The Exile Who Asked Nothing of Them

A retelling based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi, with words of Bahá'u'lláh from the Súriy-i-Mulúk. Words in quotation marks are as those texts record them.

At noon on 16 August 1863, three days after leaving Sámsún on a Turkish steamer, Bahá'u'lláh and His fellow exiles landed at Constantinople. Two carriages were waiting at the landing-stage, and He and His family were driven to the house of Shamsí Big, the official appointed by the government to entertain its guests, who lived near the mosque of Khirqiy-i-Sharíf. Later they were moved to the larger house of Vísí Páshá, near the mosque of Sulṭán Muḥammad.

It was the invariable practice of guests of the government, however highly placed, to call in person soon after their arrival on the Shaykhu'l-Islám, on the Ṣadr-i-'Aẓam (the Grand Vizir), and on the Foreign Minister. Persian princes who came to the capital were known, Shoghi Effendi writes, to "solicit at every door such allowances and gifts as they might obtain."

Bahá'u'lláh made none of these calls. He did not even return the visits paid Him by several ministers, by Kamál Páshá and by a former Turkish envoy to the court of Persia. Nor would He present Himself at the Persian Embassy or repay the visit of its representative. Shoghi Effendi calls His attitude "upright and independent," in sharp contrast to the "mercenariness" of the Persian princes.

The Persian Ambassador, Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán, was being pressed continually by his government to turn the Turkish authorities against Bahá'u'lláh, and he was encouraged by this refusal. With the help of an accomplice who spread unfounded reports, and through his influence with ecclesiastics, notables and officials, he succeeded in representing Bahá'u'lláh as "a proud and arrogant person, Who regarded Himself as subject to no law."

Bahá'u'lláh later recalled those days in the Súriy-i-Mulúk: "Call Thou to remembrance Thine arrival in the City, how the Ministers of the Sultán thought Thee to be unacquainted with their laws and regulations, and believed Thee to be one of the ignorant." And: "If the laws and regulations to which ye cleave be of your own making, We will, in no wise, follow them."

Less than four months after the exiles arrived, the Sultán and his chief ministers, 'Alí Páshá and Fu'ád Páshá, decided to banish them, suddenly and in the depth of winter, to Adrianople. The edict was to be announced by the highly respected brother-in-law of the Grand Vizir. Bahá'u'lláh refused him an audience, so he set out his arguments to 'Abdu'l-Bahá and to Bahá'u'lláh's brother, Áqáy-i-Kalím, and said he would return in three days for the answer.

That same day Bahá'u'lláh revealed a Tablet, severe in its condemnation. The next morning He gave it, in a sealed envelope, to Shamsí Big, with instructions to deliver it into the hands of 'Alí Páshá and to say that it was sent down from God. Shamsí Big afterwards told Áqáy-i-Kalím: "I know not what that letter contained, for no sooner had the Grand Vizir perused it than he turned the color of a corpse, and remarked: 'It is as if the King of Kings were issuing his behest to his humblest vassal king and regulating his conduct.' So grievous was his condition that I backed out of his presence."

According to Nabíl, the Tablet was long. It opened with words addressed to the Sultán, severely censured his ministers, exposed their immaturity and incompetence, and warned them not to pride themselves on their worldly possessions, nor to seek riches that time would take from them.

On a cold December morning the exiles set out, some in wagons, some on pack animals, their belongings piled in ox-carts, accompanied by Turkish officers, while the friends they were leaving behind wept. The journey took twelve days, through rain and storm and at times by night. "Neither My family, nor those who accompanied Me," Bahá'u'lláh later wrote, "had the necessary raiment to protect them from the cold in that freezing weather." One of the exiles recalled that to draw water from the springs a great fire had to be kept burning beside them for a couple of hours before they thawed. On 12 December 1863 they reached Adrianople.

In Adrianople Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Súriy-i-Mulúk, in which He addressed the monarchs of the world together for the first time, and in which He also addressed the Sultán's ministers. "O concourse of Ministers of State! Do ye believe in your hearts that We have come to divest you of your earthly possessions and vanities? Nay, by the One in Whose hand is My soul!" All the treasures of the earth, He told them, were in the sight of God as worthless as a handful of clay. "That which perisheth can never profit Us, nor can it profit you, were ye but to reflect."

In the same Tablet He wrote: "Incline your ears to the counsels which this Servant giveth you for the sake of God. He, verily, asketh no recompense from you and is resigned to what God hath ordained for Him, and is entirely submissive to God's Will."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi, chapter IX, and the Súriy-i-Mulúk in The Summons of the Lord of Hosts.

Effendi, S.. (1944). *God Passes By*. Baha'i Publishing Trust.