The Báb's Prayer from the Mountain Prison of Máh-Kú

The prayer here preserved is among the small body of devotional texts revealed by the Báb during His confinement in the mountain fortress of Máh-Kú in the extreme northwest of Persia, where He was held under the warden 'Alí Khán from the summer of 1847 through the early months of 1848.

The fortress at Máh-Kú stands on a sheer rock face above a small village near the Turkish border. The cell to which the Báb was confined was small, exposed to the bitter cold of the mountain winters and the harsh heat of the summers, and was intended by the Persian government to function as the maximum-security removal of the Báb from any contact with His followers. The intention failed. Friends and pilgrims found their way to the small village below the fortress; the warden 'Alí Khán, by the alchemy that the Báb's own person seems to have worked in those who guarded Him, became gradually so attached to his prisoner that he allowed the friends to approach freely; and the Báb, in the eight months of His confinement at Máh-Kú, revealed the bulk of the Persian Bayán, a substantial body of Tablets, and a number of prayers of which the present is among the simplest and most luminous.

Glorified art Thou, O Lord, my God! I yield Thee thanks that Thou hast made known unto me Him Who is the Manifestation of Thy Self.

The opening sentence sets the prayer's posture. The Báb, imprisoned by the Persian state, gives thanks for the visible appearance of Him Who is the Manifestation of Thy Self — the Promised One whose advent the Báb had announced and whose fuller appearance He had also foretold. The prayer continues through several stations of remembrance: the soul's longing for the Beloved; the Manifestation's role as the meeting-place of God and the human soul; the believer's commitment to obey the Manifestation's commands and to serve the Manifestation's Cause through every trial.

The prayer closes, in the manner of many of the Báb's devotional pieces, with a small petition for personal steadfastness: that the soul may not be shaken by the storms of the time; that the love kindled by the recognition may deepen into the strength to endure whatever is to come.

The Báb Himself would, within two years of the prayer's revelation, be martyred in the public square of Tabríz on the 9th of July 1850. The prayer, surviving Him, has remained among the small devotional treasures of the Bahá'í community through the long century and a half since its first revelation in the prison of Máh-Kú.

Source: the Báb, Selections from the Writings of the Báb (Bahá'í World Centre, 1976), prayer revealed during the imprisonment at Máh-Kú, 1847-1848. Public domain text from Project Gutenberg eBook #18828.

the Báb. (1976). *Selections from the Writings of the Báb*. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18828/pg18828-images.html