The Tablet to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh

*A retelling based on the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán, Bahá'u'lláh's Tablet to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh, as published in **The Summons of the Lord of Hosts**, with details from Shoghi Effendi's **God Passes By**. The passages in quotation marks are from those two books.*

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Of all the Tablets Bahá'u'lláh addressed to kings, the one to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh of Persia was, in Shoghi Effendi's words, "the lengthiest epistle to any single sovereign." It was revealed in Adrianople in the weeks before Bahá'u'lláh's banishment to 'Akká. Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh was the king who, in 1853, had ordered Bahá'u'lláh to leave Persia.

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Bahá'u'lláh addresses him: "O King of the Earth! Hearken unto the call of this Vassal: Verily, I am a Servant Who hath believed in God and in His signs, and have sacrificed Myself in His path." He recalls that the Sháh had recognized His innocence before sending Him to 'Iráq, and He asks for justice for the king's subjects: "O King! I adjure thee by thy Lord, the All-Merciful, to look upon thy servants with the glances of the eye of thy favour, and to treat them with justice, that God may treat thee with mercy."

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He tells how His mission came to Him: "O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been." Years later He quoted this passage again in the *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*.

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He speaks of His sufferings: "I have seen, O Sháh, in the path of God what eye hath not seen nor ear heard." Yet He adds, "I sorrow not for Myself, however," and says that He longs to give His life in the path of God, "for I see the people wandering distraught and unconscious in their drunken stupor."

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Some of the learned, Bahá'u'lláh writes, had troubled the Sháh's mind about His followers. He proposes a test: "Would that the world-adorning wish of His Majesty might decree that this Servant be brought face to face with the divines of the age, and produce proofs and testimonies in the presence of His Majesty the Sháh!

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This Servant is ready, and taketh hope in God, that such a gathering may be convened in order that the truth of the matter may be made clear and manifest before His Majesty the Sháh. It is then for thee to command, and I stand ready before the throne of thy sovereignty. Decide, then, for Me or against Me."

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The Tablet was carried to Persia by Badí', a youth of seventeen, who had visited Bahá'u'lláh in the barracks of 'Akká. He travelled alone and on foot for four months, spent three days fasting, and then met the Sháh on his way to a hunt at Shimírán. He called out, "O King!

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I have come to thee from Sheba with a weighty message." The Sháh had the Tablet taken from him and handed to the mujtahids of Ṭihrán with orders to answer it. They did not answer it; they recommended instead that the messenger be put to death. Badí' was branded for three days and then killed.

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The meeting with the divines never took place. The Sháh sent the Tablet on to the Persian Ambassador in Constantinople, in the hope, Shoghi Effendi writes, that the Sultan's ministers would read it and turn still further against Bahá'u'lláh.

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*This is a retelling. For Bahá'u'lláh's own words, see the Tablet to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh in **The Summons of the Lord of Hosts**.*

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