Bahá'u'lláh Calls on No Minister

A retelling based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi, the authoritative history of the Faith's first century. The account is summarized in our own words; the phrases in quotation marks are from that book.

Bahá'u'lláh reached Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, at noon on 16 August 1863, some three and a half months after leaving the Garden of Riḍván in Baghdád. Two carriages took Him and His family from the landing-stage to the house of Shamsí Big, the official appointed by the government to entertain its guests. Later they moved to the larger house of Vísí Páshá.

Every guest of the government, however high his rank, was expected to call in person, soon after arriving, on the Shaykhu'l-Islám, the Grand Vizir and the Foreign Minister. Shoghi Effendi calls this "the invariable practice of government guests." Bahá'u'lláh did not follow it. He did not even return the calls paid Him by several ministers, by Kamál Páshá and by a former Turkish envoy to the court of Persia. Nor would He present Himself at the Persian Embassy or return the visit of its representative.

Shoghi Effendi contrasts this "upright and independent attitude" with the conduct of the Persian princes who came to the capital and would "solicit at every door such allowances and gifts as they might obtain."

The Persian Ambassador, Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán, was waiting for a chance to strike at Bahá'u'lláh, and his government kept pressing him to turn the Turkish authorities against Him. Bahá'u'lláh's refusal encouraged him. With the help of an accomplice, and through his contacts with clergy, notables and officials, he spread the picture of Bahá'u'lláh as "a proud and arrogant person, Who regarded Himself as subject to no law, Who entertained designs inimical to all established authority."

Less than four months after the exiles arrived, Sultán 'Abdu'l-'Azíz and his chief ministers, 'Alí Páshá and Fu'ád Páshá, ordered them banished to Adrianople in the depth of winter. The Grand Vizir's brother-in-law was sent to inform Bahá'u'lláh of the edict. Bahá'u'lláh refused him an audience, and he had to put his arguments to 'Abdu'l-Bahá and to Bahá'u'lláh's brother Áqáy-i-Kalím instead.

That same day Bahá'u'lláh revealed a Tablet "severely condemnatory in tone." The next morning He gave it, sealed, to Shamsí Big to deliver into the hands of 'Alí Páshá, with the message that it was sent down from God. Shamsí Big later told Áqáy-i-Kalím that as soon as the Grand Vizir had read it, he "turned the color of a corpse, and remarked: 'It is as if the King of Kings were issuing his behest to his humblest vassal king and regulating his conduct.'"

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/