest. The Star of the West reported that He addressed Hungarian peace societies, Theosophical groups, and meetings drawing some eight hundred listeners — and that He charged a young Bahá'í named Leopold Stark with establishing the first nucleus of the Faith in the Hungarian capital.
*Star of the West* records the dedication, in 1908, of the first Bahá'í House of Worship in the world — at 'Ishqábád (Ashgabat) in Russian Turkmenistan. The community of Persian exiles and emigrants on the steppe had built, with their own hands and from a fund collected over a generation, a nine-sided dome that would for forty years be the model for every subsequent Mashriqu'l-Adhkár.
In Star of the West Volume 4, the editors printed a tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to Mrs. Harriet Cline of Los Angeles on the meaning of firmness in the Covenant. The Master compared it to a rope strong enough to hold the friends through the storm of differences and tests.
In 1920 the Star of the West printed Corinne True's report on the acquisition of the Temple property at Wilmette, on the shore of Lake Michigan — the small group of acres on which, by the Master's direction, the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár of the West would in time be raised.
In 1922 the Star of the West printed an early report from the pioneer travel-teachers who had carried the Faith into Alaska — a small notice describing the first contacts with the Native and settler communities of the territory and the response of the small Anchorage and Juneau gatherings.
In the August 1915 issue of the Star of the West, the editors surveyed the program of the Green Acre Bahá'í summer school at Eliot, Maine — the gathering that, since Sarah Farmer's gift of the property, had become the principal summer institution of the American Bahá'í community.
In the autumn of 1918 the *Star of the West* carried the first reliable news of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's safety after the British liberation of Haifa from Ottoman rule, ending three and a half years of intermittent silence between the American friends and the war-strained Holy Land.
In June 1921 the Star of the West reported on the small school for Bahá'í children that had begun on the slope of Mount Carmel — a visible answer to one of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's most insistent themes: the universal education of children, irrespective of station or means.
In 1922 the Star of the West preserved a tribute by Martha Root to Mírzá Ḥaydar-'Alí — the eleven-year prisoner of Khartoum who had become, in his later years, the great traveling teacher of the Bahá'ís of Persia, called by the friends *the Angel of the believers.*
In 1916 the Star of the West reported on the publication of Ali-Kuli Khan's translation of the Kitáb-i-Íqán — the first complete rendering into English of Bahá'u'lláh's principal doctrinal work, made available to the American friends after fifteen years of patient labour.
In 1915 the *Star of the West* carried news of the small but significant entry of the Faith into Japan — through the patient teaching work of Agnes Alexander in Tokyo and the formation of the first small Japanese Bahá'í community.
In a 1915 issue of the Star of the West, Mary Hanford Ford published an early survey of the Bahá'í communities then in existence across the United States, naming city by city the small assemblies and scattered isolated believers — a snapshot of the American Faith just as the war was beginning to reshape the world it was being preached into.
In the Naw-Rúz issue of the Star of the West for 1916, the editors printed a Tablet from 'Abdu'l-Bahá received during the year — a brief message of cheer and exhortation to the American believers, written during the war years when communication between Haifa and the West had become difficult.
In Issue 1 of Volume 2 of the Star of the West, dated March 1911, the editors reported on the work of the Persian-American Educational Society — a small body of American Bahá'ís that had enrolled sixty-three scholarships and remitted seven hundred dollars to support the Bahá'í schools in Tehran. The Master had asked them, in particular, for *one… efficient in science and arts.*
The opening issue of the Star of the West, March 21, 1910, carried a memorial account of Mírzá Mihdí — the Purest Branch — younger brother of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who fell from the roof of the barracks in 'Akká in 1870 and used his dying breaths to plead that the believers be admitted to see Bahá'u'lláh.
In 1916 the Star of the West introduced its readers to the young Japanese Bahá'í Saichiro Fujita, who had come from Yamaguchi to study in California, found the Faith there, and would in time travel to Haifa to spend the rest of his life in the household of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi.
In the spring and summer of 1919 the Star of the West gave its pages to the unveiling of the Tablets of the Divine Plan — the Master's great charter of teaching addressed to the North American believers, formally proclaimed at the New York convention in April 1919.
In the spring of 1916 the *Star of the West* carried the first published Tablets of the Divine Plan, sent by 'Abdu'l-Bahá from the war-strained Holy Land to the American believers — eight letters that would prove to be the charter of the Bahá'í teaching enterprise of the twentieth century.
In October 1912 the Star of the West printed the news of the death of Thornton Chase — the first American to embrace the Bahá'í Faith, who had passed in Los Angeles only weeks after meeting 'Abdu'l-Bahá on the Master's American journey. The Master called him *the first American believer.*
In August 1914 — the very month Europe collapsed into the Great War — the Star of the West printed a Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to American women on their particular duties in the work of universal peace. The capacity of women to *advance and to take power*, the Master argued, would accomplish what was, in 1914, plainly beyond the capacity of the men's world.
