The Tablet of Carmel

In the fourth volume of The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, Adib Taherzadeh devotes a chapter to the Tablet of Carmel, the Lawḥ-i-Karmil, which he calls the charter for the World Centre of the Faith.

Bahá’u’lláh visited Haifa four times. The first was on 31 August 1868, when the steamer carrying the exiles arrived there; He spent a few hours on shore before being taken on to the prison-city of ‘Akká. About fifteen years later, when He was living at the Mansion of Bahjí, He paid a short visit and stayed in the German colony at the foot of Mount Carmel. He stayed there again in 1890. The fourth visit, in 1891, about a year before His ascension, lasted some three months.

It was on this last visit, Taherzadeh writes, that Bahá’u’lláh is believed to have gone to the Cave of Elijah, over which a Carmelite monastery had been built. He pitched His tent close to the monastery, and there He revealed the Tablet of Carmel. A Bahá’í House of Worship is one day to be built on that site.

The Tablet is a dialogue with the mountain. It opens:

All glory be to this Day, the Day in which the fragrances of mercy have been wafted over all created things...

The voices of all created things call out to the mountain: Haste thee, O Carmel, for lo, the light of the countenance of God ... hath been lifted upon thee. Carmel answers with joy, and Bahá’u’lláh replies that God has in this Day established upon her His throne. He bids her:

Call out to Zion, O Carmel, and announce the joyful tidings: He that was hidden from mortal eyes is come!

Before this Tablet, Taherzadeh notes, there was apparently nothing in Bahá’u’lláh’s Writings concerning the international seat of His Faith. The Tablet contains significant allusions to the establishment of that seat on the mountain.

During the same period, an eyewitness recorded, Bahá’u’lláh went to a spot on the mountain where a clump of cypress trees grew in a circle, and there instructed ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to bring the remains of the Báb from Persia and to lay them in a mausoleum at a place He indicated with His hand. The remains reached ‘Akká in 1899, and at Naw-Rúz 1909 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá placed them with His own hands in the Shrine He had built on that spot. The Guardian completed the Shrine’s superstructure, with its golden dome, in 1953.

Near the Shrine the Guardian began the buildings of the World Centre with the International Archives Building, completed in 1957. The Seat of the Universal House of Justice and other buildings have since been raised on the same slope.

A retelling based on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Vol. 4 — Mazra'ih and Bahjí 1877-92 (Adib Taherzadeh). For the fuller account, see the original.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1987). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (Vol. 4 — Mazra'ih and Bahjí 1877-92)*. George Ronald.