Loading…
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
Loading…
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
17 stories on this theme.
In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, Esslemont preserves Bahá'u'lláh's own brief description of the Síyáh-Chál — the underground prison in Tihrán in which He was held in chains for four months in 1852. The dungeon was *foul beyond comparison*, dark, and crowded with nearly one hundred and fifty fellow-prisoners.
In *The Chosen Highway* Bahíyyih Khánum recounts the night in August 1852 when soldiers of the Sháh seized her father in the village of Lavásán and carried Him to the Síyáh-Chál — and the long vigil her mother kept in their plundered house with the children clinging to her skirts.
Nabíl records the nine-month imprisonment of the Báb at the mountain fortress of Máh-Kú on the western frontier of Persia — and the remarkable transformation of His warden, 'Alí Khán, from a hostile jailer into a devoted believer who could no longer hold the door closed against the friends.
Shoghi Effendi's account, in *God Passes By*, of how 'Alí Khán — the warden ordered to keep the Báb in strictest confinement at the fortress of Máh-Kú — was so moved by a strange vision that he relaxed his discipline, and how the people of the village then began to come every morning hoping for a glimpse of the Prisoner's face.
A man was given one job — to guard the Báb and keep everyone away — but the more he watched, the more his hard heart began to soften.
A stern guard was ordered to keep the Báb a prisoner high in the mountains — until something he saw changed his heart, and soon a whole village climbed up just to glimpse the Prisoner's face.
Shut away in remote mountain fortresses on the edge of the Persian empire, with no library, no leisure, and no help, the Báb poured forth Writings of such volume and such speed — commentaries, expositions, and prayers composed without pause or premeditation — that friends and adversaries alike recognized in the sheer torrent of His revealed Word a sign no human power could counterfeit.
From His confinement in the remote mountain fortresses of Ádhirbáyján, the Báb revealed, in answer to a seeker's questions, the Dalá'il-i-Sab'ih — the Seven Proofs — which Shoghi Effendi ranks among the most important of His doctrinal works. In it the Báb sets out the evidences of His mission and, with extraordinary tenderness, calls the inquirer to weigh the truth fairly, for the sake of God alone.
From the mountain prison of Chihríq, in the last spring of His earthly life, the Báb sent a beloved attendant on a long and perilous errand — bearing Tablets to the shrine of the Tabarsí martyrs and a message to Bahá'u'lláh in Ṭihrán — with a single tender instruction: to hurry back in time to keep Naw-Rúz at His side, "that festival, the only one I probably shall ever see again."
The Báb was sent to a bleak mountain prison on the frontier of Persia, chosen for its remoteness and the supposed hostility of its people, so that His influence might be extinguished. Instead the light could not be walled out: the hostile warden himself was transformed, the discipline relaxed, and the Kurdish villagers below began to climb the mountain each dawn for a single glimpse of His face.
The Báb was moved to the remote fortress of Chihríq, "the Mountain of Severity," chosen for its harshness and the supposed hostility of its Kurdish inhabitants, so that He might be cut off from all who loved Him. Instead the warden, the people, and the very town fell under the spell of His presence — and the verses that streamed from His pen could not be stopped by any wall.
From Selections from the Writings of the Báb, a prayer revealed during the Báb's confinement in the mountain fortress of Máh-Kú in northwest Persia from 1847 to 1848 — a period of severe isolation during which the Báb composed many of His major works.
Mr. Furutan, in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh,* preserves the recollection of Shaykh Maḥmúd-i-‘Arrábí — the Sunní mufti of ‘Akká who, having sworn to kill Bahá'u'lláh as a heretic upon His arrival, came to His door, was received, and walked out a servant of the Cause for the rest of his life.
In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* Furutan preserves the story of the executioner of the Síyáh-Chál who, through the months of the imprisonment, came to admire Bahá'u'lláh — and who, after each Bábí was led out to the gallows, would return to the pit to report to Bahá'u'lláh how the friend had died.
In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* Furutan preserves the practice that sustained Bahá'u'lláh's fellow Bábí prisoners in the Síyáh-Chál pit in 1852: each evening, the prisoners would divide into two rows and chant antiphonally — one row, *God is sufficient unto me,* and the other replying, *In Him let the trusting trust* — until the chant rose, in the dark, to fill the dungeon's vault.
Among the 'Akká stories Mr. Furutan preserves in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the recollection of a prison guard, originally hostile, who came over time to weep in the stone corridor when he heard the voices of the Holy Family — and who one day, in open contradiction of his orders, fell at Bahá'u'lláh's feet.
In *A Traveler's Narrative*, 'Abdu'l-Bahá recounts the Báb's confinement in the remote castle of Máh-Kú on the northwestern frontier of Persia — and describes how the warden 'Alí Khán's love for the family of the Prophet led him, despite official orders, to permit conversation between the prisoner and visiting believers.