Surely the simplicity of the marriage of Shoghi Effendi - reminiscent of the simplicity of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's own marriage in the prison-city of 'Akká - should provide a thought-provoking example to the Bahá’ís everywhere. No one, with the…
A sufficient number of Tablets having been gathered together, they have been entrusted to the Baha’i Publishing Society for publication in this concrete form for the enlightenment of the English-speaking…
In a Tablet preserved in *Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas* (1909), the Master writes to friends under the pressure of opposition and persecution: the storms they were enduring would in time be remembered as the necessary precursor of a *divine spring* — the same logic by which winter precedes the verdant fields and orchards.
262 Announce greeting on my behalf to the two young Japanese263 and…
281 Announce on my behalf respectful greeting to the maid-servant of god, Madam ........., and…
292 As to [what thou hast heard concerning] the child born from Russian parentage, this is pure imagination. Yea, certain persons shall in this divine dispensation produce heavenly children and such children shall promulgate the…
300 Convey my respectful greeting to Mr. ......... and say: “Praise be to God! that there exists in thee capacity and endowment to enter into the Kingdom of God, and that thy wisdom and intelligence are known to the republic.301…
317 Convey my respectful greeting to Mrs. ......... and say: “We hope that day by day thou mayest take higher flights, attain to greater spiritual attractions, thy word become more penetrative through the power of the Spirit and…
Convey my respectful greetings to [Dr.] ... and say: “Have confidence in heavenly bounty and be sure of the favor of the Lord of the Kingdom. Soon thou shalt see that the East hath embraced the West and that the Occident and Orient are…
El-Baha, praise, light, blessing and peace be upon thee,170 O thou fire of the Love of God, thou light of the Kingdom of God, thou radiance of the Gift of God, thou peerless pearl in the Sea of the Mercy of God, thou sturdy lion in the…
Express my affection to Mrs. ... and say: “The grace of God hath chosen thee and distinguished thee for His love, that thou mayest thank Him, a thousand times in every moment. Because of this bounty, you must choose to serve the…
For the information of those who know little or nothing of the Bahai Revelation, we quote the following account translated from the (French) Encyclopaedia of…
“In reality thou art spiritually hungry and athirst for the Water of Life. Therefore I send thee spiritual food and bestow upon thee the Water of Life Eternal. That food is the divine advices and exhortations revealed in the Tablets and…
Glory be unto Thee, O my God! I supplicate unto Thee, O Thou my Helper! I invoke Thee, O Thou my Refuge! I utter to Thee my agonies, O Thou my Physician, and entreat Thee with all my hear, my soul and my spirit,…
Glory be unto Thee, O my…
178 Glory be unto Thee, O Thou whose mercy hath encompassed all things, whose gift is made perfect, whose power hath encircled the world, whose proof is demonstrated, whose signs have become manifest, whose words are promulgated, whose…
He is God! O ye heavenly…
Honorable Dr.…
194 I ask God that thou mayest find a perceiving eye, an attentive ear and an eloquent tongue; that thou mayest loosen thy tongue in delivering the Cause of God, promoting the Word of God in that country, educating the children and…
“If the people live and act in accord with the General Tablets which are revealed in the beloved of the East and of the West, this universe will become another universe, and the whole existence of this world will be clad in another…
298 If you arise in accord with the exhortations and commands of the Blessed Perfection—may my life be a sacrifice to His beloved ones! —before long agreeable results will be obtained, the great newspapers of the world will all engage…
III-530 to teach His truth, to deliver His Cause, to promote His Word, and to train the souls whom superstitions have veiled from witnessing the lights of the Bounty of these…
130 Inquire after the health of Miss .........., send her my greeting and say: “Many ideas rise up in the human mind; some of them concern truth and some untruth. Among such ideas those which owe their source to the Light of Truth will…
“It is hoped that wonderful effects will be displayed in the future, that the friends of God may live and act in accord with the heavenly teachings, in order that the region of America may become the Paradise of Abha, that desert and…
An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to Mrs. Jessie Cole of Chicago, addressing her recent recognition of the Cause and exhorting her to undertake the active teaching work in her city that her conviction made her ready for.
