The First House of Worship at 'Ishqábád

A retelling based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi (chapters 12, 17, 20 and 23), which records the building of the House of Worship in 'Ishqábád. Words in quotation marks are from that book.

In the days of Bahá'u'lláh a Bahá'í community grew up in the newly laid-out city of 'Ishqábád, in Russian Turkistán, across the border from Persia. Shoghi Effendi describes it as a prosperous community, "assured of the good will of a sympathetic government." There the believers were able to establish a Bahá'í cemetery and to buy property, and the first steps toward a House of Worship were taken while Bahá'u'lláh was still living.

The Kitáb-i-Aqdas calls on the believers to build Houses of Worship, each called a Mashriqu'l-Adhkár, the Dawning-Place of the Praise of God. The first of them in the Bahá'í world was begun in 'Ishqábád in 1902, near the close of the first decade of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's ministry. Shoghi Effendi writes that 'Abdu'l-Bahá conceived its plan and fostered it "at every stage in its development," and that it was built according to His directions. The work was supervised by Ḥájí Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the Vakílu'd-Dawlih, a cousin of the Báb, who gave his entire resources to it. He is buried at the foot of Mount Carmel, near the Shrine of the Báb.

The foundation stone was laid in the presence of General Kuropatkin, the governor-general of Turkistán, whom the Czar had sent to represent him at the ceremony. Shoghi Effendi calls the Temple "a lasting witness to the fervor and the self-sacrifice of the Oriental believers," and ranks it as the first major undertaking launched through the concerted efforts of Bahá'u'lláh's followers in the Heroic Age of the Faith.

In God Passes By he quotes a Bahá'í visitor from the West who described the finished building. "The Mashriqu'l-Adhkár stands in the heart of the city; its high dome standing out above the trees and house tops being visible for miles to the travelers as they approach the town. It is in the center of a garden bounded by four streets." In the four corners of the garden stood four buildings: a Bahá'í school, a travellers' house for pilgrims and wayfarers, a house for the keepers, and a building to be used as a hospital. Nine avenues led to the Temple through the grounds, and the building itself was "built on the plan of a regular polygon of nine sides," with its main doorway facing toward the Holy Land.

The community also opened two schools, one for boys and one for girls, and a pilgrim house close to the Temple, and it formed a Spiritual Assembly to manage its affairs. The construction was completed before the end of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's ministry.

The Temple's later years were hard. In 1928 the Soviet law expropriating religious buildings was applied to it, though the believers were allowed to go on using it for worship under a five-year lease, renewed in 1933. In 1938 more than five hundred believers in Turkistán and the Caucasus were imprisoned, many of whom died; several prominent members of those communities were exiled to Siberia and the far north, and most of the rest were deported to Persia. The Temple was taken from the community entirely and turned into an art gallery. It was later damaged in the earthquake of 1948 and demolished in 1963.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi.

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