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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."
379 stories where devotion appears.
All the Bahá’ís in Iran loved and respected Haji Amin, and many wonderful stories are told about his sincerity and devotion. Once, when he was about to set off for the Holy Land, a very poor woman gave him a small coin to take with him.…
In London in September 1911, a painter came to ask 'Abdu'l-Bahá whether art was a worthy vocation. The Master answered in three words. Then an actor asked about drama, and the conversation widened into a memory of a Mystery Play that, as a child, had kept Him sleepless for nights.
We have met together to bid farewell to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and to thank God for his example and teaching, and for the power of his prayers to bring Light into confused thought, Hope into the place of dread, Faith where doubt was, and into…
Among those souls that are righteous, that are luminous entities and Divine reflections, was Jinab-i-Muhammad-Taqi, the Afnan. This eminent Bough was an offshoot of the Holy Tree [the Báb's kindred]; in him an excellent character was…
Bahá’í poets and people of letters in Persia used to write poems in praise and glorification of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. But the resident Bahá’ís in Akká were very careful not to breathe a word about His glorious station. They knew He had often…
Bahá'u'lláh and the Fishes Once upon a time there was a noble Vasir, a minister in the court of the Shah, the King of Persia. He was a good man, greatly respected, who helped those in need. The Vasir had a son whom he loved greatly. One…
I have come from distant lands to visit the meetings and assemblies of this country. In every meeting I find people gathered loving each other; therefore I am greatly pleased. The bond of union is evidenced in this assembly today where…
From the time of the creation of Adam to this day there have been two pathways in the world of humanity; one the natural or materialistic, the other the religious or spiritual. The pathway of nature is the pathway of the animal realm.…
Today I am most happy, for I see here a gathering of the servants of God. I see the white and colored people together. In the estimation of God there is no distinction of color; all are one in the color and beauty of servitude to him.…
O thou party who art assisted by the hosts of the Kingdom of…
Today there is no greater glory for man than that of service in the cause of the “Most Great Peace.” Peace is light whereas war is darkness. Peace is life; war is death. Peace is guidance; war is error. Peace is the foundation of God;…
What is real unity? When we observe the human world we find various collective expressions of unity therein. For instance, man is distinguished from the animal by his degree or kingdom. This comprehensive distinction includes all the…
Thy letter was received. Thou hast written of the organization of an assembly in that city. Look not at the small number; nay, rather seek the pure hearts. One holy soul is better than one thousand other souls. If a few souls gather…
In the estimation of historians this radiant century is equivalent to one hundred centuries of the past. If comparison be made with the sum total of all former human achievements it will be found that the discoveries, scientific…
This recent war has proved to the world and the people that war is destruction while Universal Peace is construction; war is death while peace is life; war is rapacity and bloodthirstiness while peace is beneficence and humaneness; war…
‘Abdu’l-Bahá spent His early years in an environment of privilege, wealth, and love. ** ‘Abdu’l-Bahá…
Mullá ‘Alí Ján and ‘Alavíyyih Khánum, not content with the conversion of the inhabitants of Máhfurúzak to the Bahá’í Faith, started to organize the life of the village on a spiritual basis. They encouraged each family to set aside a…
Áqá Faraj and Abu’l-Qásim, who had gone into hiding, then hurried away to Adrianople, to fall, ultimately, with the others and with their Well-Beloved, into the ‘Akká prison. ** Áqá…
Aqa Husayn-i-Ashchi (Ashchi in Farsi means cook or maker of broth) was Baha'u'llah's cook. His father died on his way to ask for the hand of his brother's daughter to wed 'Abdu'l-Baha. Aqa Husayn-i-Ashchi's uncle Ustad Ismail raised him…
They needed no teacher, then; by themselves, they saw through the veils that had blinded them before, and won the supreme desire of their hearts. ** Áqá Ibráhím-i-Iṣfahání And His…
Aqa Mirza Muhammad-Taqi Abhari (Ibn-i-Abhar) received many tablets from Baha'u'llah. For example, Ibn-i-Abhar had posed the question of the well-being and prosperity of the Baha'is of Persia. In a Tablet revealed in 1889 Baha'u'llah in…
"I beseech you," he tearfully entreated Mulla Ali, "to allow me to accompany you on your journey. Perplexities oppress my heart; I pray you to guide my steps in the way of Truth. Last night, in my dream, I heard the crier announce in the…
Ḥájí Faraju’lláh, he lived on in that city, until the day when merciless oppressors banished Bahá’u’lláh to ‘Akká, and in His company the Ḥájí came here to the Most Great Prison. **…
Mirza Hasan-i-Adib was deeply interested in the education of Baha'i youth. Another great achievement was the founding of the Tarbiyat Boys' School in Tehran. **Haji Mirza Hasan-i-Adib** **Born:** 1845/1847 **Death:** 1919 **Place…
Haji Muhammad Tihir was a brilliant debater and speaker. It is difficult to convey the pleasure one derived from his inspiring conversation which ranged from humorous trifles to weighty pronouncements. His knowledge of the history and…
In the days when the fort of Tabarsi had become the rallying centre for the disciples of the Bab, he languished disconsolate upon a sick-bed, unable to lend his assistance and play his part for its defence. No sooner had he recovered than,…
Let lovers be warned by his story; let them know how he gambled away his life in his yearning after the Light of the World. May God give him to drink of a brimming cup in the everlasting gardens; in the Supreme Assemblage, may God shed…
He wished neither rank nor office, and had no worldly aims at all. His one supreme desire was to serve Bahá’u’lláh, and for this reason he was never separated from his Brother’s presence. ** His Eminence Kalím (Mírzá…
Gregory was instrumental in arranging for two major speaking engagements for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Washington DC to an audience of more than a thousand in Rankin Chapel at Howard University, and that evening to a large gathering of the Bethel…
Mashhadí Faṭṭáḥ possessed some merchandise; this was all he owned in the world. He had entrusted it to persons in Adrianople, and later on those unrighteous people did away with the goods. ** Mashhadí…
He was an early martyr of the Faith, was the recipient of the Tablet of the Verse of Light, as he had requested that Bahá'u'lláh interpret the isolated letters at the chapter beginnings of the Qur'an. ** Mirza…
After he had received the endless bounties showered on him by Bahá’u’lláh, he was given leave to go, and he traveled to China. There, over a considerable period, he spent his days mindful of God and in a manner conformable to Divine good…
He who had been waited upon, now waited on others; he who had been the master was now the servant, he who had once been a leader was now a captive. He had no rest, no leisure, day or night. To the travelers he was a trusted refuge; to the…
The farráshes hunted them down, and caught Mírzá Mustafá. But then the oppressors said, “Mírzá Mustafá had two long locks of hair. This cannot be the right man.” At once, Mírzá Mustafá took off his hat and down fell the locks of hair.…
Large crowds of people thronged the approaches to the headquarters of the government, eager to learn what would befall him. "Since last night," the Amir, as soon as he had seen him, remarked, " I have been besieged by all classes of State…
During the nineteen days that he remained there he drank his fill from the life-giving draught of the presence of the Master and on daily basis paid homage to the Sacred Shrine of Baha’u’llah. **Mirza Yusuf Vahid Kashfi Born:**…
Muḥammad showed a keen interest to learn and master this language. He moved to Qazvín, the birth place of Táhiríh, to teach at Tavakkul Bahá’í School in 1914. In 1916, he was nominated as the official representative of the World Esperanto…
This honored man was successful in converting a multitude. For the sake of God he cast all caution aside, as he hastened along the ways of love. **Mu****lla`Ali-Akbar Shahmirzadi (Haji…
The Bab often remarked how out of a city full of clergy, divines and religious institutions that the first to recognize the truth was a sifter of wheat, Mulla Jafar Isfahani. ** Mulla Jafar Isfahani (Sifter of…
** Sháh Muḥammad-Amín aka Haji Shah Muhammad…
Shaykh Hasan recognized in the Báb all those attributes his master had predicted, and he became His devoted disciple, travelling far and wide to be close to the newest Manifestation of God on earth. When the ulama of Isfahan issued the…
Siyyid Isma`ils writings are among the best known in the modern Shi`ism and the most important among them are: Hisnul-Hasin dar Sharh Baladul-Amin, a commentary on his grandfather's important work on statesmanship. ** Siyyid…
In May 1878, his travel teaching took Siyyid Mustafa Rumi to Myanmar (Burma). There he would, not yet knowing the local language, together with Jamal Effendi and Haji Siyyid Mihdi, lay the foundation for the Burmese Bahá’í community.…
On my arrival I found that Husayn Khan, who in the meantime had been searching for me, was eager to know whether I had fallen a victim to the Bab's magic influence. `No one but God,' I replied, `who alone can change the hearts of men, is…
