The Tablet of the Branch

*A retelling based on **The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh**, Volume 2, by Adib Taherzadeh, which discusses the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn (Tablet of the Branch). The passages in quotation marks are Bahá'u'lláh's own words from that Tablet, in the translation Shoghi Effendi published in The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, unless another speaker is named.*

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During His exile in Adrianople, Bahá'u'lláh revealed an Arabic Tablet known as the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn, the Tablet of the Branch. Adib Taherzadeh writes that it was addressed to Mírzá 'Alí-Riḍá, the Mustawfí, a native of Khurásán who held a high position in government there. He had been taught the Faith in Mashhad by Mullá Ḥusayn, the first disciple of the Báb.

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The main theme of the Tablet, Taherzadeh writes, is the station of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Bahá'u'lláh's eldest Son. The Tablet speaks of Him as "the Trust of God," "this sacred and glorious Being, this Branch of Holiness," "the Limb of the Law of God," "the most great Favor" and "the most perfect bounty."

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In the passage Shoghi Effendi translated, Bahá'u'lláh writes:

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"There hath branched from the Sadratu'l-Muntahá this sacred and glorious Being, this Branch of Holiness; well is it with him that hath sought His shelter and abideth beneath His shadow. Verily the Limb of the Law of God hath sprung forth from this Root which God hath firmly implanted in the Ground of His Will, and Whose Branch hath been so uplifted as to encompass the whole of creation."

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The same Tablet declares: "Whoso turneth towards Him hath turned towards God, and whoso turneth away from Him hath turned away from My beauty, hath repudiated My Proof, and transgressed against Me." And it warns: "They who deprive themselves of the shadow of the Branch, are lost in the wilderness of error, are consumed by the heat of worldly desires, and are of those who will assuredly perish."

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Taherzadeh notes that these titles heralded 'Abdu'l-Bahá's later appointment as the Centre of Bahá'u'lláh's Covenant and the Interpreter of His words, an appointment announced in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and in the Kitáb-i-'Ahd, the Book of the Covenant. That Book was opened nine days after Bahá'u'lláh's ascension in 1892, and it directed His family to turn "towards the Most Mighty Branch." The praise of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in the Tablet of the Branch, Taherzadeh adds, did not surprise any of Bahá'u'lláh's followers.

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'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself was once asked by Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-'Alí to explain the verses of the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn that glorify the Branch. In His reply He wrote that "the true meaning, the real significance, the innermost secret of these verses, of these very words, is my own servitude to the sacred Threshold of the Abhá Beauty, my complete self-effacement, my utter nothingness before Him."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh**, Volume 2, by Adib Taherzadeh, and **The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh** by Shoghi Effendi.*

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