Letters to the Kings of the World

A retelling for children, based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi, his history of the first Bahá'í century.

Bahá'u'lláh was sent away from His own country, Persia, as an exile, and was moved from one city to another. From 1863 to 1868 He lived in the Turkish city then called Adrianople, and now called Edirne. He had no army and no throne. Yet it was there that He began to write to the kings and rulers of the world.

First He wrote one great letter to all the kings together, East and West. It is called the Súriy-i-Mulúk, the Súrih of the Kings. In it He told them who He was, asked them to be just, to settle their quarrels and to spend less on armies, and warned them what would happen if they did not listen.

From Adrianople He also wrote to Napoleon III, the Emperor of France, the most powerful king in the West at that time, to test whether he really meant the good things he said.

And He wrote a long letter to the Sháh of Persia, whose government had put Him in prison and sent Him into exile. In it He explained the purpose and teachings of His Faith. Later a seventeen-year-old named Badí' carried that letter on foot all the way to Persia and brought it to the Sháh.

Then Bahá'u'lláh was sent to the prison-city of 'Akká. From the prison He wrote more letters.

He wrote to Napoleon III a second time, because the Emperor had cast the first letter aside. This time He warned that if the Emperor did not help the Cause of God, his empire would pass from his hands. In 1870 Napoleon lost a great battle and lost his throne.

He wrote to Queen Victoria, and told her that God would reward her for having forbidden the trade in slaves if she followed what He had sent her. He asked the kings to make peace with one another, and to agree that if any one of them attacked another, all the rest would stand together against him.

He wrote to the Czar of Russia, thanked him for the help his ambassador in Persia had given Him, and called on the Czar to summon the nations to God.

He wrote to Pope Pius IX, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, telling him that "the Lord of Lords is come," and asking him to leave his palaces and call the peoples of the earth to God.

In the years that followed, many of those thrones fell. Napoleon lost his empire, the Pope lost his lands, and great empires came to an end. Shoghi Effendi saw in these events the fulfilment of the warnings Bahá'u'lláh had written.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "Bahá'u'lláh's Tablets to the Kings".

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