The Tablet of Fu'ád

A retelling based on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volume 3, by Adib Taherzadeh, with passages from Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By. Words in quotation marks are quoted from those books.

Fu'ád Páshá, Foreign Minister of the Ottoman Empire, had worked closely with the Grand Vizier, 'Álí Páshá, to bring about Bahá'u'lláh's exile to 'Akká and His imprisonment there. In 1869 Fu'ád Páshá died at Nice, in France.

On his death Bahá'u'lláh, then a prisoner in 'Akká, revealed the Lawḥ-i-Fu'ád, addressed to one of His followers, Shaykh Káẓim-i-Samandar of Qazvín. In it, as Taherzadeh describes it, Bahá'u'lláh severely rebukes Fu'ád Páshá, declares that God had taken his life as a punishment, and describes the agony of his soul in the next world for the sufferings he had inflicted. The Tablet then foretells: "Soon will We dismiss the one who was like unto him, and will lay hold on their Chief who ruleth the land, and I, verily, am the Almighty, the All-Compelling." Shoghi Effendi identifies "the one who was like unto him" as 'Álí Páshá, and "their Chief" as Sultán 'Abdu'l-'Azíz.

'Álí Páshá died in 1871. Of Sultán 'Abdu'l-'Azíz, Shoghi Effendi writes that he "was deposed in consequence of a palace revolution, was condemned by a fatvá (sentence) of the Muftí in his own capital, was four days later assassinated (1876)."

Taherzadeh writes that these prophecies were "often the subject of speculation and discussion among the believers of those days," and that some who were investigating the Faith made their acceptance depend on their fulfilment. One of them was Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl, head of a theological college in Ṭihrán. In the house of a believer he read the Lawḥ-i-Fu'ád and came upon the prophecy. According to his own account, he was "awe-struck," and for about half an hour he could not speak. He then declared that for him "the fulfilment of these prophecies would constitute the proof and a criterion for truth," and asked that no one speak to him about the Faith until they were fulfilled.

Five or six months later two Bahá'ís stopped him in a street in Ṭihrán with the news that Sultán 'Abdu'l-'Azíz had been dethroned. He answered angrily and went home. He told the believers that they must now wait for the words "lay hand on their Chief" to be fulfilled, since, he said, that phrase did not mean natural death. A few days later came the news that the Sultán had been killed.

After a period of great turmoil he took up the Lawḥ-i-Ra'ís, Bahá'u'lláh's Tablet to 'Álí Páshá, which he had long had in his possession, and as he read it he believed. He became one of the foremost scholars of the Bahá'í Faith and one of its ablest defenders.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Vol. 3, by Adib Taherzadeh, chapter 5.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1983). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (Vol. 3 — 'Akká, The Early Years 1868-77)*. George Ronald.