My God! My God! Elohim123…
My God! My God! I am a servant, miserable, humbled, submissive and low at the door of Thy Oneness, supplicating Thee with a heart full of Thy love and a face rejoiced at Thy glad-tidings! O God! Make me of those who are drawn unto light…
My Lord! My…
O attracted maid-servant of…
O bird185 of the Rose-garden of…
O bird without a…
“O Compassionate God! Thanks be to Thee for Thou hast awakened and made (me) conscious. Thou hast given me a seeing eye and favored me with a hearing ear; hast led me to Thy Kingdom and guided me to Thy Path. Thou hast shown me the…
O dear servant of…
O God! O God!16…
O God! O thou Attracted of the hearts of the favored ones toward the Manifest…
O God who art without…
215 O God! Grant Washington happiness and peace! Illuminate that land with the light of the faces of the friends, make it a paradise of Glory, let it become an envy of the green gardens of the earth! Help the friends, increase their…
O heavenly one! The maid-servant of God ... hath praised thee! I hope thou wilt acquire great proficiency in writing literature, composition, eloquence of tongue and fluency of speech, co-operating with the maid-servant of God in the…
O Lord! O Beloved! The truthful servant, Mr. ........, abandoned home, left his native land and crossed the great ocean until he reached the shore of the Holy Land and arrived at the Blessed Spot. He laid his head upon the threshold of the…
“O loving God! I am a young child, a suppliant, a captive. Be Thou my refuge, my support, my protector. I am in distress: give me the means of tranquillity. I am needy: bestow upon me the treasure of the Kingdom. I am dead: give me the…
O maid-servant of God, thou who hast given up thy life to the service of the Kingdom of…
O maid-servant of God, who art supplicating unto the Sublime…
O maid-servant of God who art swayed like a strong branch by the breeze of…
O maid-servant of…
O maid-servant of the Beauty of…
O my dear friend! Verily, my heart is united with thee even though my body is in a distant land, for verily neither long distance nor immense remoteness can prevent the union between hearts, because the clear hearts are in reality…
O my dear, intimate…
O my God, my…
O my God! O my God! We are servants who have sincerely turned our faces unto Thy grand face, severed ourselves from all else save Thee in this great day and are assembled together in this glorious meeting, of one accord and desire, and…
O my God! O my…
O my Lord, my Beloved, my…
O my Lord, my Hope!84…
274 O my Lord! O my…
O my Lord!279…
O my spiritual…
O my spiritual friends!291…
O my tender…
O seeker of the…
O seeker of…
O servant of…
O servant of…
O servants176 of the Blessed…
O Spiritual Assembly46…
O Spiritual…
O thou dear…
O thou advancer to…
O thou advancing maid-servant of…
O thou artery pulsating in the body of the…
O thou at whose mention I am…
O thou attracted maid-servant of…
O thou attracted one of the…
O thou attracted…
O thou bearer of the Great-tidings of the Kingdom of…
O thou believer in…
O thou beloved and benevolent daughter of the Kingdom of…
O thou beloved maid-servant of…
O thou beloved of my…
O thou bird of pleasing…
O thou bird of the Garden of…
O thou bird of the Rose-garden of the…
O thou bird of the Rose-garden of the Love of…
O thou bird warbling in the Garden of the Love of…
O thou bird who art warbling in the Garden of the Guidance of…
O thou blooming rose in the garden of the Love of…
O thou bright…
O thou candle of the Love of…
O thou candle shining by the light of the Love of…
O thou child of the Kingdom and firm in the…
O thou confident…
O thou confident soul who art content and…
O thou confirmed by an inspiration from the…
O thou cup overflowing with the Wine of the Love of God!…
O thou darling…
O thou daughter of the…
O thou dazzling gem by the light of the Love of…
O thou dear and…
O thou dear…
O thou dear maid-servant of…
O thou dear…
O thou dear servant of…
O thou dear…
O thou dear wise…
O thou effulgence of the…
O thou esteemed maid-servant of…
O thou esteemed maid-servant of the Loving…
O thou esteemed maid-servant of the Word of…
O thou excellent maid-servant of…
O thou faithful and…
O thou faithful maid-servant of…
O thou faithful…
O thou faithful servant of the True…
O thou favored maid-servant in the Threshold of the…
O thou favored maid-servant of…
O thou favored maid-servant of the Kingdom of…
O thou flame of the Love of…
O thou flower of the Rose-garden of…
O thou flower of the Rose-Garden of the Love of…
O thou flower perfumed by the Breaths of the Love of…
O Thou Forgiving Lord!91…
O thou fortunate and righteous, sincere and…
O thou fragrant rose blooming in the Garden of Guidance!…
83O thou fresh, slender branch saturated with the abundant rain of His…
O thou friend of old and O thou incomparable…
O thou gem of the Kingdom and brilliant…
O thou Glorious Lord!252…
O thou Godlike person and spiritual…
O thou handsome…
O thou heavenly, brilliant and precious…
O thou herald of the Kingdom of…
O thou herald of the…
O thou honorable…
O thou honorable…
O thou honored…
O thou ignited…
O thou illumined maid-servant of…
O thou illumined…
O thou kind…