Táhirih asked to borrow the writings and take them home. Mullá Javád violently objected, telling her: “Your father is an enemy of the Twin Luminous Lights, Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kázim. **…
Ustad ‘Ali Ashraf was a well-known architect, who designed and built most of the big governmental and national buildings (‘Qafqaziyyih’, 1867). 'Abdu'l-Bahá named one of the exterior doors to the Shrine of Bab after Ustad ‘Ali Ashraf.…
The architect Aqa Bala, who was in 'Akka on pilgrimage at the time, should beg 'Abdu'l-Bahá's permission to build a small bath in His house. And so he submitted his request. Since he was one of the pure in heart, his request was granted.…
From his years Billy Sears possessed an inordinate interest in God. He asked his parents, his grandfather, the preacher, the mayor, even the local people he met a myriad of questions: 'Did God have a wife? Where was His house? Could He…
He was made a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. ** William Sutherland…
43 I deeply appreciate your sympathy. My loss is tremendous and my sorrow so profound. I will pray that you, who have felt the power of her spirit at so advanced an age may be enabled to mirror forth its splendour and reveal its beauty…
44 I greatly value your sympathy in my cruel, my irreparable loss. My only comfort is the assurance of her devoted lovers to remain firm and steadfast in the Cause and to strive to follow in her footsteps. The example of her life is…
48 Your highly impressive and touching message brought much relief to my weary soul. I thank you from the depths of my heart. I greatly value the sentiments expressed on behalf of a local community, the members of which have, by their…
126 O my dear sister! Your excellent letter brought me much joy, testifying as it did to your ardour and pure intent, and to your being immersed in the ocean of God’s heavenly love, and also to the harmony and concord among His…
49 The passing of the Greatest Holy Leaf has filled my heart with unutterable sorrow. My comfort is the thought that the measure of success achieved, under your wise and able leadership, by the collective efforts of the American…
129 Both in the Persian and Arabic Writings of the Primal Point—may the life of all men be offered up for Him—there are several, nay indeed numerous passages in which He directs His plea to the exalted court of Him Whom God shall make…
55 I wish to express to your distinguished assembly my gratitude for the action they have taken in reproducing in facsimile my humble tribute to the Greatest Holy Leaf. The hundred copies you sent me have been received and are splendid…
56 O ye who share my anguish and are my comforters in my distress and bereavement! In these past few months, from the day of the passing of that fairest fruit of the Undying Tree, of the setting of that wondrous Star in the heavens of…
57 Moved by an unalterable devotion to the memory of the Greatest Holy Leaf, I feel prompted to share with you, and through you with the concourse of her steadfast lovers throughout the West, these significant passages58 which I have…
99 Surely there is nothing that will console the Guardian more than the happy news that the Cause for which the Greatest Holy Leaf lived and suffered is gradually spreading and embracing the whole of the people of the…
101 Surely no matter what we say about her still we have not done justice to the abounding love she had and the services she rendered to Bahá’u’lláh and the Master. Her life was full of events, full of sacrifices in the path of God.…
32 GREATEST HOLY LEAF’S IMMORTAL SPIRIT WINGED ITS FLIGHT GREAT BEYOND. COUNTLESS LOVERS HER SAINTLY LIFE IN EAST AND WEST SEIZED WITH PANGS OF ANGUISH, PLUNGED IN UNUTTERABLE SORROW. HUMANITY SHALL ERELONG RECOGNIZE ITS IRREPARABLE…
110 The letter in which that leaf had expressed the ardent longing of her heart and revealed the depth of her devotion has received my eager…
143 Although that supreme calamity, that great ordeal, the ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, put the torch to the harvest of our hearts, and brought down both our outer and inner beings, wedding us to grief and ceaseless pain, yet praised be…
106 ...He was deeply touched by the strong attachment of the friends to one who, besides being the beloved daughter of Bahá’u’lláh, exemplified perhaps more than anyone the true spirit that animates His teachings. His sincere hope is…
145 O God, my…
162 The good news that the Word of God is being raised up, and His Cause glorified, and that His friends, on fire with love for Him, are arising to spread His sweet savours abroad—is coming in steadily from every quarter of the…
78 His grief is too immense and his loss too heavy to be adequately expressed in words. But the many letters of condolence he has already received, and especially your message that indicated your profound attachment to our departed…
170 The purport of your letter is highly indicative of your steadfastness in His Cause, of your unswerving constancy in the Covenant, of having set your face toward Shoghi Effendi, the authorized Point to whom all must turn, the Centre…
172 At this hour while yet the heart burns with the anguish of sorrow, and the gloom of bereavement still hangs low, my thoughts turn in loving remembrance to my sincere beloved sisters and brothers in the…
174 A physician treats every illness with a certain remedy and to every painful sore he applies a specially prepared compound. The more severe the illness, the more potent must be the remedy, so that the treatment may prove effective…
180 The letter that you wrote in your burning grief, on the passing of the world’s Beloved, the Orb of the Covenant—wrote with weeping eyes and a heart afire, has come. Once again, it brings back the full force of this calamity, and…
38 Brethren and fellow-mourners in the Faith of…
80 In these days, when we are all mourning the loss of our beloved Greatest Holy Leaf, Shoghi Effendi’s sole comfort is to see the friends as ever devoted and active and striving day and night to promote the teachings of the…
192 The letter you have written was received with the utmost joy for it was to us not only a message of love and unity but a message of humble devotion and servitude at the divine Threshold. It was not only the cause of comfort to our…
193 All praise be unto the Court of Holiness, that God has drawn certain blessed souls, entities delicate and pure, unto a realm where they have no desire save the good-pleasure of the Beloved; where, in the pathway of the Ancient…
194 It has been demonstrated time and time again that whatever comes to pass only enhances the glory of God’s Faith, and further proclaims His Word. This time it will be the…
10 O Díyá!11 It is incumbent upon thee, throughout the journey, to be a close, a constant and cheerful companion to my honoured and distinguished sister. Unceasingly, with the utmost vigour and devotion, exert thyself, by day and…
200 Your kind and loving letter written with an unbounded love and a sincere devotion for our beloved ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and His Cause has been duly received. It spoke of that painful story where earthly cares and physical illnesses have…
201 Praise be to God that through the gracious assistance of the Abhá Kingdom those devoted friends have been enabled to achieve that which befits the glory of the Cause of God and the protection of the community of the followers of…
209 The tongue of this lowly and grief-stricken maidservant is powerless to praise those loved ones of God, and the words uttered by her are wholly inadequate to pay a worthy tribute to the staunch firmness and constancy, to the spirit…
82 ...The news of the Memorial Service you had held for the Greatest Holy Leaf gave him the assurance that the friends are faithfully sharing his grief and are demonstrating in a befitting manner their profound devotion to one whose…
215 Your charming letter of June 20th has arrived and with it the spiritual waves of your love and devotion to the welfare of the Cause of God and to the prosperity of the dear friends throughout…
216 Your numerous letters written to the beloved Guardian and myself have all arrived and brought with them the sweet perfume of your devotion, sincerity, strong faith and active and beautiful services you are inexhaustibly rendering…
217 From this hallowed Spot I send heavenly greetings to those two faithful servants of the holy Threshold of the Abhá Beauty. Indeed, no word of compliment could be compared to this expression of praise and commendation, whereby,…
219 It always cheers my heart to hear from the dear friends whose hearts are so full of love and devotion, and desire to serve this Blessed Cause which has been proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh to all the world, so that all national, racial,…
83 The letter from that spiritual friend has reached the beloved Guardian, and he is aware of your bitter grieving over the calamitous news that a most glorious fruit of the Holy Tree, the Most Exalted Leaf, the Remnant of Bahá, has…
224 Your letter, laden with many a graceful phrase, many a wondrous inner meaning, has been received. Its perusal brought composure and tranquillity to my soul and gladness to my heart, inasmuch as from between its lines I could…
The Bahá’í glad tidings disclose a vision of the Bounty of God and of the future progress of humanity, which is surely the greatest and most glorious Revelation ever given to mankind, the development and fulfillment of all previous…
In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, Esslemont describes the proximity of the Persian believers in 'Akká to the great Mansion of Bahjí — the pilgrim who, after the long road, would silently ascend the path each morning to be near the windows of the Master, then sit beneath the trees, then descend at dusk having barely spoken.
Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí, Who afterwards assumed the title of Bahá’u’lláh (i.e. Glory of God), was the eldest son of Mírzá Abbás of Núr, a Vazír or Minister of State. His family was wealthy and distinguished, many of its members having…
During the past century scientists have devoted and immense amount of study to the struggle for existence in the plant and animal world, and, amid the perplexities of social life, many have turned for guidance to the principles which…
In order to attain to the Bahá’í life in all its fullness, conscious and direct relations with Bahá’u’lláh are as necessary as is sunshine for the unfolding of the lily or the rose. The Bahá’í worships not the human personality of…
There are, of course, difficulties in the way of the student who seeks to get at the truth about this Cause. Like all great moral and spiritual reformations, the Bahá’í Faith has been grossly misrepresented. About the terrible…
Under the inspired guidance of Shoghi Effendi the Bahá’í Cause grew steadily in size and in the establishment of its Administrative Order, so that by 1951 there were eleven functioning National Spiritual Assemblies. At that point the…
The essential joyousness of the Bahá’í religion finds expression in numerous feasts and holidays throughout the…
Bahá’u’lláh teaches that everyone endowed with the Station of Prophethood is given sufficient proofs of His Mission, is entitled to claim obedience from all men and has authority to abrogate, alter or add to the teachings of His…
About this time Bahá’u’lláh wrote His famous letter to the Sulṭán of Turkey, many of the crowned heads of Europe, the Pope, and the Sháh of Persia. Later, in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas16 He addressed other sovereigns, the rulers and Presidents…
Having in His earlier years of hardship shown how to glorify God in a state of poverty and ignominy, Bahá’u’lláh in His later years at Bahjí showed how to glorify God in a state of honor and affluence. The offering of hundreds of…
To know the Manifestation of God means also to love Him. One is impossible without the other. According to Bahá’u’lláh, the purpose of man’s creation is that he may know God and adore Him. He says in one of His Tablets:— The cause of…
On the 9th of July, 1850,10 the Báb Himself, Who was then in His thirty-first year, fell a victim to the fanatical fury of His persecutors. With a devoted young follower name Áqá Muḥammad ‘Alí, who had passionately begged to be allowed…
Bahá’u’lláh left instructions that temples of worship should be built by His followers in every country and city. To these temples He gave the name of “Mashriqu’l-Adhkár,” which means “Dawning Place of God’s Praise.” The…
As a religious body, Bahá’ís have, at the express command of Bahá’u’lláh, entirely abandoned the use of armed force in their own interests, even for strictly defensive purposes. In Persia many, many thousands of the Bábís and Bahá’ís…
Devotion to God involves implicit obedience to His revealed Commands even when the reason for these Commands is not understood. The sailor implicitly obeys his captain’s orders, even when he does not know the reason for them, but his…
This last quotation reveals the spirit which animated the Báb’s whole life. To know and love God, to mirror forth His attributes and to prepare the way for His coming Manifestation—these were the sole aim and object of His being. For…
Even when the imprisonment was at its worst, the Bahá’ís were not dismayed, and their serene confidence was never shaken. While in the barracks at Akká, Bahá’u’lláh wrote to some friends, “Fear not. These doors shall be opened. My tent…
Unfortunately it is impossible, within the space at our disposal, to describe in detail the progress of the Bahá’í Faith throughout the world. Many chapters might be devoted to this fascinating subject, and many thrilling stories…
Devotion to God implies a life of service to our fellow- creatures. We can be of service to God in no other way. If we turn our backs on our fellowmen, we are turning our backs upon God. Christ said, “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of…
Devotion to God implies also severance from everything that is not of God, severance, that is, from all selfish and worldly, and ever other-worldly desires. The path of God may lie through riches or poverty, health or sickness, through…
Before ‘Abdu’l-Bahá completed His earthly mission, He had laid a basis for the development of the administrative order established in Bahá’u’lláh’s Writings. To show the high importance to be attributed to the institution of the…
All things manifest the bounty of God with greater or less clearness, as all material objects exposed to the sun reflect its light in greater or less degree. A heap of soot reflects a little, a stone reflects more, a piece of chalk more…
The power of spiritual healing is doubtless common to all mankind in greater or less degree, but, just as some men are endowed with exceptional talent for mathematics or music, so others appear to be endowed with exceptional aptitude…
After the Báb’s martyrdom, His remains, with those of His devoted companion, were thrown on the edge of the moat outside the city wall. On the second night they were rescued at midnight by some of the Bábís, and after being concealed…
Having glanced at the principal causes of war and how they may be avoided, we may now proceed to examine certain constructive proposals made by Bahá’u’lláh with a view to achieving the Most Great…
Another proposal frequently and powerfully advocated by Bahá’u’lláh was that a Universal League of Nations should be formed for the maintenance of international peace. In a letter to Queen Victoria, written while He was still a prisoner…
From that time onwards, He became His father’s closest companion and, as it were, protector. Although a mere youth, He already showed astonishing sagacity and discrimination, and undertook the task of interviewing all the numerous…
It was during Bahá’u’lláh’s nine-month exile to Karbilá in 1851, on the order of the Persian Prime Minister, that He “encountered, as He was walking through the streets, Shaykh Hasan-i-Zunúzí, to…
After the death of the Vazir [Mirza Buzurg, Bahá'u'lláh’s father], Haji Mirza Aqasi [the Persian Prime Minister] continued to show the utmost consideration to Bahá'u'lláh.
The night before his [Mullá Husayn's] arrival at Máh-Kú, which was the eve of the fourth Naw-Rúz after the declaration of the Mission of the Báb, and which fell in that year, the year 1264 A.H.,…
Mirza Abu'l-Fadl, a famous Baha’i scholar, relates in one of his works what he himself heard from a divine.
Mirza Ghorban Ali, who was one of the Seven Martyrs, a man of great piety and learning, was a strong Bábi, but he was very fearful and timid.
When Bahá’u’lláh was still a child, the Vazír, His father, dreamed a dream. Bahá’u’lláh appeared to him swimming in a vast, limitless ocean.
When Bahá’u’lláh was nearly eighteen years old, His older sister requested their father's permission for her Brother to marry her husband's sister, Ásíyih Khánúm.
One night we were in the presence of 'Abdu'l-Baha along with the rest of the pilgrims.
The King of the Martyrs and Beloved of the Martyrs were born to a noble family in Isfahan. They were nine and ten years of age respectively when the Declaration of the Báb took place in 1844.
The whole province of Khurásán was in those days [1848] in the throes of a violent agitation.
This is the story of Mulla Aliy-i-Bastami, one of the Letters of the Living, "the first to leave the House of God (Shiraz) and the first to suffer for His sake…" (The Báb, quoted by Shoghi Effendi,…
Karbila, circa 1930s In the following incident Nabil gives an example of Siyyid Kazim’s efforts to prepare his disciples to gradually remove the veils of age-old erroneous understandings and…
Jináb-i-Mírzá Músá was the true brother of Bahá’u’lláh, and from earliest childhood he was reared in the sheltering embrace of the Most Great Name.
During the time when the Báb was in Shiraz, one night in a gathering with three of the believers, He turned suddenly to Mullá ‘Abdu’l-Karím and said: “‘Abdu’l-Karím, are you seeking the…
When Siyyid Kazim died in Karbila, Iraq, on December 31, 1843, his enemies became emboldened and renewed their hurtful activities to further discredit his teachings and ridicule those who followed…
Before Mulla Husayn met the Báb and became His first believer, he was a disciple of Siyyid Kázim, one of the two forerunners of the Báb – the other was Siyyid Kázim’s teacher, Shaykh Ahmad.
Bahá'u'lláh intended to give His niece, Shahr-Banu Khanum, in marriage to His eldest Son, ‘Abdu’l-Baha. She was the daughter of His faithful older half-brother, Mirza Muhammad-Hasan.
We know from the Baha’i Writings that Quddus, in addition to being the last Letter of the Living and the chosen companion of the Báb during His pilgrimage to Mecca, has a high station.
circa 1930s: The castle of Máh-Kú He [‘Alí Khán, the warden in charge of the castle of Máh-Kú] discharged his functions with the utmost severity and refused to allow any of the avowed disciples of…
Mulla Husayn was still in Mashhad during the conference of Badasht as a guest of the Governor-General of the province of Khurasan - where he was treated with courtesy and consideration.
At the time of the Báb, Isfahan, a central city in Persia, was known among cities for the great learning of its clergy.
The life of 'Abdu'l-Baha is very significant among the lives of the past heavenly educators.
In the whole range of Bahá'u'lláh's Writings, the Kitáb-i-Íqán (The Book of Certitude) has most importance, with the exception of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book).
A little under two years had passed since Bahá'u'lláh's confinement in the barracks, when suddenly a most tragic event occurred.
Mirza Aqa Jan embraced the religion of the Báb when he was about sixteen years old and became instantly “aflame with devotion.” He was neither learned nor rich and made his living in his hometown of…
When you stand in the gardens at Mazra'ih near 'Akka, you can see the mountains that hold the Druze village of Abu-Sinan, where the Baha'is of the Holy Land lived during the most dangerous times of…
Resting place of Ásíyih Khánum and son Mirza Mihdi Many people loved Bahá'u'lláh when He was alive. Pilgrims traveled far distances just to look at His face.
'Abdu'l-Rahim was a fanatical Muslim. He was alarmed. The Baha'i Faith was growing in his town in Persia and he decided that it was time to ask the advice of a Muslim clergyman.
Before Baha'u'llah became a follower of the Báb, he had a home in the country, surrounded by many acres of land, and a palace in the city of Tihran which had beautiful gardens around it.
Suppose you and I had been born in Persia more than a hundred years ago. Suppose we had grown up as Muslim children, hearing the beautiful words of the Qur'an.
"Grandpa," Brently's imploring 7-year-old eyes looked panicked. Brently trudged from his two-story house across the dry lawn to Grandpa Burrell's porch.
When I was growing up, Halloween was a great time, even for a kid in a wheelchair.
One day, behind the hot stone walls of the prison city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh said, "I have not gazed on verdure for nine years." It had been nine years since He had rested His eyes on green and…
In *The Chosen Highway* Lady Blomfield records the recollection of how, in the late 1830s, the young Ásíyih Khánum — daughter of a Persian noble and rare beauty of her age — was married to the young Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʿAlí, and how the household of Núr received its new bride with quiet ceremony.
Nabíl's chronicle records the return of Bahá'u'lláh from Karbilá in the autumn of 1842 — a young nobleman not yet thirty, returning by horse to Tihrán with the resolve to take up the work the city had been preparing for. The intervening years of His ministry to the wider Bábí community would, in retrospect, take their root in that journey home.
During those days one hundred years ago Bahá’u’lláh was enduring His imprisonment in the Barracks of 'Akká. Upon the tribulations which weighed Him down was heaped the fatal accident which befell His young son, His companion and…
Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne, poetess, and her husband, Dr T. K. Cheyne, esteemed critic, lived in Oxford, England, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá visited them. Dr Cheyne’s health and strength were waning. ‘The beautiful loving care of the devoted wife…
Five years after Grace told me these stories she went on an extensive teaching trip through the nearsouthern states. For three of these five years she had been very ill - most of the time very close to the Open Door. Finally, when she was…
For his own personal use Bahá’u’lláh never ordered anything extravagant. The life of luxury to which He was accustomed in His youth had been denied Him since His imprisonment in the Siyah-Chal of Tihran when all His possessions had been…
A seventeen-year-old boy asked for one thing: to carry a letter from Bahá'u'lláh to the king of Persia. He walked for months to deliver it — and gave his life with a smile that no one who saw it could forget.
