Bahai Story Library
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wisdom

5 stories on this theme.

Wisdom Untaught: The Young Nobleman Who Embraced the Cause

ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's own narrative remembers the young Bahá'u'lláh as a Nobleman who was never trained in the schools of the learned, yet whose wisdom astonished all who came near Him — and who, the moment the Báb's Cause arose, embraced it with His whole heart and became its devoted champion. A reflection on the early life that A Traveler's Narrative preserves.

9 min

"Do You Teach the Spiritual Things?" — Stanwood Cobb

A Harvard-trained teacher, proud of the Latin, algebra, and geometry he drilled into his pupils, met 'Abdu'l-Bahá and was asked one quiet question that exposed the great gap in modern education. Stanwood Cobb spent the rest of his long life — he lived to 101 — trying to put back what his schooling had left out.

5 min

The Stranger of Sar-Galú: Bahá'u'lláh in the Mountains of Kurdistan

For two years Bahá'u'lláh withdrew alone into the wilderness of Kurdistan, asking nothing, claiming nothing, known to no one but as a wandering dervish. Yet the sheer beauty of His character and wisdom could not stay hidden — the shaykhs and divines of Sulaymáníyyih were drawn to Him in wonder and love, until His fame at last revealed where He was.

5 min

Looking for the Key: A Mulla Nasrudin Tale 'Abdu'l-Bahá Used

'Abdu'l-Bahá would sometimes draw, in His talks with friends, on the great Persian-Turkish folk humour of Mulla Nasrudin — including the famous tale of a man searching for his key in the wrong place because the light there was better, and the searching lesson He drew from it.

1 min

The Wise Man and the Fool: A Story 'Abdu'l-Bahá Told

Among the parables 'Abdu'l-Bahá told to the friends was the brief story of a wise man and a fool who walked the same road in opposite directions — and the question of which of them was in fact going somewhere.

1 min