First Steps Ashore: The Master Arrives in New York

On April 11, 1912, the SS Cedric pulled into New York harbour with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá aboard. The Master was sixty-eight years old. He had, only four years earlier, been a prisoner of the Ottoman state. That a Persian of His age and background should now step onto the dock of the world’s busiest port — sought after by reporters, welcomed by Bahá’ís who had only ever known Him by letter — was itself a marvel that Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, the Master’s secretary on this journey, would record day by day in the diary that bears his name.

According to Mahmúd’s Diary, the New York reporters did not wait for an interview to be arranged. They climbed onto the ship. Cameras and notebooks pressed close. They wanted to know what business an Eastern teacher had in the United States.

The Master answered without ornament:

Our object is universal peace and the unity of humankind. I have travelled to Paris and London and now I have come to America.

When the journalists pressed Him on what afflicted the world, He named one specific affliction:

One of these ills is the people’s restlessness and discontent under the yoke of the war expenditures of the world’s governments.

A few days later, on April 14, the Master accepted the invitation of Dr. Percy Stickney Grant to address the congregation of the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue. He was the first Eastern religious figure ever to address that pulpit. Mírzá Maḥmúd records the audience as utterly stilled by the talk, and the crowd that pressed around the Master afterward as overcome — one woman, in particular, weeping as she held to the hem of His robe.

So began the nine-month American journey. From the deck of the Cedric to the doors of the Ascension, the pattern that would hold across the continent had already been set. He would speak, and people would weep, and what they wept for was not always something they could name afterwards.

Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entries for April 11 and April 14, 1912; see original for full text.

Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, M.. (1998). *Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání*. George Ronald.