The Father of the Poor

*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield, which records the recollections of Bahíyyih Khánum, the daughter of Bahá'u'lláh, with details from Adib Taherzadeh's **The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh**, volume 1, and Shoghi Effendi's **God Passes By**. Words in quotation marks are quoted from those books.*

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Bahá'u'lláh, whose name was Mírzá Ḥusayn-'Alí, was born in Ṭihrán in 1817, into a noble family of the province of Núr. His father, Mírzá Buzurg, held a high position at the court of the Sháh. Adib Taherzadeh writes that government officials of that time were often arrogant and could terrify ordinary people by their very presence. Those who met Bahá'u'lláh in His youth expected a son of the court to behave in the same way.

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Instead they found "the embodiment of love and compassion." In Taherzadeh's words: "To the orphan He was a kind father, to the downtrodden a helper, and to the poor and needy a haven and a refuge."

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When He was about nineteen He married Ásíyih Khánum, known as Navváb. Their daughter, Bahíyyih Khánum, remembered the early years of their married life in Ṭihrán. Her parents, she said, took part as little as possible in State functions and in the luxurious habits of wealthy families. They "preferred rather to occupy themselves in caring for the poor, and for all who were unhappy, or in trouble.

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From our doors nobody was ever turned away; the hospitable board was spread for all comers." Poor women came constantly to her mother to tell their troubles and be comforted. "Whilst the people called my father 'The Father of the Poor,'" she said, "they spoke of my mother as 'The Mother of Consolation.'"

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The Chosen Highway also tells how Mullá Ḥusayn, sent to Ṭihrán by the Báb in search of a holy person there, asked who such a person might be and was told of a nobleman who seldom attended stately functions and cared nothing for luxury: "He is the helper of all in need of succour. A refuge for those in sorrowful weariness; a comfort to all the afflicted. A strong champion of those who suffer wrong." Of the poor, the sick and the forsaken, the account continues, "they speak of him as the 'Father of the Poor.'"

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After He embraced the Cause of the Báb in 1844, Bahá'u'lláh became one of its chief defenders. Shoghi Effendi describes Him in those years as "conspicuously fearless in His advocacy of the rights of the downtrodden," possessed of riches and high position, "and yet contemptuous of all earthly pomp, rewards, vanities and possessions."

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In 1852 He was imprisoned in the Síyáh-Chál and His property was seized. When the family was sent into exile, the gold buttons, set with precious stones, that had adorned Navváb's garments when she married were exchanged for bread on the road to Baghdád.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield.*

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