Bahá'u'lláh's Tablets to the Kings

*A retelling based on **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, with one passage from the Súriy-i-Mulúk as published in **The Summons of the Lord of Hosts**. Words in quotation marks are from those books.*

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Bahá'u'lláh lived as an exile in the Ottoman city of Adrianople, the modern Edirne, from 1863 to 1868. Shoghi Effendi writes that with His arrival there and the proclamation of His Mission "the Orb of His Revelation climbed as it were to its zenith." It was in Adrianople that He began to proclaim His Mission to the kings and rulers of the world.

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Shoghi Effendi names the weightiest Tablets of that period. First among them is the Súriy-i-Mulúk (Súrih of the Kings), which he calls "the most momentous Tablet revealed by Bahá'u'lláh." In it Bahá'u'lláh, for the first time, addresses the monarchs of East and West together.

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He discloses the character of His Mission, exhorts them to embrace His Message, enjoins them to be just and vigilant, to compose their differences and reduce their armaments, and warns them that "Divine chastisement" will "assail" them "from every direction" if they refuse to heed His counsels. It also contains passages addressed to the Sultán of Turkey and his ministers, the kings of Christendom, and the French and Persian ambassadors at the Sublime Porte. One passage reads:

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> Lay not aside the fear of God, O kings of the earth, and beware that ye transgress not the bounds which the Almighty hath fixed.

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Among the same Tablets were the first Tablet to Napoleon III, in which the Emperor of the French was addressed and "the sincerity of his professions put to the test," and the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán, His detailed epistle to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh of Persia, in which "the aims, purposes and principles of His Faith are expounded and the validity of His Mission demonstrated." That Tablet was later carried on foot to Ṭihrán by the youth Badí', who gave his life for it.

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The proclamation continued after Bahá'u'lláh was banished to 'Akká in 1868. As a prisoner in the army barracks He wrote to other sovereigns one by one.

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To Napoleon III He sent a second Tablet, through the French agent in 'Akká, because the Emperor, in Bahá'u'lláh's words, had "cast behind his back" the first. In it He prophesied that the Emperor's kingdom would be "thrown into confusion" and that his "empire shall pass" from his hands unless he arose to help the Cause of God. Napoleon III was defeated at the Battle of Sedan in 1870 and lost his throne.

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In His Tablet to Queen Victoria He called on the kings to hold fast to "the Lesser Peace," to be reconciled among themselves and to reduce their armaments, and set out the principle that should any one of them take up arms against another, all should rise against him.

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To Czar Alexander II He announced the advent of the promised Father, acknowledged the help the Czar's ambassador in Ṭihrán had given Him, and commanded him to "arise ... and summon the nations unto God."

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To Pope Pius IX He announced that "He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with clouds," and bade him leave his palaces unto such as desire them and "arise ... amidst the peoples of the earth" to summon them to His Faith.

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In a later chapter of *God Passes By*, Shoghi Effendi traces what befell these rulers and their houses in the decades that followed: the fall of Napoleon III, the loss of the Pope's temporal sovereignty, the end of the Qájár dynasty, and the collapse of the Ottoman, German, Austrian and Russian empires.

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*This is a retelling. For the full account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, chapters 10, 12 and 13.*

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