In the prison of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh's young son fell while lost in prayer. Given the chance to ask for his life back, he asked instead that his death open the prison doors to others.
When Bahá'u'lláh passed away, His Son could have borne any title in the world. He asked to be known by only one: the Servant of Bahá.
Haji Muhammad-Baqir was a well-known merchant, foremost among the believers in faith, certitude and enthusiasm, and was serving the Cause with devotion and self-sacrifice. This man attained the presence of Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdad. There He…
From 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Memorials of the Faithful: when Bahá'u'lláh ascended in 1892 at Bahjí, His chronicler Nabíl-i-Zarandí was inconsolable. He calculated the numerical value of the word "shidád" — "year of stress" — at 309, and found that Bahá'u'lláh had foretold the date in His own writings.
Esslemont's account of the early life of Siyyid 'Alí-Muhammad — the One later known as the Báb — born in Shíráz on October 20, 1819, raised by an uncle after His father's death, recognized in His youth for piety, charm, and a remarkable observance of prayer.
Nabíl's account, in *The Dawn-Breakers*, of the night of May 22–23, 1844, when Mullá Ḥusayn met the Báb at the gate of Shíráz, accepted His invitation home, and at two hours and eleven minutes after sunset became the first to recognise Him.
He wasn’t interested in the man. He wasn’t interested in his clothes. All he was interested in was interested in was his character and his devotion to the Cause. Someone knocked on the door of the Western pilgrim house, and I opened the…
The third Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's promise that the soul which finds within itself the love of God shall enter the bounty of His mercy.
The fourth Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's small, two-line reciprocal of love between God and the soul, the line that has been memorised perhaps more than any other in the entire collection.
The fifth Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's image of the human heart as His own mansion, and His invitation to sanctify it for His descent.
The seventh Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's call to the son of man to forsake all but Him, that he may attain to His presence and abide in His company.
The third Hidden Word in Persian — Bahá'u'lláh's tender injunction that the believer plant only the rose of love in the garden of the heart, and that the heart itself be the dwelling of the Beloved.
The fourth Hidden Word in Persian — Bahá'u'lláh's invitation to the believer to behold, with the eye of the heart, the manifestation of God's eternal beauty in His own being.
I am so delighted by these news that my dear friend and colleague in Bahá’í studies, Hossain Achtchi has enthusiastically agreed to speak at our first cloud conference. What an extraordinary life. His father was Aqa Husayn-i Ashchi,…
I remember when I was a girl the news came to Isfahan from Nabil that Jamal-i-Mubarak [Bahá’u’lláh] was imprisoned in the fortress town of `Akká, shut in behind iron doors, never going out! As I thought of Him in that poisonous climate -…
I spend much of my time travelling, visiting many countries and meeting Bahá’ís and their friends. Very often we will sit and talk about the teachings and about prayer. It is often a surprise to me how some of the friends say they don't…
I want to give you just one day in the Guardian’s life so you can appreciate a little bit more what it is to be the head of a faith like the Bahá’í Faith. Shoghi Effendi usually arose in the morning about 5:30. And then he had his period…
In 1909 Ethel Rosenberg made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Although He was free, the Master had not yet left ‘Akka to live in Haifa. Ethel asked Him what the friends could do to increase their numbers and to make their work more…
In the 1840’s the sea journey from Bushihr to Jiddah was a dangerous and uncomfortable one; the distance was about 4000 kilometres and the journey took about two months. The seas were often rough, the storms frequent, water was scarce and…
In the spring of 1918, I was much startled and deeply disturbed by a telephone message: "‘Abdu’l-Bahá in serious danger. Take immediate action." It came from an authoritative source. There was not a moment to be lost. Every available power…
In those days when the friends in Persia were aflame with the fire of love, and at the same time, they were, with a spirit of forbearance, burning in that fire of envy and hatred, of calumny and slander created by the people of malice and…
It is related of Shaykh Mahmud of 'Akka that he 'hated the Bahá’ís. While many of his fellow-townsmen had gradually come to realize how very wrong they had been and were speaking of the prisoners in terms of appreciation and praise,…
It took some time for the news of Bahá’u’lláh’s Declaration to reach the believers in Persia. In the first place, methods of communication were still primitive. Secondly, the dissemination of such important news had to be carried out with…
It was June of 1847. An immense crowd of people thronged the gate of the city of Tabriz to witness the very first time that the Báb entered their city. Some were merely curious, while others were earnestly trying to find out if the Báb…
A husband and wife loved their little village so much that they filled it with prayer, schools, and kindness — and even when the hardest things happened, their love never stopped.
When Áqá Faraj first heard the wonderful news, he clapped his hands and cried out for joy — and then he set off on a long journey that lasted his whole life.
A young cook named Husayn tried to save every little piece of coal — and one day Bahá'u'lláh let him know that even his quiet, careful kindness had been noticed.
A devoted believer kept asking Bahá'u'lláh what he should do — and was lovingly taught one of the most important lessons of all: to sit down with wise friends and decide together.
A young man woke from a dream he could not forget, ran out of his shop to follow a stranger on a journey — and set off a story of courage, cruelty, and forgiveness that took his whole family years to finish.
A young man named Faraju'lláh wanted to be near Bahá'u'lláh more than anything — so when hard times came, he chose to follow Him even to a faraway prison.
A famous teacher of kings and scholars discovered something greater than all his learning — and spent the rest of his life teaching it to others.
A weaver named Haji Muhammad Tihir was so brave and so wise that even his enemies put down their weapons and listened — and he gave his whole long life to teaching and caring for others.
A young man left home to search for the truth, and the truth he found made him so brave and so kind that he forgave even the person who meant to harm him.
A gentle old man who made sweet rose perfume left his home and walked across deserts and mountains, longing to reach Bahá'u'lláh.
Mírzá Músá wanted nothing for himself — only to be near his Brother, Bahá'u'lláh, and to serve Him through every hardship from beginning to end.
A kind man named Mashhadí Faṭṭáḥ lost all that he owned, yet he stayed quietly happy because he loved God most of all.
A man in Shíráz loved the Báb with all his heart, and he carried one big question all the way to Bahá'u'lláh.
From a rooftop at sunset, 'Abdu'l-Bahá saw a carriage far away and somehow knew a holy soul was coming — a faithful traveler whose face seemed made of light.
A famous scholar who had everything gave it all up to serve in a faraway prison-city — and became the most beloved helper of all.
When soldiers came hunting for a brave believer, he could have stayed hidden — but instead he lifted off his hat and told them the truth.
A man so beloved that crowds lined the roads to greet him chose to follow the Báb instead — because, more than anything, he wanted to be fair and to know the truth.
A man named Mirza Yusuf searched for the truth for many years, and when he finally found it, he gave up everything to travel the world and share it.
A boy named Muḥammad started a little company so children could save money for the future — and grew up to take photographs of holy places for a famous book.
When the Báb chose His very first followers, a man named Mullá Ahmad was one of them — and he gave everything to the new Faith he loved.
A devoted helper named Mullá Báqir spent his whole life carrying messages and serving the ones he loved most — and became the very last of a special group of believers.
A man named Mullá Hasan was chosen for a very special job, but deep down he felt he was not good enough — and his quiet, humble heart has been remembered ever since.
A young noblewoman of Tihrán, so lovely she was called the Daughter of the Beautiful, was married long ago — and the gift she gave that mattered most was not her jewels, but her own faithful heart.
A young man sat quietly in a little school far from home, listening — and his old teacher saw a secret in Him that he would not say out loud.
A man named Nabíl spent his whole life searching for Bahá'u'lláh and following Him — and his great love for Him is still remembered today.
Long ago in a busy city in Persia, a special boy grew up to be fair, kind, and faithful in his prayers — and the world would one day know Him as the Báb.
A tired traveler had searched everywhere for one special person — and then, just outside the city gate, a smiling Youth in a green turban came out to meet him.
A man knelt for one last blessing and placed 'Abdu'l-Bahá's hand on his own head — and what he felt taught him what true greatness really is.
After a long day of talking to crowd after crowd, 'Abdu'l-Bahá came home so tired He had to be helped inside — and then, fifteen minutes later, His strong voice rang out again.
A young man stepped into a quiet London office, saw a message lying open on a desk, and read the hardest news of his life — all alone.
Everyone said grass could never grow on the dry mountain — but Shoghi Effendi worked and worked until green gardens grew where no one believed they could.
May Maxwell, the mother of Rúhíyyih Khánum, died only a few weeks after pioneering to South America, and was declared a martyr by Shoghi Effendi. (Her story can be read in the Bahá’í World, Vol. VIII, pp. 631-642.) There is no question…
Leaving a green and beautiful estate outside New York, 'Abdu'l-Bahá looked at the lush grounds — and suddenly wept. His thoughts had flown back across the years to His Father, and to all that the Blessed Beauty had borne. A retelling from Mahmúd's Diary.
On a December day in 1912, the believers crowded aboard the steamship that would carry 'Abdu'l-Bahá away from America for the last time. As the ship pulled out, a weeping crowd stretched as far as the eye could see. A retelling from Mahmúd's Diary.
On a May morning in 1912, on a windswept plot of land north of Chicago, 'Abdu'l-Bahá knelt and turned the first earth for the Mother Temple of the West with His own hands. A retelling from Mahmúd's Diary.
