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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."
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
4 stories took place here — most often featuring 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Ḥájí Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the Afnán and Bahá'u'lláh.
'Ishqábád (today: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan)
In the city of 'Ishqábád, in Russian Turkistan, the Bahá'í community raised the first House of Worship the world had ever seen — a stately, nine-sided edifice set in gardens, ringed by the institutions of practical service the Cause ordains beside its temples: schools, a traveller's hospice, a clinic. Shoghi Effendi numbers its construction among the signal triumphs of the Faith's early history.
Hájí Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the Afnán — a cousin of the Báb known as the Vakílu'd-Dawlih — gave up his comfort, his business, and his estates and hastened to 'Ishqábád, where he poured out nearly all he possessed to raise the first Bahá'í House of Worship in the world, becoming, in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words, "the first builder of a House to unify man."
*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.