Loading…
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
Loading…
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
15 stories where might appears.
The poet Varqá and his twelve-year-old son Rúḥu'lláh were imprisoned in Ṭihrán. After the Sháh's assassination in 1896, the Ḥájibu'd-Dawlih killed Varqá before the boy's eyes, then had Rúḥu'lláh strangled when he refused to recant.
During the siege of Zanján a village girl named Zaynab disguised herself as a man and fought at the barricades. Ḥujjat recognised her and granted her request. She fought for five months until she was killed.
In 1889 Ḥájí Muḥammad-Riḍáy-i-Iṣfahání was stabbed to death in the bazaar of ʻIshqábád. A Russian military court condemned his killers, and the Bahá'ís interceded for their lives, a deed Bahá'u'lláh praised.
Mullá ʻAlí-Akbar, known as Ḥájí Ákhúnd, taught the Faith so openly in Ṭihrán that he was the first to be arrested whenever trouble broke out. 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembers his chains, his composure and his constancy: he was never vanquished.
Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl headed a religious college in Ṭihrán when he first met the Bahá'ís. After months of argument he accepted the Faith in 1876, lost his post, was twice imprisoned, and spent the rest of his life teaching and defending the Cause.
Badíʻ, a seventeen-year-old believer, asked Bahá'u'lláh for the honour of carrying His Tablet to Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh. He walked alone to Ṭihrán, brought it to the king, and was tortured and killed. Bahá'u'lláh named him the Pride of Martyrs.
The Báb sent Mullá ʻAlíy-i-Bastámí, one of the Letters of the Living, to Najaf and Karbilá, telling him he would be the first to suffer for God's sake. He proclaimed the new Revelation, was denounced, chained, tried in Baghdád and sent away as a prisoner, never to be seen again.
Mírzá Qurbán-ʻAlí, a dervish revered by many, was arrested in Ṭihrán in 1850. Officials pleaded for his life and the Amír-Niẓám was loath to condemn him, but he would not deny the Báb, and he became one of the Seven Martyrs of Ṭihrán.
In 1904 and 1907 Ottoman commissions came to 'Akká to investigate false charges against 'Abdu'l-Bahá. He declared Himself ready for any sentence, refused an offer of escape, and went on with His daily life until the 1908 revolution set Him free.
Mullá Ṣádiq, later known as Ismu'lláhu'l-Asdaq, taught the new Faith so openly in Shíráz that a halter was hung on him and he was led through the streets and bázárs. 'Abdu'l-Bahá records that he kept on speaking to the people, composed and smiling.
For eleven months in 1848–49, some three hundred followers of the Báb, most of them students, defended themselves at the shrine of Shaykh Ṭabarsí against a royal army. The siege ended only when the prince broke his oath on the Qur'án.
Moved from Máh-Kú to the castle of Chihríq under a warden ordered to admit no one, the Báb won over both the warden, Yaḥyá Khán, and the Kurds of the district, and seekers again came to Him in numbers.
Returning to Baghdád from Kurdistán in 1856, Bahá'u'lláh found the Bábí community dispirited and divided. Through His counsels and His writings He restored its faith and reformed its conduct.
Years before the First World War, 'Abdu'l-Bahá had Bahá'í villagers near the Jordan grow and store grain. In the famine years He fed the poor of Haifa, 'Akká and the surrounding district, and afterwards the British Government conferred a knighthood on Him.
In London in 1911 the journalist Isabel Fraser asked 'Abdu'l-Bahá how He had felt in prison. He told her the story of His exile and imprisonment and said He had been happy all that time, for the prison of self is the greater prison.