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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
17 stories on this theme.
In London in September 1911, a painter came to ask 'Abdu'l-Bahá whether art was a worthy vocation. The Master answered in three words. Then an actor asked about drama, and the conversation widened into a memory of a Mystery Play that, as a child, had kept Him sleepless for nights.
Shoghi Effendi's tribute to Bahíyyih Khánum preserves a single small image from her childhood in Tihrán: when Bahá'u'lláh was thrown into the Síyáh-Chál and the family's wealth was seized within the space of a single day, Navváb — the mother — placed a handful of dry flour into the hand of her young daughter as the substitute for daily bread.
In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, Esslemont preserves 'Abdu'l-Bahá's recollection of His Father's boyhood: by the age of thirteen or fourteen, the young Mírzá Ḥusayn-'Alí had already become known across the scholarly circles of the Núrí district for being able to converse on any subject and resolve any problem put to Him.
In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, J. E. Esslemont introduces the Western reader to the Báb as He was before His Declaration: a young merchant of Shíráz, raised by a maternal uncle after His father's early death, known across His district for piety, gentleness, and the scrupulous honesty of His business dealings.
At family meals in 'Akká, the children watched and waited for one special spoonful that always tasted better than anything else — because it was given with love.
A boy named Shoghi Effendi went far away to school in Beirut, where he studied hard and learned new languages — and was being made ready for something great he could not yet see.
A small barefoot boy stood in a doorway watching his grandfather, 'Abdu'l-Bahá — and the gentle nod he was given held a secret no one could quite put into words.
While Bahá'u'lláh was still a child in the house of Núr, His father, the Vazír Mírzá Buzurg, dreamed of his Son swimming alone in a boundless ocean, His body aglow, His long hair spread upon the waves, with a multitude of fishes clinging each to a lock of His hair. A summoned interpreter read the vision as the foretelling of a Cause that would one day encircle the world.
When the Báb's father died in His early childhood, the boy passed into the care of His maternal uncle, Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid 'Alí, a merchant of Shíráz who reared Him as his own son. He watched over the Child's schooling and His youth — and in the end, having known Him from the beginning, gave his very life for Him.
In *A Traveler's Narrative*, 'Abdu'l-Bahá records what all Shíráz knew of the Báb's early years: that He had sat in no scholar's circle and studied under no master, and yet, when He came forth, His knowledge confounded the most learned divines of Persia. The wisdom He carried had been His own from childhood.
When 'Abdu'l-Bahá was still a small boy, He was taken to His father's country estate in Mázindarán, where the shepherds of a great flock came to honour Him. Told that a landlord's son should leave the shepherds a gift, and having nothing of His own to give, the child gave them the sheep themselves — every one. Bahá'u'lláh, hearing of it, laughed and said a guardian would have to be appointed to protect the boy from his own generosity.
In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum describes a small ritual at the family table in 'Akká: Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, would spoon a small bite from her own plate — *the mouthful of Khánum* — to one of the grandchildren, and the grandchildren would watch for whose turn it was.
In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum recounts the years the young Shoghi Effendi spent at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut — later the American University of Beirut — where the grandson of 'Abdu'l-Bahá met the West for the first time inside a Western classroom, and was prepared, without knowing it, for the office that lay ahead.
Rúḥíyyih Khánum's *The Priceless Pearl* preserves a moment from Shoghi Effendi's boyhood in 'Akká: a small barefoot figure in a doorway, eyes on his grandfather, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá's slow nod of recognition that the bond between them was not only physical, but something else.
In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* the Hand of the Cause Mr. 'Alí-Akbar Furútan preserves two early memories of the Blessed Beauty's childhood: His unusual composure as an infant, who almost never cried, and a prophetic dream He described at age five or six in which He stood unharmed amid attacking sea creatures and birds — interpreted by a noted dream-reader as a foreshadowing of His future Cause.
Among the childhood stories Hand of the Cause Furutan gathered into his *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the recollection of how the young Mírzá Ḥusayn -‘Alí — long before His Declaration — would refuse to settle a quarrel among His playmates without first hearing both sides, and how the household began to recognize a quiet authority in the boy.
Among the recollections of Bahá'u'lláh's boyhood Mr. Furutan preserves in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the dream the child once had of a great moving spectacle in the sky — birds, fish, a green sea — that He told to His father the next morning, and whose meaning the household began only later to suspect.