Mirza Mahmud was a youth when he arrived in Baghdad from Kashan. Aqa Rida became a believer in Baghdad. The spiritual condition of the two was indescribable. There was in Baghdad a company of seven leading believers who lived in a single,…
When he was very young, people thought of ‘Abdu’lláh Baghdádí as a libertine, solely devoted to pleasure. He was regarded by all as the sport of inordinate desires, mired down in his physical passions. But the moment he became a…
In all these straits, Áqá Faraj was the companion of Abu’l-Qásim. When, in Persian ‘Iráq, he first heard the uproar caused by the Advent of the Most Great Light, he shook and trembled, clapped his hands, cried out in exultation and…
These two blessed souls, Mírzá Maḥmúd of Káshán and Áqá Riḍá of Shíráz, were like two lamps lit with God’s love from the oil of His knowledge. Encompassed by Divine bestowals from childhood on, they succeeded in rendering every kind of…
Mírzá Áqá of Káshán — known to the Bahá'í community as Jináb-i-Muníb — was a calligrapher, poet, and singer who left his daughter and his livelihood to walk on foot beside Bahá'u'lláh from Baghdád to Constantinople. He died, ill, in a Smyrna hospital during the exile to 'Akká, his last act being to drag himself to Bahá'u'lláh's feet and weep.
Sháh-Muḥammad, who had the title of Amín, the Trusted One, was among the earliest of believers, and most deeply enamored. He had listened to the Divine summons in the flower of his youth, and set his face toward the Kingdom. He had…
Khurshíd Begum, who was given the title of Shamsu’d-Ḍuḥá,105 the Morning Sun, was mother-in-law to the King of Martyrs. This eloquent, ardent handmaid of God was the cousin on her father’s side of the famous Muḥammad-Báqir of Iṣfáhán,…
One of the emigrants who died along the way to the Holy Land was Zaynu’l-Ábidín of Yazd. When, in Manshad, this devoted man first heard the cry of God, he was awakened to restless life. A holy passion stirred him, his soul was made…
My mother, my Aunt Khánum, my three sisters, and I lived in the bigger house at `Akká with our beloved Father; Bahá’u’lláh lived at Bahji. At this time the people of the place greatly respected and honoured Him and the Master, and we were…
My noble father was hurled into this black hole, loaded with heavy chains; five other the Bábís were chained to him night and day, and here he remained for four months. Picture to yourself the horror of these conditions. Any movement…
Na'im was a truly devoted servant of Bahá’u’lláh. As a result of embracing the Faith, he suffered great persecutions in his native village of Sidih near Isfahan. By order of the clergy, he and four other believers had their arms tied to…
The nineteenth and final month of the Bahá'í year, 'Alá' — Loftiness — is the month of the Fast. From sunrise to sunset for nineteen days the believer abstains from food and drink, but the heart of the Fast lies elsewhere: in abstinence from the desires of self, and in severance from all save God. This is what gives the month its name.
In the flower of his youth Nabíl-i-Zarandí bade farewell to his family in Zarand and set out to find the One his soul was seeking. From that day he never turned back. Poet, traveller, herald, recluse — he spent his whole life pouring himself out in service to Bahá'u'lláh, holding nothing of the world in reserve, until at the end he could endure separation no longer.
In a tender letter preserved among His Writings, 'Abdu'l-Bahá set the fading things of this world beside the one Beauty that never fades. Mortal charm passes, He wrote, roses give way to thorns, youth lives its day and is no more — but the Beauty of the True One endureth for ever. His counsel is the very lesson the month of the Fast was given to teach: where to fix the heart.
Pidar-Ján of Qazvín was a poor old man who emigrated to Baghdád to be near Bahá'u'lláh, and there gave his days and nights to prayer. So absorbed was he in the remembrance of God that thieves once lifted the goods from his open hands while he chanted, and he did not notice. 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembered him as a soul who walked the earth but travelled the heights of Heaven.
Ḥájí Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the Afnán, was a kinsman of the Báb and a prosperous merchant of Yazd. After Bahá'u'lláh's ascension he gave up his comfort, his business, and his estates and went to 'Ishqábád, where he poured out his entire fortune to raise the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár — the first Bahá'í House of Worship ever built. "This," 'Abdu'l-Bahá said, "is the way to make a sacrifice."
Keith Ransom-Kehler was a gifted American lecturer who could have spent her later years in comfort. When the Guardian asked her to undertake a long, hard teaching journey to Persia on behalf of her persecuted fellow believers, she accepted at once — with no Persian, no pioneering experience, and not in robust health. She gave the rest of her life to it, dying in Iṣfáhán in 1933, and Shoghi Effendi named her the first American Bahá'í martyr.
At the end of the great funeral on Mount Carmel in 1921, 'Abdu'l-Bahá was laid to rest not in a tomb of His own but in a chamber of the Shrine of the Báb — the very Shrine He had laboured for years to raise over the remains of His Lord's Forerunner. The Builder of that holy House became one of its treasures.
At three in the morning on the anniversary of His ascension, and whenever a pilgrim enters the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh, Bahá'ís chant the Tablet of Visitation. Adib Taherzadeh recounts how this most beloved of devotional texts came to be — gathered, in the days of mourning, by the grief-stricken chronicler Nabíl from Bahá'u'lláh's own revealed words, and given authority by 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
In Memorials of the Faithful, 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembers Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá Baghdádí — famed in Iraq for his love of Bahá'u'lláh, who settled near the coast and made himself the host and helper of every pilgrim journeying to attain the presence of the Blessed Beauty. When the Sun of Bahá set, he stood unshaken, loyal to the Covenant, "a blazing light" to the end.
Six days before His ascension in 1892, Bahá'u'lláh — already weakened by fever — summoned the entire company of believers and pilgrims gathered at the Mansion of Bahjí into His presence one last time. Leaning against one of His sons, He thanked them for their services, urged them to remain united, and gave them His final blessing.
In the small hours of the twenty-ninth of May, 1892, Bahá'u'lláh ascended at Bahjí in the seventy-fifth year of His age. A telegram bearing the words "the Sun of Bahá has set" carried the news to the Sultan; and for a full week, mourners of every faith and station — Muslim and Christian, Jew and Druze, rich and poor — gathered at the Mansion to grieve and to pay tribute.
On the first night of His Revelation the Báb gave to the first soul who recognised Him a name that would shape the rest of his life — Bábu'l-Báb, the Gate of the Gate. From that hour Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bushrú'í lived as the door through which others were meant to enter, until he laid down his life at the fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí.
Bahá'u'lláh bestowed upon His eldest Son a constellation of titles unique in religious history — the Most Great Branch, the Master, and, most mysterious of all, Sirru'lláh, the Mystery of God. Shoghi Effendi unfolds what these names mean, and how the One on whom they were conferred chose, in the end, to be known by a single humble name of His own.
In the first weeks of His Revelation, the Báb gave to the youngest of His chosen disciples, Mullá Muḥammad-'Alí of Bárfurúsh, a name that set him apart from all the rest — Quddús, the Most Holy — and chose him, alone among the Letters of the Living, to be His companion on the long pilgrimage to Mecca.
A poet from the village of Zarand left everything to follow Bahá'u'lláh, and in the end was given the task of recording the whole heroic story of the Faith's beginnings. Bahá'u'lláh conferred on him the name Nabíl-i-A'ẓam — a name whose very letters, by the old reckoning, add to the same sum as the name Muḥammad.
A respected jurist of Najaf-Ábád gave up rank and safety to follow Bahá'u'lláh, and devoted the rest of his life to copying out the sacred Writings in a hand so exact that his transcriptions became the standard by which others are verified to this day. Bahá'u'lláh named him Zaynu'l-Muqarrabín — the Ornament of the Near Ones.
Already past sixty, a travelling salesman named Hyde Dunn and his wife Clara left America to carry the Bahá'í message to a continent where it had never been heard. Town by town across Australia they planted the Faith, and Shoghi Effendi gave them the names by which they are remembered — "Father" and "Mother" Dunn, and Australia's "spiritual conqueror."
In 1953 the golden dome of the Shrine of the Báb was at last raised over Mount Carmel, completing the monument Shoghi Effendi loved to call the "Queen of Carmel" — a structure of surpassing majesty over the remains of a Prophet whom His own land had martyred in obscurity.
On Naw-Rúz 1909, after the sacred remains of the Báb had been hidden and moved for sixty years, 'Abdu'l-Bahá laid them with His own hands in the Shrine He had built on Mount Carmel — and, overcome, wept so that all who were present wept with Him. The greatest victory, He called it, of a long-deferred hope.
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.
In the late 1830s, the young Bahá'u'lláh married Ásíyih Khánum, a noblewoman of rare beauty and gentleness whom He would name Navváb. The Chosen Highway preserves her daughter's loving portrait of her, and the story of how the open-handed generosity of the young couple was already known to the poor of Tihrán long before the days of exile.
Before the world knew Him, the young Báb married Khadíjih Bagum, a kinswoman of His own family, and made with her a quiet home in Shíráz. In her own remembrances she tells of the dreams that prepared her heart, of His long hours of prayer, and of the strange "account books" that were not a merchant's ledgers at all.
In *A Traveler's Narrative*, 'Abdu'l-Bahá describes the Báb's youth in the plainest terms: a young Merchant of holy descent who traded in the Gulf port of Búshihr and was known among all who dealt with Him for godliness, devoutness, virtue, and piety — the quiet signs of a station the world had not yet guessed.
