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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."
26 stories on this theme.
Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl was reckoned among the most learned men of Persia — head of a great religious college, master of philosophy and theology. The proofs of the new Faith could not move him. What moved him, in the end, was a plain question from an unlettered believer that all his learning could not answer — and through it he came to recognise the glory of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation.
In Baghdád, in answer to the questions of an uncle of the Báb who was still searching, Bahá'u'lláh revealed in the span of two days and two nights the Kitáb-i-Íqán — the Book of Certitude. Shoghi Effendi ranks it the most important doctrinal work of the Bahá'í Revelation: a torrent of explanation poured out almost in a single sitting, and a sign of the glory of the Word.
From within His imprisonment, on the death of one of the Ottoman ministers who had persecuted Him, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Tablet of Fu'ád — and in it foretold, in order, the downfall of the other minister who shared the guilt and of the Sulṭán above them both. Within a few years it had all come to pass. The sovereignty of His Word over the mightiest powers of the age is a splendour the Feast of Bahá remembers.
Across forty years of exile, imprisonment, and persecution, Bahá'u'lláh poured forth a sea of revealed verses unmatched in religious history — Tablets, prayers, and books in such abundance that those who tried to record them could scarcely keep pace. Shoghi Effendi gathers the testimony of that torrent as one of the surest signs of the glory of His Revelation.
On the evening of 22 May 1844, outside the gate of Shíráz, the Báb invited a travel-worn seeker named Mullá Ḥusayn into His home. There, two hours and eleven minutes after sunset, He declared Himself to be the Promised One — and, taking up His pen, began to reveal the first verses of a new Book with a speed and majesty that left His guest overwhelmed.
Late in His life in the Holy Land, Bahá'u'lláh answered a question put to Him by the learned Bábí scholar Nabíl-i-Akbar about the place the philosophy of Greece and Persia should hold among the believers. The reply, the Tablet of Wisdom, surveys the great philosophers by name, traces the lineage of their light, and sets out the proper relation between human inquiry and divine Revelation — a charter for the life of the mind.
Before the world knew he would be the Guardian, Shoghi Effendi went to Oxford with one private purpose: to perfect his English so that he might serve 'Abdu'l-Bahá as His translator. In quiet rooms at Balliol, with English literature, a dictionary, and a notebook, he forged the very instrument by which the Sacred Writings would later reach the Western world — a lifetime's labour of learning poured out in service.
Hippolyte Dreyfus was a brilliant young Parisian lawyer with everything the world prizes when he encountered the Bahá'í teachings. Recognising their truth, he did something few Western believers had done: he set himself to master Persian and Arabic so that he could read the Writings in their own words and carry them to the French-speaking world. He became the first French Bahá'í and one of the Faith's earliest Western scholars and translators.
A young American woman travelled again and again to the prison-city of 'Akká, sat at 'Abdu'l-Bahá's table, and asked Him question after question — about God, the soul, the prophets, the meaning of the Scriptures. Out of three years of patient asking came *Some Answered Questions,* a book that includes the Master's teaching on the four ways human beings try to know the truth — and why only one of them is sure.
He was the most favoured disciple of the foremost religious teacher of his day, the one student raised to the rank of mujtahid, "a universal man, in himself alone a convincing proof." Then Áqá Muḥammad-i-Qá'iní met Bahá'u'lláh — and the scholar who had mastered theology, philosophy, and mysticism found a knowledge before which all his learning bowed.
On the night the Báb declared His mission in Shíráz, He entrusted Mullá Ḥusayn with a sacred charge: to find in Ṭihrán a soul of a noble house and deliver into His hands a scroll of the newly revealed Word. The young schoolteacher who carried it never learned the meaning of his errand — but Bahá'u'lláh read the Words, and the first utterance of the new Revelation reached the One for Whom, unknown to all, it had been written.
In the years of His exile in Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh received a letter of spiritual questions from a Ṣúfí leader, a judge named Shaykh Muḥyi'd-Dín. In answer He revealed the Seven Valleys — a mystical Tablet that traces the soul's ascent to God through seven stages, from the first Valley of Search to the last Valley of true poverty and nothingness. A single revealed letter became one of the most beloved descriptions of the inner journey ever written.
As the First World War ended, an organization in The Hague devoted to building a durable peace wrote to 'Abdu'l-Bahá. From the Holy Land, only newly released from a lifetime of confinement, He answered with one of the great Tablets of His ministry — setting out, for the world's peace-workers, the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh on the oneness of humanity and the true foundations on which a lasting peace must rest.
The vast ocean of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation lay almost entirely in Persian and Arabic, beyond the reach of the growing communities of the West. Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Faith, set himself to gather from that ocean and to render its waters into a stately, faithful English — producing, in *Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh*, a book through which the West could at last drink directly from the Word.
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.
In the years of His exile in Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh would walk the banks of the Tigris, and there He revealed the small book of gem-like utterances He named the Hidden Words — the very essence of the guidance of God, distilled into a handful of Words and entrusted to every human heart.
Late in His ministry, from the neighbourhood of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Kalimát-i-Firdawsíyyih — the "Words of Paradise" — a Tablet of luminous leaves of counsel on the fear of God, the building of a just society, education, the trustworthiness that adorns the human race, and the world-renewing power of His Word.
A quiet American newspaperwoman, Martha Root, placed the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá into the hands of Queen Marie of Romania. The Word so moved the Queen that she became the first reigning monarch to embrace the Faith, and published her testimony to it in newspapers across the world.
From the Holy Land, during the dark years of the First World War, 'Abdu'l-Bahá wrote a series of Tablets to the Bahá'ís of North America summoning them to carry the Faith to the ends of the earth. Unveiled in New York in 1919, these Words transformed a small community into a teaching force that would belt the globe.
An eminent Swiss scientist, long an unbeliever, sent his deepest questions about God and the soul to 'Abdu'l-Bahá. The reply — one of the last great Tablets of the Master's life — answered him so fully that Auguste Forel, near the end of his days, embraced the Faith whose Word had reached him.
Quddús was the youngest and the last of the Báb's first eighteen disciples, the Letters of the Living — and the one He raised highest. A youth of luminous refinement, learning, courtesy, and serenity, Quddús was chosen as the Báb's sole companion on the pilgrimage to Mecca, poured out commentaries of astonishing depth even under arrest and siege, and bore himself through every ordeal with a perfection of character that his companions never forgot.
Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, brought to everything he touched a standard of exactness and beauty that those closest to him never forgot. The Priceless Pearl preserves the portrait: a young man who taught himself English to perfection in quiet Oxford rooms, then laboured year after year by lamplight to render the Sacred Writings in cadenced, faultless prose — showing that the patient pursuit of excellence can itself be a form of worship.
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 the very days of the Riḍván festival, on the eve of His banishment from Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh revealed one of the great Tablets of His early ministry — the Súriy-i-Ṣabr, the Tablet of Patience, also called the Tablet of Job. Sent in honor of a survivor of the Nayríz upheaval whom He named Ayyúb, it lifts up the steadfastness of those who suffered for the Báb and crowns the Festival of joy with a hymn to patient endurance.