The Tablet of Aḥmad

A retelling based on Adib Taherzadeh’s The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, vol. 2.

The Arabic Tablet of Aḥmad was revealed by Bahá’u’lláh in Adrianople around 1865 for a believer named Aḥmad, a native of Yazd.

Aḥmad was born into a rich and influential family. Even in his teens he would shut himself in a room to pray, and his greatest hope was to meet the Promised One. When his family pressed him to give up his asceticism, he left home one morning, pretending to be going to the public bath, and travelled as far as India in search of the truth. He did not find it there, and came back to Persia, married, and settled in Káshán as a hand-weaver.

In time he accepted the message of the Báb. Later he went to Baghdád, attained the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, and stayed for six years, working at his loom and living in the outer apartment of Bahá’u’lláh’s house. When Bahá’u’lláh left Baghdád for Constantinople in 1863, Aḥmad was among those who remained behind.

He served the Faith in Baghdád, but longed to be with Bahá’u’lláh again. At last he could bear the separation no longer and set out for Adrianople. When he reached Constantinople, a Tablet from Bahá’u’lláh reached him there.

The Tablet opens with the Nightingale of Paradise singing upon the twigs of the Tree of Eternity, and proclaims Bahá’u’lláh as the Most Great Beauty foretold in the Books of the Messengers. It calls Aḥmad to steadfastness:

Be thou as a flame of fire to My enemies and a river of life eternal to My loved ones, and be not of those who doubt.

It bids him learn the Tablet well and chant it during his days, and promises that if one in affliction or grief reads it with absolute sincerity, God will dispel his sadness, solve his difficulties and remove his afflictions.

Taherzadeh writes that on reading it Aḥmad knew what was expected of him. Instead of going on to Adrianople, he returned to Persia to take the message of Bahá’u’lláh to the Bábís, and travelled widely as a teacher. He carried the original Tablet, in Bahá’u’lláh’s handwriting, and chanted it often. According to one account he lived to be a hundred, dying in 1902.

Bahá’ís today often recite the Tablet of Aḥmad in times of difficulty.

A retelling based on Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, vol. 2, chapter 5 (George Ronald, 1977); the words of the Tablet are quoted from its published translation. For the fuller account, see the original.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1977). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (Vol. 2 — Adrianople 1863–68)*. George Ronald.