Among the recollections Lady Blomfield gathered for *The Chosen Highway* is the testimony of the Báb's own family — that the relatives who lived closest to Him, His uncles and aunts, were conscious of His exalted nature and revered Him long before He made any claim. His greatness was felt in His own home before it was ever proclaimed to the world.
In the years before His Declaration, the young Báb was known in Shíráz not for any claim or office but for the depth of His devotion — a Youth of great personal beauty and gentle manner, unfailing in His prayers and fasts, who obeyed not merely the outward forms of His religion but lived, even then, in the very spirit of its teachings.
For some forty years Shaykh Salmán walked, once each year, from Persia to the Holy Land and back — carrying the believers' letters to Bahá'u'lláh and bearing His Tablets home again, never losing a single one. In Memorials of the Faithful, 'Abdu'l-Bahá honours him as a courier without equal, a living thread of the Covenant binding the scattered friends to their Lord.
Years before He named 'Abdu'l-Bahá the Centre of His Covenant, Bahá'u'lláh revealed in Adrianople the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn — the Tablet of the Branch — in which His eldest Son is extolled as the "Branch of Holiness," the "Limb of the Law of God," and the "Trust of God," a Tablet that foreshadowed the rank later to be conferred upon Him.
In the winter of 1898, a small band of American believers crossed the ocean to the prison-city of 'Akká — the first Bahá'ís of the West ever to reach the Centre of the Covenant. They came with little but their longing, and they returned having found in 'Abdu'l-Bahá the living heart toward which Bahá'u'lláh had bidden every soul to turn.
In the summer of 1844, weeks after the Báb declared His mission in Shíráz, a youth named Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Bárfurúshí arrived footsore from the north. He was the eighteenth and last to find the Báb of his own seeking — and the youngest. He spoke few words, yet the Báb raised him above all the other Letters of the Living and named him Quddús, "the Most Holy."
In the days after Mullá Ḥusayn recognised the Báb in Shíráz in 1844, a learned disciple of Siyyid Káẓim named Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Bastámí arrived in the city, withdrew alone to pray and fast, and on the third night was led by a vision to the threshold of the Báb. He became the second to believe — and, in the Báb's own words, the first to leave the House of God and the first to suffer for His sake.
When Mullá Ḥusayn reached Iṣfahán in 1844, a devout seeker named Mullá Ṣádiq-i-Muqaddas begged him to name the Promised One. Forbidden to tell, Mullá Ḥusayn pointed him instead to prayer. Alone in a quiet room, Mullá Ṣádiq saw in a vision the face of a weeping Youth he had once watched at the shrine of the Imám Ḥusayn — and knew, at last, whom he had been seeking.
Soon after the Declaration, the Báb sent Mullá Ḥusayn northward to Ṭihrán to deliver a sacred trust to one He did not name. Guided by a midnight conversation with a teacher's pupil, Mullá Ḥusayn entrusted a scroll of the Báb's Writings to be carried at dawn to Bahá'u'lláh — who, upon reading it, affirmed its truth at once. It was among the first recognitions of the new Revelation in the capital.
Years before the Declaration, in the shrine-city of Karbilá, Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Zunúzí was led by his teacher Siyyid Káẓim to the door of a young Pilgrim of radiant countenance, and watched Him weep in prayer at the shrine of the Imám Ḥusayn. When the Call rang out from Shíráz in 1844, the memory of that Youth flashed back to him — and he knew at once that the Báb and the Pilgrim of Karbilá were one and the same.
Before Mullá Ḥusayn ever met the Báb at the gate of Shíráz, he obeyed his teacher's dying charge: he scattered, purified his heart, and withdrew for forty days of prayer and fasting. Then an inner prompting drew him from Karbilá across Persia to Búshihr, and turned him northward to Shíráz — the preparation of soul that made the recognition of 1844 possible.
Before it became the holiest spot in the Bahá'í year, the Garden of Riḍván was simply a green wooded park on the far bank of the Tigris, belonging to a notable of Baghdád named Najíb Páshá. This is the story of that garden — its roses and avenues, and how the believers crossed the river to reach the place where the Promised One declared His Mission.
When Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris into the Garden of Riḍván on that April afternoon in 1863, His eldest Son crossed with Him — 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then a young Man of eighteen, who had already given the whole devotion of His life to His Father, and who in the Garden stood at the threshold of the Cause He would one day be appointed to lead.
Bahá'ís did not invent the supreme rank of Riḍván — Bahá'u'lláh Himself conferred it. In His Most Holy Book He named those days the first of the "two Most Great Festivals," and tradition has hailed Riḍván as the "King of Festivals," the days whereon, in His own words, "all created things were immersed in the sea of purification."
From His prison in 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed a Tablet to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh, the king of Persia. A seventeen-year-old believer named Badíʻ asked for the honour of carrying it. Alone and on foot he crossed an empire, stood in plain sight before the royal camp, and delivered it — then bore three days of torture with a serenity his executioners could not break.
The recollections of the Holy Family, preserved in The Chosen Highway, tell of Mírzá Mihdí — the gentle younger brother of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, known as the Purest Branch — who fell through a skylight while pacing the prison roof of 'Akká wrapped in prayer. Mortally hurt and offered by his Father whatever he might wish, he asked not to be healed but that his death be accepted as a ransom, so that the pilgrims barred from Bahá'u'lláh's presence might one day attain it.
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.
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.
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.
Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl had perfected nearly every branch of human knowledge — theology, philosophy, history, the sciences — and headed a renowned college before he was thirty. When he became a Bahá'í, he did not lay his learning aside; he laid it at the feet of the Cause, becoming its peerless scholar and carrying its proofs from Cairo to Paris to Green Acre, where Harvard and Columbia professors came to listen.
Mishkín-Qalam was the foremost calligrapher of Persia, his pen "the wonder of all calligraphers." He could have kept his comfort, his fame, and the favour of princes. Instead he crossed deserts and seas to find Bahá'u'lláh, and turned his perfected art into an act of worship — writing the Most Great Name in countless beautiful forms even from prison, until 'Abdu'l-Bahá called him "a compendium of perfections."
Long before the barrack-square of Tabríz, a young man named Mírzá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zunúzí wept for one thing only — to look upon the face of his Lord. Kept from the Báb by his own stepfather, he poured out his soul in prayer, and in vision was promised the one gift he longed for above life: to share with the Báb the cup of martyrdom. On the 9th of July, 1850, that promise was kept.
After the firing squad, the remains of the Báb began a journey unlike any other in religious history — wrapped in a cloak, hidden in a silk factory, carried to Ṭihrán, buried beneath shrine floors, walled into a mosque, smuggled at last across mountains and seas to the Holy Land. For nearly sixty years the faithful passed this Most Holy of trusts from hand to hand, guarding it through every danger until 'Abdu'l-Bahá could lay it to rest on Mount Carmel.
Forty days before He was led from His mountain prison to be martyred, the Báb quietly gathered up all that He possessed — His writings, His pen-case, His seals, and His rings — and placed them in trusted hands, with instructions that they be carried in secret to Bahá'u'lláh in Ṭihrán. On the threshold of death, His last act of provision looked not backward in grief but forward to the One whose coming He had lived and would die to herald.
After the Báb was martyred, His body and that of His companion were flung outside the gate of Tabríz, at the edge of the moat, to be devoured — and a guard of sentinels was set to watch over them. Through the daring of a believer named Ḥájí Sulaymán Khán, the precious remains were carried away by night, hidden in a silk factory, and — at Bahá'u'lláh's own command — borne in secret toward safety. So began a hidden journey that would end, sixty years later, on Mount Carmel.
A young American woman came to 'Akká with a notebook and a head full of questions — about God and the soul, evil and free will, the prophets and the life to come — and over visits stretching across the years 1904 to 1906 she laid them, one by one, before 'Abdu'l-Bahá at the lunch table. The answers He gave her, recorded and reviewed, became one of the best-loved books of the Faith: Some Answered Questions.
Shaykh Ṣádiq of Yazd, a man as righteous as his name, lived in Baghdád wholly absorbed in the remembrance of God. When the convoy of Bahá'u'lláh departed from the city, Shaykh Ṣádiq submitted to the bidding that he stay behind — yet his longing burned so fiercely that, after Bahá'u'lláh reached Mosul, he could bear the separation no more, and shoeless and hatless he ran out across the barren plain after Him and fell to his rest with mercy all about him.
Darvísh Ṣidq-'Alí was a wandering Sufi, free and detached, who roamed the path of the mystics in search of God. When he found Him in Baghdád in the person of Bahá'u'lláh, he laid down his old independent life at once and begged only to walk beside the caravan of exile as a humble groom — tending the horses by night, singing his Lord's praises by day, and counting that lowly service the highest sovereignty.
For nearly half a century Corinne True gave herself to a single labour of service — the raising of the first Bahá'í House of Worship of the West on the shore of Lake Michigan at Wilmette. Across two world wars and a great depression she gathered the dimes and dollars of working believers, held the project together through every discouragement, and lived to see the temple she had served dedicated to public worship. 'Abdu'l-Bahá called her the Mother of the Temple.
A slight, quiet newspaperwoman from western Pennsylvania, Martha Root gave the last twenty years of her life to a single errand of service — carrying the message of Bahá'u'lláh to the whole world. Between 1919 and her death in 1939 she circled the globe four times, living out of a suitcase, often ill, often with little money, planting the Cause in lands where it had never been heard. Shoghi Effendi called her the foremost Hand raised up in the West in His time.
