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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."
13 stories where loving-kindness appears.
Exiled and dispossessed, Bahá'u'lláh spent ten years in Baghdád showering kindness upon all who came to Him — the poor, the lowly, the learned, and even those who had wished Him harm. By the time a fresh banishment drove Him on to Constantinople, the whole city had come to love Him; and on the day He rode away, men and women of every rank wept in the streets and pressed forward to embrace His stirrups.
In the green province of Mázindarán, in the ancestral district of Núr, the young Bahá'u'lláh was known and loved long before His ministry began. The Dawn-Breakers remembers a Nobleman of singular wisdom and kindness whom the people of His homeland honoured and cherished — a love that prepared the way for the day He would bring them the greatest of all gifts.
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.
Through the long years of His confinement in the prison-city of 'Akká, 'Abdu'l-Bahá made the care of the poor and the sick His own daily work — a Friday almsgiving at the gate, a warm garment each winter for every one of the city's poor, and morning rounds to the bedsides of the feeble, the forgotten, and the dying.
Banished to a bleak mountain fortress on the Turkish frontier, where His chief enemy hoped He would be forgotten and the hard people of the region would have no sympathy for Him, the Báb met cruelty with such gentleness that the warden, the guards, and the very Kurds of the district came to revere Him — gathering each dawn at the foot of His prison simply to receive His blessing.
Through the years of His exile in Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh transformed a place of banishment into a haven. Though His own household often had little, He became the friend and refuge of the poor, the orphan, and the wronged of the city — so beloved that high and low alike sought His door, and His departure cast the whole community into grief.
For thirty-six years Shoghi Effendi carried the cares of the entire Bahá'í world from a small room in Haifa. The Priceless Pearl preserves the compassion at the heart of that labor — a Guardian who felt the believers' sorrows as his own, answered each in his own hand, and spent his strength without stint to comfort and protect them.
In the prison-city of 'Akká, where disease festered in the damp and the poor died unattended, 'Abdu'l-Bahá made the care of the sick His personal calling. He brought physicians to the bedsides of the destitute, paid for their medicines, sat with the dying, and ministered to the bodies and spirits of the people the city had abandoned — winning, by mercy alone, the love of an entire town.
Withdrawing alone into the mountains of Kurdistán to spare His companions from discord, Bahá'u'lláh lived for two years among proud and warlike tribes and the learned of Sulaymáníyyih as a nameless stranger. He asked nothing of them and pressed His claims on no one; yet His gentleness, wisdom, and unfailing kindness so won their hearts that the whole region came to revere Him — and grieved to lose Him when at last He was called back.
When 'Abdu'l-Bahá came to Paris in 1911 He was honoured by the great and the cultivated of the city. But the people who drew His tenderness most surely were the poor, the friendless, and the troubled who found their way to His door — to whom He gave money, comfort, and an unhurried love, as though each were the only person in the world.
Through exile, imprisonment, famine, and bereavement, Bahíyyih Khánum — the Greatest Holy Leaf, daughter of Bahá'u'lláh — made herself the tender refuge of everyone around her: nursing the sick, consoling the grieving, sharing what little the household had with the poor, and binding up the sorrows of a whole community with a mercy that asked nothing for itself.
The recollections gathered in The Chosen Highway preserve a way of living that astonished every visitor to 'Abdu'l-Bahá's household: He treated servants as honoured family, received the poorest as cherished guests, and accepted no deference for Himself. To the people the world overlooked, He gave the one thing they were never given — dignity. It is a portrait of honour not claimed but bestowed.
When Bahá'u'lláh rode out of the Garden of Riḍván on the twelfth day, the grief knew no party and no creed. Believers and unbelievers alike sobbed and lamented; the chiefs and notables who had gathered were struck with wonder. The departure laid bare what ten years of His presence had done to a whole city's heart — and what His presence does to any heart it touches.