O Thou kind God! That scattered assembly31 is Thine, and that gathering of friends is of Thee. Their eyes are opened, their hearts in tune with Thy love, and their ears in communion with Thy hidden…
O thou kind maid-servant of…
O thou lamp glowing with the fire of the Love of…
O thou lamp ignited by the fire of the Love of…
O thou lamp of the Love of…
O thou lamp who art enkindled with the fire of the Love of…
O thou lamp who art illuminated with the light of the Love of…
O thou leaf who art moved by the Breeze of…
O thou leaf who art well watered through the out-pouring of the cloud of favor from…
O thou lover of humanity!312…
O thou loving torch, flaming by the fire of the Love of…
O thou maid-servant of God who art attracted to the Fragrances of…
O thou maid-servant of God who art attracted unto…
O thou maid-servant of God, who art guided to the Light of…
O thou maid-servant of…
O thou maid-servant of the Blessed…
O thou messenger in the command of…
O thou my beloved…
O thou my dear friend, my associate and…
O thou my dear…
O thou my spiritual…
O thou near servant to the Threshold of…
O thou opened rose in the garden of…
O thou party5 who art assisted by the hosts of the Kingdom of…
O thou peerless, matchless, glorious martyr!172…
O thou plant in the Garden of the…
O thou plant in the garden of the Love of…
O thou plant of the Garden of the Love of…
O thou pure and spiritual…
O Thou Pure God!155…
O thou pure soul who art kindled by the fire of the love of…
O thou pure soul who art turning toward the Lord of the…
O thou pure soul241 who hath turned with a submissive heart to the Kingdom of…
O thou respectful…
O thou revered sincere…
O thou rose of the Rose-Garden of the Love of…
O thou Secretary of the meanings emanated from the hearts of the people of the…
O thou seeing…
O thou seeker after the Beauty of the True…
O thou seeker after…
O thou seeker of the Divine…
O thou seeker of the Heavenly…
O thou seeker of the…
O thou seeker of…
O thou servant of…
O thou servant14 of…
O thou servant of the Beauty of…
O thou servant of the True…
O thou servant who art near and dear to the Glorious…
O thou shining…
O thou sign of the Kingdom and the bird singing with the most wonderful melodies in the rose-garden of…
O thou sign of the Love of…
O thou sincere servant of…
O thou sincere servant of…
O thou sincere servant of the Lord of the…
O thou sincere servant of the True…
O thou slave of the Beauty of…
O thou son of the associate and companion29 of…
O thou son of the…
O thou speaker in the remembrance of…
O thou spiritual…
O thou spiritual…
O thou spiritual…
O thou spiritual…
O thou spiritual leaf who art verdant and well-watered by the outpouring from the Kingdom of…
O thou spiritual maid-servant of…
O thou spiritual man and merciful…
O thou spiritual person and heavenly man—may God confirm…
O thou spiritual…
O thou spiritual temple whose heart is drawn unto the Horizon of…
O thou spiritual youth and merciful young…
O thou spiritual youth!261…
O thou Thahbet (Firm) in the…
O thou that mirror in which the Light of Guidance is…
O thou that virtuous soul and individual who art ready for the confirmation of the Holy…
O thou thrall of the Lord of the…
O thou tree, developed in the garden of the Love of God!…
O thou tree planted in the Garden of the Love of…
O thou tree planted in the Vineyard of…
O thou who are enkindled by the fire of the Love of God!…
O thou who are firm in the…
O thou who art a young tree in the Garden of the Love of…
O thou who art ablaze with the fire of the Love of…
O thou who art accepted of…
O thou who art acknowledging the Oneness of…
O thou who art advanced toward…
O thou who art advanced toward the…
O thou who art advanced towards…
O thou who art advancing to the Dawning-point of Lights!…
O thou who art advancing to the Kingdom of…
O thou who art advancing toward…
O thou who art advancing toward the Divine…
O thou who art advancing toward the Kingdom of…
O thou who art advancing toward the Kingdom of…
O thou who art advancing toward the…
O thou who art advancing toward the Threshold of…
O thou who art advancing towards…
O thou who art advancing towards the Shining Orb of the…
O thou who art advancing unto…
O thou who art advancing unto the Face of…
O thou who art advancing unto the Kingdom of…
O thou who art afflicted by a visitation by which thine eyes are overflowing with…
O thou who art agitated as oceans by the winds blown from the direction of the Kingdom of…
O thou who art always calling on…
O thou who art anticipating the appearance of the Gift of…
O thou who art anticipating the descent of the Gift of…
O thou who art arisen for the service of the Cause of…
O thou who art assured in…
O thou who art assuredly believing in…
O thou who art attached to the Beauty of…
O thou who art attracted by a Breath that passed upon thee from the Holy Garden, the Blessed Spot—the Paradise of…
O thou who art attracted by the Breath of…
O thou who art attracted by the Breaths of God! —may God confirm…
O thou who art attracted by the brilliant lights of the Merciful One, shining from the Supreme…
O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God and enkindled with the Fire wherein Moses, the Speaker, found…
