The Tablet of the Holy Mariner

Among the most haunting episodes recounted by Adib Taherzadeh in *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* is the brief narrative of the revelation of the *Lawḥ-i-Malláḥu'l-Quds* — the *Tablet of the Holy Mariner* — in Baghdád in the spring of 1863, in the weeks immediately preceding Bahá'u'lláh's declaration in the Garden of Riḍván.

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The Tablet was revealed in two parts: an Arabic portion and a Persian portion. It is a long mystical Tablet composed in the symbolic language of Persian Sufi poetry, drawing imagery from the journey of a Holy Ark — the *Crimson Ark* — sailing through the seas of trial and adversity, manned by a sacred crew, bearing the soul of the believer toward the shore of the Beloved.

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Taherzadeh describes the gathering at which the Tablet was first chanted aloud. A small number of the resident Bábí believers had assembled in the room where Bahá'u'lláh's amanuensis Mírzá Áqá Ján was wont to read out, in a measured voice, the freshly revealed Tablets. The amanuensis began to chant the *Tablet of the Holy Mariner.* The believers listened.

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What followed, by Taherzadeh's account, was an unusual event. The believers — without knowing in advance the content of the Tablet, and without any warning — became aware that the Tablet was about to disclose something of great gravity. *A strange dread fell upon the friends; they wept, sensing that the parting of which the Tablet spoke was about to come.*

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The reading concluded. The believers dispersed in subdued silence. They had not been told, in plain words, what was about to happen. But the Tablet's symbolic content had made them feel, with a kind of pre-rational certainty, that a great change was imminent.

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The change came within weeks. On 22 April 1863, Bahá'u'lláh entered the Garden of Riḍván on the outskirts of Baghdád and declared, in the small circle of His inner companions, His station as the Promised One foretold by the Báb. The twelve days of the Riḍván declaration followed. At the end of the twelve days, the Master departed Baghdád forever, on the long forced journey to Constantinople and onward to the further exiles that would end in the prison-city of 'Akká.

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The *Tablet of the Holy Mariner,* read in retrospect, proved to have been the providential preparation. The *parting* that the Tablet had foreshadowed was the literal departure from Baghdád. The *Holy Ark* on its journey through hostile seas was the literal community of believers entering the further exile. The *strange dread* the friends had felt at the original chanting had been, in fact, the spiritual perception of an event that the ordinary mind had not yet been told.

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Taherzadeh treats the episode as exemplary. The Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, his commentary observes, function not only as written record but as inwardly sensed presence. The believers who first heard the *Tablet of the Holy Mariner* knew, before they could have known, what its literal historical referent would prove to be. The Tablet had communicated, through its imagery, what its words had not yet plainly stated.

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*Paraphrased from The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Vol. 1 — Baghdád 1853-63 (Adib Taherzadeh, George Ronald, 1974); see original for full text.*

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