In the city of 'Ishqábád, in Russian Turkistan, the Bahá'í community raised the first House of Worship the world had ever seen — a stately, nine-sided edifice set in gardens, ringed by the institutions of practical service the Cause ordains beside its temples: schools, a traveller's hospice, a clinic. Shoghi Effendi numbers its construction among the signal triumphs of the Faith's early history.
On a green hillside above a river in Maine, Sarah Farmer founded a summer gathering where people of every religion and philosophy could meet, listen to one another, and seek the truth in peace. When she made her pilgrimage to 'Akká and recognised in the Bahá'í teachings the very unity she had been reaching for, she gave Green Acre into the keeping of the Cause — and it became one of the first enduring Bahá'í centres of learning in the West.
Hájí Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the Afnán — a cousin of the Báb known as the Vakílu'd-Dawlih — gave up his comfort, his business, and his estates and hastened to 'Ishqábád, where he poured out nearly all he possessed to raise the first Bahá'í House of Worship in the world, becoming, in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words, "the first builder of a House to unify man."
In the winter of 1898, fifteen Western believers — gathered and largely financed by Phoebe Hearst, and travelling in small parties to avoid notice — made their way to the prison-city of 'Akká to attain the presence of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Shoghi Effendi marks their visit as the opening of a new epoch in the rise of the Faith in the West.
Long before he had ever heard of the Bahá'í Faith, the French-Canadian architect Louis Bourgeois believed his life's work was to build a universal temple of Truth for all humanity. When he found the Cause, he found his commission — and poured the rest of his life into the luminous nine-sided House of Worship at Wilmette, a building whose ornament gathers the symbols of all the world's religions into one.
Among the laws the Báb set down in His Bayán was a wholly new way of measuring time: the Badíʿ calendar, a year of nineteen months of nineteen days, each month bearing the name of an attribute of God, and nineteen years gathered into a cycle called a Váḥid. At the head of it all He placed Naw-Rúz — so that the Bahá'í year begins, every spring, upon the name of God's own splendour.
In His writings Bahá'u'lláh gave Naw-Rúz a meaning far deeper than the turning of a season. In a prayer revealed for the festival, He blessed the day He had ordained for those who had kept the Fast for love of Him; and through His larger teaching, traced by Adib Taherzadeh, the spring equinox becomes a sign of the spiritual resurrection that the coming of a Manifestation works upon a dead world.
Esslemont, gathering the ordinances of the Bahá'í year, shows how Bahá'u'lláh framed Naw-Rúz with exquisite care: a handful of intercalary days given to hospitality and the poor, then the nineteen-day Fast of inward devotion, and then, at the spring equinox, the new year breaking in joy. The festival is the bright morning that the whole shape of the year is built to reach.
Within the laws of His Bayán, the Báb swept away the old calendar and brought into being an entirely new one — nineteen months of nineteen days, each named for an attribute of God, the first month bearing the name of splendour itself. At its head He set Naw-Rúz, the day the sun returns to its springtime power, naming it the Day of God and crowning with it the month of the Fast.
When Bahá'u'lláh entered the Garden of Riḍván outside Baghdád in April 1863, His daughter Bahíyyih Khánum — the Greatest Holy Leaf, then a girl in her teens — remained behind with the household, kept on the far bank by the flooding Tigris. On the ninth day the waters fell and she crossed at last to rejoin her Father in the Garden of Paradise.
Among the household of Bahá'u'lláh in the Riḍván days of 1863 was His younger son Mírzá Mihdí, the Purest Branch, then a gentle boy. The recollections preserved in The Chosen Highway let us picture him among the family on the near bank of the Tigris, waiting through the flood, and crossing on the ninth day to be gathered with his Father in the Garden of Paradise.
The festival of Riḍván lasts twelve days, and of these the first, the ninth, and the twelfth are kept as holy days on which work is set aside. Drawing on the early Bahá'í periodical Star of the West, this retelling looks at how the ninth day — the day the Holy Family crossed to join Bahá'u'lláh in the Garden — came to be hallowed, and how the friends keep it.
The festival of Riḍván was made ready by loving hands. Drawing on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, this retelling honours the companions who served the Holy Family through the twelve days outside Baghdád — pitching the tent, gathering and tending the roses, keeping watch through the nights — and who helped the household across the Tigris on the ninth day.
When Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris to enter the Garden of Riḍván in April 1863 and declared His mission, the eldest of the sons at His side was 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then a youth of eighteen. He had grown up in the shadow of His Father's exile and had already, as a child, recognized His station. The Ninth Day of Riḍván, when the rest of the family joined them in the Garden, gathers the whole household around that declaration.
At fifty-eight, when many would be winding down, Dr. Susan I. Moody closed her Chicago medical practice and travelled alone to Tehran at 'Abdu'l-Bahá's call — to carry the light of healing to the sick and the light of learning to the daughters of a country that did not yet think girls worth teaching. Her first letters home carried one quiet, decisive sentence: "The girls' school is assured."
Not long after the Báb declared His mission, He told His first disciple that a soul of surpassing greatness was yet to be reached, and sent him north to find the one of his own heart's choosing. In Ṭihrán, Mullá Ḥusayn placed a scroll in the hands of a young Nobleman, Bahá'u'lláh — and when the answer came back, the Báb's joy revealed that the greatest Light of all had recognised the Day.
Fáṭimih of Qazvín — the brilliant poet the world would come to know as Ṭáhirih, the Pure One — recognised the Báb without ever meeting Him. Hearing only that a voice had risen in Shíráz, she sent forward her written testimony of belief, and so became the only woman among the Báb's first eighteen disciples, the Letters of the Living — a light kindled by inner sight alone.
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.
In a city famous for the learning of its clergy, the first to recognise the Báb was an unlettered man who sifted wheat for his bread. In a single moment the Call remade him — and he took up his sieve and ran toward martyrdom, declaring he would sift whole cities for souls. A story of the power of God to raise the humblest heart to greatness.
Mírzá Muḥammad was a man of gentle birth and high learning, accustomed to being waited upon. For the love of Bahá'u'lláh he left every comfort behind, walked to the prison of 'Akká, and spent himself as a servant at the believers' hospice — he who had been the master was now the servant, and counted it the highest honour of his life.
When the convoy left Baghdád on the twelfth day of Riḍván, 'Abdu'l-Bahá was a young Man of eighteen, already beloved by the people of the city and wholly devoted to His Father. In the spoken chronicle gathered in The Chosen Highway, the years of exile are remembered through the family who lived them — and the eldest Son stands out as the one who carried the burdens, comforted the household, and gave Himself entirely to Bahá'u'lláh.
On 17 August He spoke of true knowledge: in cities like New York the people are submerged in the sea of materialism. Their sensibilities are attuned to material forces, their perceptions purely physical. The animal energies predominate…
At the last farewell aboard the ship, Howard Colby Ives knelt and placed 'Abdu'l-Bahá's hand upon his own head. What he felt in that hand — and saw in that face — became his lasting picture of true humility. A retelling from Portals to Freedom.
After a day of speaking that would have flattened a younger man, 'Abdu'l-Bahá returned so exhausted He had to be helped from the car. Fifteen minutes later His voice rang out, stronger than ever. A retelling from Howard Colby Ives's Portals to Freedom.
A young man at Oxford stepped into a London office one November day in 1921, glanced at an open telegram lying on a desk — and learned, alone and unprepared, that his grandfather had passed and his whole life had changed. A retelling from Rúhíyyih Rabbání's The Priceless Pearl.
Everyone told the young Guardian that grass would never grow on the dry slopes of Mount Carmel. Shoghi Effendi set out to prove them wrong — and the gardens that surround the Shrine of the Báb today are his answer. A retelling from Rúhíyyih Rabbání's The Priceless Pearl.
15 Rue Greuze, Paris, November…
Friday, October…
November 4th All over Europe today one hears of meetings and assemblies, and societies of all kinds are formed. There are those interested in commerce, science, and politics, and many others. All these are for material service, their…
November 9th In the Gospel according to St John, Christ has said: ‘Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’8 The priests have interpreted this into meaning that baptism is necessary for…
In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the pilgrimage of Aḥmad-i-Yazdí — a believer of about sixty who walked, on foot, the 1,700 kilometres from Baghdád to Constantinople in search of Bahá'u'lláh in Adrianople. The Tablet that reached him by the wayside, the *Tablet of the Nightingale,* turned him from pilgrim into teacher and sent him another 2,240 kilometres back into Persia.
Adib Taherzadeh, in *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh*, traces the mission of Mishkín-Qalam — Bahá'u'lláh's celebrated calligrapher — sent from Adrianople to Constantinople to teach by his art, then arrested through court intrigue and exiled to Cyprus, where he remained imprisoned for nine years.
