revelation

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.

The Báb spent four months in Iṣfáhán in 1846 as the guest, first of the Imám-Jum'ih and then of the Governor Manúchihr Khán. The Imám-Jum'ih had asked, as a test, for a commentary on a Súrih of the Qur'án; the Báb produced one in two hours of writing — a quantity of verse that the host afterwards estimated at a third of the Qur'án itself.

Nabíl's chronicle records the Báb's removal from Iṣfáhán in 1847 to the remote frontier prisons of Máh-Kú and Chihríq, in the bleak mountains of north-western Persia. The intent of the authorities was to silence Him by isolation; the effect was the opposite — the journey itself became a teaching, the remote fortresses became places of pilgrimage, and from the cells the Persian Bayán was revealed.

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.

Nabíl's chronicle records that in the autumn of 1852, after the attempt on the life of Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh by two distraught Bábís acting without authorisation, Bahá'u'lláh was arrested at Níyávarán and confined in the underground dungeon of Ṭihrán known as the Black Pit. There, in chains, He received the intimations of the Mission that would shape the next forty years.

Among the most distinguished early converts to the Báb's Cause was Siyyid Yaḥyá-i-Dárábí — known later as Vaḥíd, the Peerless. Sent from the court of Muḥammad Sháh to investigate the new movement, he came as a sceptic; the Báb's revealed commentary on the Súrih of Kawthar undid his scepticism in a single afternoon.

In the *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*, Bahá'u'lláh briefly recalls the conditions of His four-month imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál of Tihrán in 1852 — the underground dungeon in which the first intimations of His Revelation came to Him.

Shoghi Effendi's account, in *God Passes By*, of Bahá'u'lláh's most consequential undertaking of the Adrianople period (1863-1868) — the composition and transmission of the great Tablets to the rulers of His era, addressing each by name and summoning the world's governors to recognise the new Day of God.

Adib Taherzadeh's account, in the closing chapters of *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh*, of the ascension of Bahá'u'lláh on 29 May 1892 in the mansion of Bahjí — the closing of the prophetic ministry of which the rest of Bahá'í history would become the unfolding.

Adib Taherzadeh's account, in *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh*, of the Tablet known as the *Lawḥ-i-Aqdas* — the *Most Holy Tablet* — addressed by Bahá'u'lláh from the prison-city of 'Akká to the Christians of the world.

In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the Tablet of Carmel — the Tablet revealed by Bahá'u'lláh on one of His four visits to Mount Carmel in the closing years of His life. The Tablet is read as the charter of the future Bahá'í World Centre.

In *Some Answered Questions*, 'Abdu'l-Bahá takes up the question of miracles with characteristic clarity: extraordinary events may have occurred and may yet occur, but they are not the proofs by which a Manifestation of God is finally known. *Miracles are proofs for the eyewitness only*.

In *Some Answered Questions*, 'Abdu'l-Bahá presses the case that humanity, left to itself, does not by some natural process improve. It *requires* an educator of universal scope — and the Manifestations of God are precisely the educators sent for that purpose.

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.