O thou11 who art attracted by the Fragrances of…
O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of…
O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of the Kingdom of…
O thou who art attracted by the Love of…
O thou who art attracted by the Speech of…
O thou who art attracted by the Word of god to the Kingdom of…
O thou who art attracted by the Word of…
O thou who art attracted to…
O thou who art attracted to the Beauty of…
O thou who art attracted to the Beauty of…
O thou who art attracted to the Beauty of the…
O thou who art attracted to the Bounty of…
O thou who art attracted to the Call of the…
O thou who art attracted to the Fire of the Love of God!…
***O thou who art attracted to the Fragrances of…
O thou who art attracted to the Fragrances of…
O thou who art attracted to the Fragrances of the Garden of the Covenant and art speaking the praise of the Orb of the…
O thou who art attracted to the Holy…
O thou who art attracted to the Holy…
O thou who art attracted to the Kingdom of…
O thou who art attracted to the…
O thou who art attracted to the Light of…
O thou who art attracted to the Light of the…
O thou who art attracted to the Spirit of…
O thou who art attracted to the Word of…
O thou who art attracted toward the…
O thou who art attracted unto the Beauty of…
O thou who art attracted unto the Beauty of…
O thou who art awakened from the sleep of negligence and…
O thou who art awakened to the Cause of…
O thou who art baptized by the Spirit of the Love of…
O thou who art calling in the cities, the bearer of the Gospel of the Kingdom of…
O thou who art calling in the Name of God and heralding unto the Kingdom of…
O thou who art cheered through the Fragrances of…
O thou who art cheerful in heart, by the Fragrances of the…
O thou who art cheerfully moving by the Fragrances of…
O thou who art commemorating the Name of…
O thou who art commemorating the praises of…
O thou who art confessing the Oneness of…
O thou who art confident in the appearance of the Kingdom of God! Verily I read thy letter, which was beautifully composed and which proved thy great love, the extent of thy knowledge and the illumination of thy sight, by witnessing the…
O thou who art…
O thou who art controlled by the attraction of the Fragrances of…
O thou who art controlled by the attraction of the Holy fragrances of the gardens of God’s…
O thou who art controlled by the attractions of the Fragrance of…
O thou who art desirous of the Kingdom of…
O thou who art directed to the Light of…
O thou who art directed toward the Light of…
O thou who art directed unto…
O thou who art drawn unto God and kindled by the Fire which burned on Mt.…
O thou who art enkindled by the fire of the Love of God!…
O thou who art enkindled with the fire of the Love of…
O thou who art enkindled with the Fire of the Love of…
O thou who art esteemed and…
O thou who art esteemed in the Threshold of the…
O thou who art exhilarated by the Wine of the Love of God—young in age and old in…
O thou who art favored in the Kingdom of the…
O thou who art firm in the Covenant and…
O thou who art firm in the Covenant of…
O thou who art firm in the…
O thou who art firm in the love of…
O thou who art gazing toward…
O thou who art gazing toward the Kingdom of the…
O thou who art gazing toward the…
O thou who art guided by the Light of…
O thou who art honorable and faithful to…
O thou who art honored and…
O thou who art hoping for the…
O thou who art ignited through the brilliant Flame which is blazing in this Blessed…
O thou who art illuminated by the Light of…
O thou who art imploring…
O thou who art kindled as a lamp with the Fire of the Love of…
O thou who art kindled by the Fire of Guidance which blazed and burnt in the Tree of…
O thou who art kindled by the fire of the Love of…
O thou who art kindled with the fire of the Love of God!…
O thou who art longing for the Heavenly…
O thou who art longing for the…
O thou who art longing for the Orb of the Horizons!55…
O thou who art longing to witness the lights from the Beauty of…
O thou who art made happy by the Fragrances of…
O thou who art marching onward to…
O thou who art marching unto…
O thou who art near to the Threshold of…
O thou who art nurtured from the breasts of the Kingdom of God, who wert brought up in the lap of the Guidance of…
O thou who art partaking of the Heavenly…
O thou who art patient and resigning thyself to the judgment (of…
O thou who art preparing to receive knowledge from the Herald of the…
O thou who art quickened by the Divine…
O thou who art rejoiced at the explanation of the maid-servant of God…
O thou who art rejoiced at the Kingdom of…
O thou who art rejoiced by the Appearance of…
O thou who art rejoiced by the Divine…
O thou who art rejoicing at the Glad-tidings of…
O thou who art rejoicing by the Glad-tidings of…
O thou who art remembered by…
O thou who art seeking fire from the Fire of the Love of…
O thou who art seeking for the Power of the Holy Spirit!…
O thou who art set aglow with the Fire burning in the Tree of…
O thou who art set aglow with the Fire of the Love of…
O thou who art set aglow with the Fire of the Love of…
O thou who art shining with the Kingdom’s…
