The Tablet of the Branch

A retelling based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi (chs. 10, 14 and 19). The verses of the Tablet quoted here are from Shoghi Effendi's translation in "The Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh" (The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh).

Bahá'u'lláh was exiled to Adrianople from 1863 to 1868. He called it the "remote prison." Among the Tablets He revealed there was the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn, the Súrih or Tablet of the Branch. Shoghi Effendi writes that in it 'Abdu'l-Bahá's "future station is foreshadowed," and that He is eulogized in it as the "Branch of Holiness," the "Limb of the Law of God," the "Trust of God," "sent down in the form of a human temple."

Among its verses are these: "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." It calls Him God's "most great Favor" and "most perfect bounty" to the people, through Whom "every mouldering bone is quickened." It says: "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 that "they who deprive themselves of the shadow of the Branch, are lost in the wilderness of error."

Shoghi Effendi calls the Tablet one "which may well be regarded as the harbinger of the rank which was to be bestowed upon Him, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and which was to be later elucidated and confirmed in the Book of His Covenant." The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, revealed in 'Akká, told the believers to turn, after Bahá'u'lláh's passing, to "Him Whom God hath purposed, Who hath branched from this Ancient Root." The Book of the Covenant, read aloud after His ascension in 1892, named that One as the Most Mighty Branch, 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

After the ascension He took the name by which He is known, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the Servant of Bahá. Twenty years later, in June 1912, the newly translated Tablet of the Branch was read at a gathering of the Bahá'ís of New York, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá then affirmed the implications of the Covenant. Shoghi Effendi records that New York was from then on called the "City of the Covenant."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi, and the verses of the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn in "The Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh."

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