Thousands of Mashriqu'l-Adhkárs: 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Dedication Talk

On the morning of May 1, 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá addressed the assembly that had gathered on the cold lakeshore at Wilmette, Illinois, for the dedication of the grounds of the Mother Temple of the West. The same morning would see Nettie Tobin's stone laid as the cornerstone. The talk preserved in The Promulgation of Universal Peace gives the larger vision into which that small act of laying-the-stone fitted.

He began by noting the unusual conditions of the gathering — a windy, cold spring morning on the bare prairie north of Chicago — and the unusual power that had brought the friends to it:

The power which has gathered you here today notwithstanding the cold and windy weather is, indeed, mighty and wonderful.

He then turned to the building that would arise. He had already seen, in 1902, the dedication of the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár of the Bahá'í world in Ishqábád, in Russian Turkestan. The Ishqábád building — with its nine avenues, its gardens and fountains, its surrounding institutions of hospital and school — was the model He held up for the friends in Wilmette. He described it in vivid detail, and asked them to imagine the American building rising in similar splendour.

He gave one specific architectural instruction, in case they should ever forget it:

The Mashriqu'l-Adhkár cannot be triangular in shape. It must be in the form of a circle.

The geometric stipulation matters: the circle expresses inclusion, the triangle exclusion. The House of Worship was to be open on every side to every soul, regardless of religious inheritance.

He closed with a prophecy that, in 1912, must have seemed almost extravagant:

Thousands of Mashriqu'l-Adhkárs, dawning points of praise and mention of God for all religionists, will be built in the East and in the West.

The American friends pictured what they had heard. Many of them had given everything they had — including, in Nettie Tobin's case, the only stone she could find — toward this dedication. The building they imagined would not be completed in their lifetimes. The continental Houses of Worship in the West would not begin to rise until decades later. The thousands the Master named remained, in 1912 and remain at this hour, an invitation extended to a future the friends had been asked to prepare.

Source: 'Abdu'l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, talk of May 1, 1912 at the Dedication of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár Grounds, Wilmette, Illinois. Public domain text from the Bahá'í Reference Library.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1922). *The Promulgation of Universal Peace*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/promulgation-universal-peace/