O thou who art sincere in the Religion of…
O thou who art skilled in the Knowledge of God and wise in the Wisdom of the…
O thou who art speaking the praise of god in that vast and extensive…
O thou who art spreading the Cause of…
O thou who art submissive and humble before the Holy…
O thou who art supplicating unto…
O thou who art supplicating unto the Kingdom of…
O thou who art sweet…
O thou who art tested with a great…
O thou who art the single one of Japan and the unique one of the extreme…
O thou who art tranquilized by the Call of the Kingdom at this…
O thou who art turned to the Kingdom of the Lord, the…
O thou who art turned to the…
O thou who art turning thy heart unto the Kingdom of…
O thou who art turning to the divine…
O thou who art turning toward the Kingdom of…
O thou who art turning unto…
O thou who art turning unto the Kingdom of God, and looking unto the Day-spring of the lights of…
O thou who art turning unto the Kingdom of…
O thou who art uttering the mention of…
O thou who art uttering the praise of…
O thou who art waiting for the Appearance of the…
O thou who art wholly advancing unto…
O thou who art witnessing the Light of…
O thou who art yearning for the Glad-tidings of…
O thou who dost believe in the Unity of…
O thou who has advanced towards…
O thou who has sought shelter in the Impregnable…
O thou who has turned towards the Lights of the…
O thou who hast acknowledged the Kingdom of…
257 O thou who hast addressed…
O thou who hast approached the Kingdom of God and hast looked toward the Center of the…
O thou who hast approached toward…
O thou who hast arisen to render service to the Cause of God in His Great…
O thou who hast attained to…
O thou who hast confessed and believed in the Words of…
O thou who hast gained illumination from the Light of…
O thou who hast humbled thyself before the Kingdom of…
O thou who hast prayed to the Kingdom of…
O thou who hast sought illumination from the Light of the Guidance of…
O thou who hast spread the Fragrance of God!—may God confirm…
O thou who hast turned thy face toward the Kingdom of…
O thou who hath advanced to the Kingdom of his Lord, the…
O thou who in truth art attracted through the Breaths of the Holy…
O thou who seekest for the Will of…
O thou whom I mention with my heart and…
O thou whose breast is dilated by the Fragrances of God!…
O thou whose breast is dilated (with joy) for the Kingdom of…
O thou whose breast is dilated with the Fragrances of…
O thou whose face is illumined with the Light of the Love of…
O thou whose face is radiant with the light of the Love of…
O thou whose heart hath been filled with the love of the Beauty of…
O thou203 whose heart is attracted and whose breast is dilated with joy by the Holy…
O thou whose heart is empty and pure through the Light of the word of God shining…
O thou whose heart is filled with the Love of…
O thou whose heart is moved by a breeze blowing from the Garden of…
O thou whose heart is overflowing with the love of…
O thou whose heart is pure and whose souls is…
O thou whose heart is soaring in the sky of the love of…
O thou whose nostrils are perfumed with the Fragrances of…
O thou whose tongue is uttering the Name of…
O thou wonderful leaf of the Tree of the Love of…
O thou wooer of Truth and attracted one toward the Kingdom of…
O thou yearner after the Kingdom of…
O thou yearner after the…
O thou yearner after…
O thou yearning…
O thou young in age and great in…
O thou young, incomparable tree of the Rose-garden of the Love of…
O visitant of the Resort69 of spirits (who are) sincere in the Religion of…
O ye196 beloved friends of…
O ye206 beloved! O ye maid-servants of the…
O ye145 beloved of God and His sincere…
O ye beloved ones! It is the moment of the ecstasy of the soul and consciousness and the season of running in the arena of sacrifice! Show ye kindness to all; be ye engaged in the refinement of the souls. Become ye as ignited lamps and…
O ye beloved ones of Abdul-Baha! This servant longeth to write a special Tablet to each one of the friends of God—but what can be done! For there is neither opportunity nor time. The affairs are like unto the waves, and the requirements…
O ye174 beloved servants of Abdul-Baha and the maid-servants of the Merciful…
O ye blessed maid-servant283 of the Beauty of…
O ye243 blessed…
O ye187 brilliant…
O ye33 children of the…
O ye34 Cohorts of…
O ye27 crying voices in the region of…
O ye dear children!280…
O ye81 dear friends and maid-servants of…
O ye dear friends of…
O ye305 dear servants of…
O ye154 dwellers of the…
O ye199 elect and chosen ones of the…
O ye208 esteemed maid-servants of God, and ye revered beloved ones (or men believers) of the…
O ye firm ones in the…
O ye friends of…
O ye153 friends of God and daughters of the…
O ye friends285 of this…
O ye friends!255…
O ye77 illumined faces! O ye divine souls! and O ye spiritual…
O ye leaves25 of the Paradise of El-ABHA, and the maid-servants of the…
O ye120 longing ones! O ye cheered ones! O ye attracted ones! O ye who are beseeching the Kingdom of…
O ye maid-servants297 of God and leaves of the Tree of Eternal Life!…
O ye maid-servants of His Majesty, the Lord—daughters and sons of the Kingdom!304…
