You Shall Know

A retelling based on The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, with details from The Dawn-Breakers, Eminent Bahá'ís in the Time of Bahá'u'lláh by H. M. Balyuzi and The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh by Adib Taherzadeh. Words in quotation marks are preserved in those accounts.

Siyyid 'Ali Yazdi was a boy of fourteen in 1858. His recollections, recorded in The Chosen Highway, begin with a Babi doctor named Radiu'r-Ruh.

Radiu'r-Ruh, "Contented Spirit," was the designation Bahá'u'lláh gave to Mulla Muhammad-Rida of Manshad, a village near Yazd. Years before, when Vahid was teaching the Cause of the Báb in Yazd, Nabil records that Mulla Muhammad-Rida was "one of the most enlightened 'ulamas of Manshad, who had discarded his turban and offered himself as his doorkeeper."

Radiu'r-Ruh had been in the presence of Bahá'u'lláh in Baghdad. On the day of mourning for the martyrdom of Husayn he went into a mosque and caused a great stir by crying aloud: "Oh, people! Ye are waiting for the Imam. But He has come! He is here! He is here!" Then he chanted, "God is greatest. Muhammad is His Prophet."

The people asked, "Why that chant on our day of mourning, O Radiu'r-Ruh?"

"Because the Promised One is here! You wait and wait, and know it now."

Siyyid 'Ali also remembered seeing him ride off with a flag over his shoulder. Bahá'u'lláh had sent him to teach in Persia. He came to the village of Manshad, where he held meetings with great caution, because they put everyone present in danger, and himself as well.

A believer of Yazd, whose words are preserved in the history written by Samandar and quoted by Balyuzi, recalled that Radiu'r-Ruh brought certain Writings with him from Baghdad, among them an ode that Bahá'u'lláh had composed in Sulaymaniyyih. The same account says: "The Friends [Baha'is] of Manshad and its environs were led to the light of faith by him. For a long time, because of the transgressions of the enemies, he had to spend both summers and winters in caves and on mountain-tops, suffering untold hardships, until the day of his death."

The boy found out that there were meetings, and that his father went in to them with others. When he listened, he heard chanting. Sometimes, when he watched the men coming out, he could see that they had been weeping. He wanted very much to know what it all meant.

One day he knocked at Radiu'r-Ruh's door. The doctor looked at him with surprise.

"What is happening?" the boy asked. "I want to know the meaning of all this; what are you doing - what?"

"My child, it cannot be told to you."

"But I want to know, I must know."

"If you know, and tell what you know, you will cause my death, that of your father, and of many, many others."

"I will tell nothing; only let me know, I promise to tell nothing."

"Very good," said Radiu'r-Ruh. "You shall know."

He taught the boy. Siyyid 'Ali said that his eyes were opened, that he saw that what the doctor said was the truth, and that he believed.

Ten days before his death, Radiu'r-Ruh came to the village again and read a Tablet from Bahá'u'lláh. Siyyid 'Ali's account keeps one sentence of it:

"Human life without the spirit is absolutely of no importance - the spiritual life is the only real life."

The doctor kissed the Tablet. To him it was "a missive of command from on High."

"My stay in this world is now very short," he said; "it behoves me to make ready."

He sent last messages to his family, with various directions and requests. When he had prepared for his end, he was summoned to a nearby village, where another doctor received him and offered him tea. The man had put strychnine in it.

Within a few hours Radiu'r-Ruh was dead. With his last breath, in agony, he sang praises to God for accepting the sacrifice of his life. Siyyid 'Ali calls him "this fearless 'Waiting Servant,' this faithful disciple," who gave up the human life that was to him of no importance, and by being steadfast unto death attained "the spiritual life, the only real life."

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Radiu'r-Ruh had brought back from Baghdad another Tablet, one whose owner had not yet been found. Haji Muhammad-Tahir of Yazd, who later attained the presence of Bahá'u'lláh in 'Akka, wrote in his memoirs that Bahá'u'lláh told him a Tablet had been written in His own handwriting for him, and that he would receive it in Yazd. It did not come with the other Tablets sent to Yazd, and years went by.

When a death-warrant was issued against him, Haji Muhammad-Tahir arranged to leave the city in the middle of the night. As he was about to mount the donkey hired for him, a Bahá'í woman of Yazd, Bibi Sahib, arrived and gave him a Tablet in Bahá'u'lláh's own handwriting. He asked her its history. She told him that twenty-four years earlier, when Radiu'r-Ruh returned from Baghdad, he had entrusted it to her "on Bahá'u'lláh's instruction, saying that its owner would be found later." It was twelve years since Radiu'r-Ruh had been martyred, she said, and she now felt that the Tablet should be his. 'Abdu'l-Bahá later confirmed that this was the Tablet Bahá'u'lláh had revealed especially for him. Taherzadeh notes that Haji Muhammad-Tahir was only a child when it was written in Baghdad, years before he asked for one.

This is a retelling. For the fuller accounts, see The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, and The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, volume 1, by Adib Taherzadeh.

Blomfield, L.. *The Chosen Highway*.