In the beginning of the eleventh chapter of the Revelation of St. John it is…
O ‘Abdu’s-Sáhib! Verily God and every created thing testify that there is none other God but Me, the Almighty, the Best…
This is an Epistle from God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, unto Sulaymán in the land of Masqát, to the right of the Sea. In truth there is none other God but Him, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting... Indeed, were all the…
All majesty and glory, O my God, and all dominion and light and grandeur and splendour be unto Thee. Thou bestowest sovereignty on whom Thou willest and dost withhold it from whom Thou desirest. No God is there but Thee, the…
The substance wherewith God hath created Me is not the clay out of which others have been formed. He hath conferred upon Me that which the worldly-wise can never comprehend, nor the faithful discover ... I am one of the sustaining…
Likewise consider the manifestation of the Point of the Bayán. There are people who every night until morning busy themselves with the worship of God, and even at present when the Day-Star of Truth is nearing its zenith in the heaven of…
O My God! There is no one but Thee to allay the anguish of my soul, and Thou art my highest aspiration, O my God. My heart is wedded to none save Thee and such as Thou dost love. I solemnly declare that my life and death are both for…
O Thou who art the chosen one among…
Ponder upon the people unto whom the Gospel was given. Their religious leaders were considered as the true Guides of the Gospel, yet when they shut themselves out from Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, they turned into guides of error,…
The reason why privacy hath been enjoined in moments of devotion is this, that thou mayest give thy best attention to the remembrance of God, that thy heart may at all times be animated with His Spirit, and not be shut out as by a veil…
Thy letter hath been perused. Were the truth of this Revelation to be fully demonstrated with elaborate proofs, all the scrolls that exist in the heaven and on the earth would be insufficient to contain…
Twelve hundred and seventy years have elapsed since the declaration of Muḥammad, and each year unnumbered people have circumambulated the House of God [Mecca]. In the concluding year of this period He Who is Himself the Founder of the…
O peoples of the world! The Sun of Truth hath risen to illumine the whole earth, and to spiritualize the community of man. Laudable are the results and the fruits thereof, abundant the holy evidences deriving from this grace. This is…
O my dear children! Your letter was received. A degree of joy was attained that is beyond words or writing that, praise be to God, the power of the Kingdom of God hath trained such children who, from their early childhood, eagerly wish…
O thou sincere and loyal handmaid of the Lord! I have read thy letter. Thou art truly attached to the Kingdom and devoted to the All-Glorious Horizon. I beg of God in His bounty to make thee to burn ever more brightly in the fire of His…
O ye concourse of the Kingdom of Abhá! Two calls to success and prosperity are being raised from the heights of the happiness of mankind, awakening the slumbering, granting sight to the blind, causing the heedless to become mindful,…
O ye faithful friends, O ye sincere servants of Bahá’u’lláh! Now, in the midwatches of the night, when eyes are closed in slumber and all have laid their heads upon the couch of rest and deep sleep, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is wakeful within the…
O army of God! A letter signed jointly by all of you hath been received. It was most eloquent and full of flavour, and reading it was a…
O handmaid of God, who tremblest even as a fresh and tender branch in the winds of the love of God! I have read thy letter, which telleth of thine abundant love, thine intense devotion, and of thy being occupied with the remembrance of…
O ye co-workers who are supported by armies from the realm of the All-Glorious! Blessed are ye, for ye have come together in the sheltering shade of the Word of God, and have found a refuge in the cave of His Covenant; ye have brought…
The first condition is absolute love and harmony amongst the members of the assembly. They must be wholly free from estrangement and must manifest in themselves the Unity of God, for they are the waves of one sea, the drops of one…
O ye blessed souls!31 The letter ye had written to Rahmatu’lláh hath been perused. Many and various were the joyful tidings it conveyed, namely, that through the power of faith and constancy in the Covenant, numerous gatherings have…
A short story preserved by Hand of the Cause Furutan in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh*: an aged believer who set out on foot from Persia to attain the presence of Bahá'u'lláh in 'Akká, and the welcome that met him at the door when he arrived, exhausted, decades younger in his soul.
In June 1913 the Star of the West printed a brief obituary, written by Edward Theodore Hall, for Sarah Ann Ridgway of Manchester, England — a silk weaver who had given her quiet evenings, for years, to teaching the Faith in the working-class district of Pendleton.
For the information of those who know little or nothing of the Bahai Revelation, we quote the following account translated from the (French) Encyclopaedia of…
178 Glory be unto Thee, O Thou whose mercy hath encompassed all things, whose gift is made perfect, whose power hath encircled the world, whose proof is demonstrated, whose signs have become manifest, whose words are promulgated, whose…
Honorable Dr.…
298 If you arise in accord with the exhortations and commands of the Blessed Perfection—may my life be a sacrifice to His beloved ones! —before long agreeable results will be obtained, the great newspapers of the world will all engage…
O maid-servant of God who art swayed like a strong branch by the breeze of…
O my Lord, my Beloved, my…
O my spiritual friends!291…
O thou advancer to…
O thou bearer of the Great-tidings of the Kingdom of…
O thou esteemed maid-servant of the Word of…
O thou pure and spiritual…
O thou pure soul who art kindled by the fire of the love of…
O thou servant of the Beauty of…
O thou servant who art near and dear to the Glorious…
O thou who art advancing toward…
O thou who art directed to the Light of…
O thou who art marching unto…
O thou whose heart hath been filled with the love of the Beauty of…
O ye174 beloved servants of Abdul-Baha and the maid-servants of the Merciful…
O ye two134 pilgrims of the Holy…
Verily I approach Thee, O my God, in the darkest hour of this dark night, and pray Thee with my inmost heart, while I am moving by Thy fragrances, which are being diffused from Thy Kingdom of Abha, and say158…
Badí‘ulláh came in during the afternoon. At first he seemed somewhat self-conscious, but in a little while the Power came over him and the Light shone in his face. Then he forgot self and spoke with fervor and eloquence. His theme was…
She said, “I regret indeed that I cannot speak your language. You also feel your need of Persian. Persian is most important in this Day as it is the language of the Word. We will understand each other perfectly in the spiritual world. A…
We looked again at the faces of the Blessed Perfection and the Báb in the inner room. In the Blessed Perfection is the composite of all the Power sand Love of the universe. The eyes seemed to scrutinize the very depths of my soul. In…
In *Ten Days in the Light of 'Akká* Julia Grundy preserves a private audience with 'Abdu'l-Bahá near the end of her 1905 pilgrimage. He spoke with her about her spiritual progress, told her she would become a source of guidance to others, and consoled her with a promise that has carried many pilgrims home: *you will never be absent now.*
“Persian is the language of the Word because Bahá‘u'lláh revealed Himself in it. God be praised that you have come to ‘Akká! Mr. M. is a teacher. It is well that he has come to ‘Abdu'l-Bahá. As a pupil he should come to learn how…
“When you give the Message of this Manifestation many say, 'This is nothing new—I prefer the home of my old religious belief which has been so serviceable and trustworthy.'” ‘Abdu'l-Bahá answered: “Bahá‘u'lláh is the same Light in a…
“The disciples of Jesus, passing along the road and seeing a dead dog, remarked how offensive and disgusting a spectacle it was. Then Christ turning to them said, 'Yes, but see how white and beautiful are his teeth'—thus teaching that…
In the afternoon we drove to the Tomb of the Blessed Perfection, passing out through the narrow gateway of the city and following the road toward the Ridván for a short distance. Then a sharp turn to the left toward the Lebanons took us…
“Why are women so favored in this Revelation?” “Women in Persia were treated badly in former times by the Muhammadans. When speaking evil of a man, they would say, 'He is just like a woman.' When they wished to lower a man's pride, they…
The Báb, during his life, had a certain follower who was specially devoted to him. On one occasion he visited this man in his home. His host said to him that his visit filled him with the greatest happiness of his life; but that he had one…
The following touching incident took place one day when we were seated at table with the Master. A Persian friend arrived who had passed through `Ishqabad,. He presented a cotton handkerchief to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who untied it, and saw…
The husband of Amelia Collins, a devoted American Bahá’í, was a very sociable man. He would take part in any discussion with perfect freedom and ease. But once, before entering the Master’s home, he was so excited that he arranged his tie…
The Master also dearly loved His devoted disciple, Juliet Thompson. In her diary she wrote about a visit with Him in New York City in November 1912. One day she wrote, 'I had been very naughty with Mamma that day and had grieved her. My…
The Master, as He was now called, shielded His adored Father in all ways that lay in His power from undesirable intruders, from the world's insistence, and from those who merely wanted idly to see and to hear something new. He made the…
The Master sometimes made His points through telling stories. Julia Grundy recorded the following story of His: ‘A master had a slave who was completely devoted to him. One day he gave the slave a melon which when cut open looked most…
The story of Green Acre itself is intensely interesting. The beautiful property the rolling meadows, the dear wide-verandahed Inn and, now, all the cottages surrounding it, together with the Tea House at the entrance leading from the…
This article, reprinted from "International Language", gives an excellent picture of the man who created Esperanto. The author calls him a genius. It would seem clear, however, that his success was due not only to genius, but to divine…
absolutism in [the conduct of] affairs: on his own decisive resolution, without seeking permission from the Royal Presence or taking counsel with prudent statesmen, he issued orders to persecute the Bábís, imagining that by overweening…
correspondence?” Then the Royal Command was issued that their Reverences the learned doctors and honorable and accomplished divines should write a reply to that epistle. But when the most expert doctors of the capital became aware of…
swords be blunted, and their footsteps slip. I know not how long they shall ride the steed of desire and wander erringly in the desert of heedlessness and error. Of glory shall any glory endure, or of abasement any abasement? Or shall…
To the galling weight of these tribulations was now added the bitter grief of a sudden tragedy -- the premature loss of the noble, the pious Mirza Mihdi, the Purest Branch, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's twenty-two year old brother, an amanuensis of…
What had happened in Chicago was this: the Syrian, Khayru'llah, had been teaching the Cause, adding to the Faith many beliefs of his own, such as reincarnation, dream interpretation, occultism and the like. He had written a book…
When religious fanaticism was aroused against a person or persons, who were accused of being infidels, as was now the case with the Bábís, it was customary not simply to condemn them to death and have them executed by the State…
You can’t feel the precision of mind. I’ve dealt in America with high executives all of my business life. Men who have a problem, and they size it up, and they see the meat and heart of it and seize the situation immediately, but they pale…