O ye79 maid-servants of the Merciful! Leaves of the Tree of…
O ye maid-servants of the…
O ye members of the shining assembly! Each one of you must resist doubts (or false rumors) in those parts like unto a great barrier, until the invisible confirmations may appear and merciful assistance may become manifest. May your…
O ye members of the shining assembly!222…
O ye209 my dear…
O ye my divine friends!32…
O ye real companions! Day and night Abdul-Baha is engaged in the remembrances of the friends, and time after time doth he associate with them and behold their blessed faces. I entreat in the Threshold of the Lord of Existence to confrim…
***O ye real friends of…
O ye248 seekers of…
O ye205 servants of God and maid-servants of the…
O ye servants of the Threshold of…
O ye273 servants of the True One and the maid-servants of the…
O ye shining Assembly!113…
***O ye118 shining faces and spiritual…
O ye148 sincere, O ye firm and steadfast in the Testament of…
O ye58 sincere ones and ye who are attracted and moved by the breeze of the favor of…
O ye177 sincere ones! O ye favored ones! O ye beseeching ones! O ye supplicating…
O ye146 sincere ones! O ye firm ones! O ye heralds of the Kingdom of…
O ye200 sons of the…
O ye spiritual assembly!254…
O ye spiritual friends of…
O ye271 spiritual ones! O ye heavenly…
O ye two41 accepted ones in the Kingdom of…
O ye two237 advancers towards the Kingdom of…
O ye54 two birds in the open-space of the Love of…
O ye47 two birds warbling in the Garden of…
O ye two dear maid-servants of…
O ye93 two doves, flying in the verdant Gardens of the…
O ye two244 kind and beloved maid-servants of…
O ye two135 lamps of the Love of…
O ye two220 maid-servants of…
O ye two merciful assemblies!287…
O ye two134 pilgrims of the Holy…
O ye two147 revered persons, ye servants in the vineyard of…
O ye two269, servant and maid-servant of the Beauty of…
O ye two133 singing birds in the Garden of…
O ye two42 truthful…
O ye verdant and flourishing leaves26 of the Blessed…
O ye114 who are advancing towards the Kingdom of…
O ye who are attracted! O ye who are firm! O ye who are zealous in the service of the Cause of God and are sacrificers of possessions and lives for the promotion of the Word of…
O ye188 who are attracted! O ye who are remembered! O ye who are directed unto the Kingdom of…
O ye119 who are attracted! O ye who are united! O ye who are believers and…
O ye78 who are attracted to the Heavenly Kingdom! O ye who are enlightened by the Light of Guidance! O ye lamps lighted by the Light of Love and…
O ye who are chosen! O ye who are firm! O ye who are calling! O ye who are…
O ye who are considering the Kingdom of your august…
O ye who are firm in the…
O ye76 who are longing for the beauty of…
O ye who are set aglow with the fire of God’s…
O ye7 who are sincere! O ye who are attracted! O ye who are yearning! O ye who are arising for service to the Cause of God, for the promotion of the Word of God and the spreading of the Fragrances of…
O ye who are sincere! O ye who are firm in the Covenant of God in this new…
O ye who are sincere! O ye who are firm! O ye who are…
O ye57 who have advanced! O ye who are…
O ye207 whom God hath chosen from among those who are called!—know that “many are called but few are chosen”!—upon whom He caused the evident Light to descend; whom He guided into the right Path, and to whom He gave the Glad-tidings of…
Rejoice, O maid-servant of…
The first light which shone forth from the horizon of Eternity, the first radiance which was cast forth from the Morn of Guidance, and the first mercy which descended from the Kingdom of Heaven, be upon thee,173 O thou manifest light,…
These Tablets were originally written in Persian and all bear the caption, “He is God!”4 and close with expressions of good will, such as, “Upon ye be greetings and praise!” These expressions have been omitted from this compilation;…
24 *** Thou has written concerning the Board of…
276 Thou hast written concerning the universal peace, that before long the congress of The Hague will be opened277 and discussion will be made in regard to the universal…
108 Thy letter was received. It became conducive to happiness. Up to the present thou hast been serving in the Kingdom of God and hast been assisted. I hope that, in the future, thou wilt become assisted more and serve more. Praise be…
Thy229 letters were received. Although thou hast complained on account of not receiving answers to the petitions of the people, yet thou hast no right to do so, for the letters coming from those regions are like unto a sea—who is able…
An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the New York believers, preserved in the 1909 *Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas* — addressing the city of New York as the eventual centre through which the Cause will reach the New World and exhorting the friends to prepare for that destiny.
An early collective Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the Washington, D.C. community of believers — exhorting them to unity among themselves as the foundation of their effective teaching work in the capital city.
