The Adrianople Revelation: Tablets to the Kings

In God Passes By, Shoghi Effendi devotes the central chapters of the book to what he names the most signal features of the Adrianople period — the years from 1863 to 1868 during which Bahá'u'lláh resided in the Ottoman city of Adrianople (modern Edirne) under the technical condition of exile.

The Adrianople period was, in the Guardian's reading, the time during which the Bahá'í Cause was publicly proclaimed to the world's rulers. Bahá'u'lláh, in the Tablets revealed in those years, addressed by name the great political and religious authorities of His age and called them to recognise the new Day of God.

The principal Tablets the Guardian enumerates include the following.

The Tablet to Napoleon III of France — a powerful Tablet addressed to the French Emperor, then at the height of his power and fresh from the Crimean War. The Tablet contained, in addition to its summons, a specific prophecy of the Emperor's downfall if he did not recognise the new Revelation. The Emperor refused. He was overthrown in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War. The kingdom passed from his hands as the prophecy had named.

The Tablet to Queen Victoria of Great Britain — addressed to the Queen of the world's then-greatest empire, acknowledging her abolition of the slave trade as a reflection of the divine will and counselling her on the proper administration of her realms.

The Tablet to Pope Pius IX — addressed to the head of the Roman Catholic Church, then at the height of his temporal authority, summoning him to recognise the second coming of Christ in the new Revelation and to use his vast spiritual authority in support of it. The Pope did not respond.

The Tablet to the Czar of Russia (Alexander II) — acknowledging a small particular service the Russian diplomatic corps had rendered to Bahá'u'lláh during the Tihrán imprisonment of 1852, and summoning the Czar likewise to recognition.

The Tablet to the Sháh of Persia (Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh) — addressed to the ruler whose government had imprisoned and exiled Bahá'u'lláh, and calling him to face the responsibilities of just rule and of recognition of the Cause the Persian state had been persecuting.

The Súriy-i-Múlúk (the Tablet to the Kings) — a collective Tablet to all the world's monarchs, addressed not to one ruler but to the entire institutional structure of nineteenth-century monarchy.

The Tablets were dispatched. Some were delivered through diplomatic channels. Some were carried by trusted believers. Some were in due course physically presented to the addressees. None of the addressees, in the Guardian's sober summary, met the call with the recognition that had been required.

The historical consequences of the kings' refusal would, in the Guardian's reading, work themselves out across the next century. The collapse of the European monarchies in the First World War, the upheavals of the Russian and Ottoman empires, the gradual diminution of the temporal authority of the Roman papacy — all could be read as the unfolding of what Bahá'u'lláh had named in His Adrianople addresses. The Day is come, and ye are veiled.

Paraphrased from God Passes By (Shoghi Effendi, Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1944); see original for full text.

Effendi, S.. (1944). *God Passes By*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/