The Master and the Sultan's Commission

A retelling based on Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J. E. Esslemont. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.

For most of His life 'Abdu'l-Bahá was a prisoner. He had been a child when His family was driven into exile, and a man well past middle age when, for a time, the old severity of His confinement returned in full. In the opening years of the twentieth century, while He laboured in 'Akká under the rule of the Ottoman Sulṭán 'Abdu'l-Ḥamíd, His enemies renewed their campaign against Him, and the government in Constantinople appointed commissions of investigation to inquire into the charges they brought.

The accusations were false, and they were dangerous. Lying witnesses were produced to testify against Him. The commission that came to 'Akká in the winter of 1907 was empowered to gather the case and carry it back to the capital — and the report it was preparing to deliver recommended that 'Abdu'l-Bahá be exiled to the deserts of North Africa, or simply put to death. The danger was not abstract. A boat lay waiting in the harbour, and word ran through the believers that it might be used to carry the Master away, or to drown Him at sea.

What is remembered of those days is not the fear of the believers, real as it was, but the bearing of the One the danger was meant to break. 'Abdu'l-Bahá met the threat with complete composure. While refuting the false charges, He let it be known that He was entirely ready to submit to whatever sentence the tribunal might impose. If they should throw Him into jail, He said, drag Him through the streets, curse Him, spit upon Him, stone Him, heap upon Him every kind of ignominy, hang Him or shoot Him — He would still be happy. There was no defiance of bluster in this and no despair; there was only a man so anchored in God that the worst the empire could devise had lost its power to dismay Him.

And He did not merely speak serenity; He lived it, in plain sight, for all to see. Between the very sittings of the commission that might condemn Him, the Master pursued His ordinary life with the utmost calm. He planted fruit trees in a garden — the act of a man unworried about whether he will be alive to taste the fruit. He presided at a marriage feast, carrying Himself, the account says, with all the dignity and radiance of spiritual freedom, as though no shadow lay over the house at all.

A way out was offered Him. The Spanish Consul, alarmed for His safety, came forward with the offer of safe passage to any foreign port He might choose. It would have been an honourable, even a prudent, escape. 'Abdu'l-Bahá refused it — gratefully, but firmly. Whatever the consequences, He said, He must follow in the footsteps of the Báb and of Bahá'u'lláh, who never sought to save Themselves or to flee from Their enemies. He would not run. He did, however, urge most of the believers to leave the neighbourhood of 'Akká, which had grown perilous for them, and He remained behind with a few of the faithful to await whatever was to come.

What came was not at all what His enemies intended. The four officials of the commission finished their so-called investigation, departed for Constantinople, and prepared to lay their damning report before the government. No sooner had they reached Turkey than revolution broke out across the empire. The men of the old régime — the very commissioners who had come to condemn Him — had to flee for their own lives. The new authorities freed the political and religious prisoners of the realm. And so, in 1908, after a lifetime of captivity, 'Abdu'l-Bahá was set at liberty; and not long after, the Sulṭán who had ruled over His imprisonment became himself a deposed and powerless prisoner.

This is the might that the Feast of 'Izzat holds up for us — not the might of armies and decrees, but the unconquerable serenity of a soul that has placed itself wholly in the hands of God. The Ottoman Empire could appoint commissions, suborn witnesses, ready a boat in the bay, and draft a sentence of death. It could not make 'Abdu'l-Bahá afraid, and it could not make Him flee. He went on planting trees and blessing a marriage while the powers of the world plotted His end — and in the end it was those powers that fell, and the prisoner who walked free.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J. E. Esslemont.

Esslemont, J. E.. (1923). *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*. George Allen & Unwin. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19241