To him who is looking unto God! O thou who art gazing unto the Center of the Covenant—may God confirm…
An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to Lua Getsinger — the *mother teacher of the West,* one of the first Western pilgrims to 'Akká in 1898 — sent to her after her return to America with a charge to undertake the lifelong teaching work that her pilgrimage had opened.
To the beloved of God in…
To the servant of…
An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to a Western servant of God, preserved in *Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas* (1909), gives a careful warning about the kind of association into which the Bahá'í community should be drawn — and the patient discernment by which trust should be extended.
Verily I approach Thee, O my God, in the darkest hour of this dark night, and pray Thee with my inmost heart, while I am moving by Thy fragrances, which are being diffused from Thy Kingdom of Abha, and say158…
50 Verily, I read thy magnificent letter, thy brilliant writing, and found its meanings as the chanting of the verses of guidance and its foundation based on righteousness and piety. Verily I beseech God to make thee a sign of…
When you assemble in the meeting of teaching (the truth), it is incumbent on you to chant the following supplication and…
Your letters have been received. God willing, answer will be given very soon, but as a matter of great importance is on foot (afloat), therefore I write it to you in brief and it is this, that his honor Mr. ... must compose a letter of…
18 Your three reports, together with the public announcement19, were received. Praise be to God! all the contents indicated firmness, spirituality and goodness. The friends of the Spiritual Meeting are indeed manifesting efforts in…
‘Abdu'l-Bahá sent for me. I went to Him in the little room where He writes. He said, “Be strong! Be firm! You are not leaving Me; it is only your body that is going away. Your spirit will always be here. I shall always see you. There is…
Tonight we met ‘Abdu'l-Bahá and a large number of believers from all parts of the East at the Feast, or Supper, under the shadow of the Blessed Perfection. As we entered the large hall, ‘Abdu'l-Bahá greeted us, extending both hands and…
Before there were Bahá'í books, pamphlets, periodicals—before there were, properly speaking, Bahá'í administrative institutions; before ‘Abdu'l-Bahá made His historic voyage to America; before Shoghi Effendi transmitted to the English…
Badí‘ulláh came in during the afternoon. At first he seemed somewhat self-conscious, but in a little while the Power came over him and the Light shone in his face. Then he forgot self and spoke with fervor and eloquence. His theme was…
She said, “I regret indeed that I cannot speak your language. You also feel your need of Persian. Persian is most important in this Day as it is the language of the Word. We will understand each other perfectly in the spiritual world. A…
“Moral life consists in the government of one's self. Immortality is government of a human soul by the Divine Will.” “The soul is the Sanctuary of God; Reason is His Throne.” “Our Actions reveal what we are, no matter what the…
“Persian is the language of the Word because Bahá‘u'lláh revealed Himself in it. God be praised that you have come to ‘Akká! Mr. M. is a teacher. It is well that he has come to ‘Abdu'l-Bahá. As a pupil he should come to learn how…
“When you give the Message of this Manifestation many say, 'This is nothing new—I prefer the home of my old religious belief which has been so serviceable and trustworthy.'” ‘Abdu'l-Bahá answered: “Bahá‘u'lláh is the same Light in a…
“What is the Second Coming of Christ in this Dispensation?” ‘Abdu'l-Bahá answered: “In the Book of the Zend-Avesta the Zoroastrians are awaiting the Coming of two Manifestations. Also, in the Old Testament Scriptures there is the…
The early believers in Akká not only observed the Bahá’í Fast, but also observed the Muslim 30-day Fast of Ramadan during their incarceration in the Most Great Prison! These are Thy servants, O my Lord, who have entered with Thee in this,…
The Master loved children and took great delight in them. He felt ‘they were nearer to the Kingdom of God’ than were adults. It was observed how He listened so attentively one day to a young granddaughter of His He took her troubles…
The Master sent a Tablet to a lady who longed ‘for the Heavenly Kingdom’. In part, He wrote, ‘Recite the Greatest Name at every morn, and turn thou unto the Kingdom of Abhá, until thou mayest apprehend my…
The occasion of the wedding had one peculiar feature so characteristic of my brother that I will mention it. Our marriage service is very simple, consisting of the reading of a tablet and the exchange of promises by the contracting…
These words are especially poignant when one thinks of Thomas's young age, of the influence he demonstrated both during his life and after his death. For, truly, he was unlike anyone else. The spiritual maturity he evinced was that of a…
*World Order* magazine carried, in a 1980s issue, an appreciation of Marzieh Gail — the American Bahá'í translator whose six-decade career rendered into English a substantial portion of the Persian and Arabic Bahá'í Writings, including major works of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi.
In *The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh*, Shoghi Effendi insisted on a single, load-bearing distinction: the administration of the Cause is *an instrument and not a substitute* for the Faith. To separate the spiritual teachings from the institutions, he warned, would be to mutilate the body of the Cause itself.
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