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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."
18 stories on this theme.
From a borrowed house in the Ottoman town of Adrianople, an exile stripped of homeland, wealth, and freedom revealed the Súriy-i-Mulúk — the Tablet of the Kings — and, addressing the whole concourse of the world's sovereigns at once, bade the rulers of the earth lay down their pride, deal justly with their peoples, and turn to the Day of God. Shoghi Effendi ranks it among the most momentous Tablets of the entire Bahá'í Revelation.
In 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Súrih of the Temple — the Súriy-i-Haykal — and gathered into its body the mighty messages He had already sent to the Pope, the Emperor of France, the Sháh, the Czar, the Queen, and the rulers of the earth, fashioning of His proclamation a living "Temple" of the Word.
Soon after declaring His mission in Shíráz, the Báb set out on the great pilgrimage to Mecca, arriving in December 1844. There, in the holiest place of Islam, He openly proclaimed His station — and on His return to Persia the news of His claim kindled both fervent love and bitter opposition, opening the long road of suffering that led at last to His martyrdom.
When Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bushrú'í and his companions reached the hostile town of Bárfurúsh, a mob rose to bar their way and cut them down. In that moment of utmost danger, the first to believe in the Báb answered not with the sword but with his voice — bidding the call to prayer be raised, and proclaiming the advent of the new Day before the very crowd that had come to kill him.
Hidden behind a curtain in Bahá'u'lláh's house in Ṭihrán, Táhirih listened as the celebrated divine Vahíd discoursed on the proofs of the new Day. Then she raised her voice and interrupted him with a few burning sentences that turned the whole meaning of speech inside out — calling not for more learned words, but for the deeds and the bold utterance that would promote the Word of God.
Besieged with a few hundred companions in the forest fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, Quddús held the failing band together not chiefly with the sword but with his voice — composing a commentary whose verses made the hungry forget their hunger, and rising under the roar of the enemy's cannon to bid his companions fear neither the threats of the wicked nor the clamour of the ungodly.
In April 1912, in the segregated capital of the United States, 'Abdu'l-Bahá stood before a great mixed audience of Black and white at Howard University and proclaimed, plainly and without flinching, the oneness of humanity — that there are no whites and blacks before God, that all colours are one, and that the world of humanity is a single garden whose many colours are its beauty.
At 'Abdu'l-Bahá's own request, a Washington hostess with no experience in such matters set out to gather Black and white Americans together to proclaim their oneness. In May 1921 over a thousand souls of both races filled a hall for the first Convention for Amity between the Races — and there the Master's message, carried fresh from Haifa, declared that no more important gathering had been held since the beginning of time.
On a Sunday evening in September 1911, after forty years of imprisonment and exile, 'Abdu'l-Bahá rose in the pulpit of the City Temple in London and gave the first public address of His life in the Western world — a few quiet sentences, proclaimed before a crowded congregation, that opened the teaching of the Cause in the West.
When the Sháh of Persia came to Paris in 1902, 'Abdu'l-Bahá charged the young American teacher Lua Getsinger to carry to him a message protesting the persecution of the Bahá'ís in his realm. She — a farmer's daughter with no rank and no standing — found her way to the monarch and delivered the Master's word, a single act of bold testimony that earned her the name of Banner-Bearer.
Returning from her 1899 pilgrimage to 'Akká, the young American May Ellis Bolles settled in Paris and began, by the spoken word, to tell seekers of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh — gathering around her the first body of believers on the European continent and teaching souls whose own service would reach across the world.
Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zanjání was the foremost and most fearless divine of the city of Zanján. When the message of the Báb reached him and he recognised its truth, he did not keep his conviction to himself: he proclaimed the new Cause openly from his place of authority, won a great multitude of his townsmen, and bore imprisonment rather than be silenced.
Brought back a prisoner to His native Shíráz and slandered with claims He had never made, the Báb went up into the pulpit of the city's chief mosque on a Friday and addressed the assembled congregation directly — affirming His true mission and disowning the falsehoods spread in His name, before the very people who had been turned against Him.
From His exile in Adrianople and 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed the most powerful monarch in Europe — Napoleon III of France — twice. The first message the Emperor is said to have cast aside with a contemptuous word; in the second Tablet Bahá'u'lláh warned him plainly that for what he had done his kingdom would be thrown into confusion and his empire pass from his hands. Within a few short years the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter, while the Cause the exile proclaimed continued to spread.
From the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed the supreme spiritual sovereign of the West — Pope Pius IX, who reigned over the Catholic world from Rome. In the Lawḥ-i-Páp He called the Pontiff to leave his palace, sell the jewelled ornaments of his office for the sake of God, and arise to recognize the Day of God. It was a summons from a Prisoner with nothing to a prelate with everything — and within a few years the Pope's own temporal kingdom had vanished from the earth.
In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book revealed in the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh turned to the assembled monarchs of the earth and addressed them in words of staggering majesty. He told them that the sovereign Lord of all had come, that they were but vassals, and that the King of Kings had appeared and was summoning them unto Himself. A reflection on the verses in which the sovereignty of God is proclaimed over every throne on earth.
In A Traveler's Narrative, 'Abdu'l-Bahá looks back on the rise of the Faith and observes a strange law its enemies never understood: every blow the thrones rained down upon it only made it stronger. Persecution bred constancy, suppression bred eagerness, and the more the powers of the age tried to extinguish the Cause, the faster it spread. A reflection on the sovereignty of a Cause that no earthly power could quench.
An excerpt from the Báb's earliest book, the Qayyúmu'l-Asmá' — a commentary on the Súrih of Joseph revealed in the first hours of His Declaration in May 1844. In this passage, the Báb summons the kings of the world to carry His verses to the peoples of Turkey, India, and the lands of East and West.