“For two years or rather less,” He, likewise, in another Tablet, declares, “I shunned all else but God, and closed Mine eyes to all except Him, that haply the fire of hatred may die down and the heat of jealousy abate.”
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
…Bahá’u'lláh reached the decision to take Himself away from Baghdád and from the society of men whom He knew and who knew Him. Such seclusion from the gatherings of men has always occurred in the lives of the Manifestations of God. Moses went out to the desert of Sinai. Buddha sought the wilds of India. Christ walked the wilderness of Judaea, Muhammad paced the sunbaked hillocks of Arabia.
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
In the early days of Our arrival in this land, [Iraq] when We discerned the signs of impending events, We decided, ere they happened, to retire. We betook Ourselves to the wilderness, and there, separated and alone, led for two years a life of complete solitude. From Our eyes there rained tears of anguish, and in Our bleeding heart there surged an ocean of agonizing pain. Many a night We had no food for sustenance, and many a day Our body found no rest. By Him Who hath My being between His hands! notwithstanding these showers of afflictions and unceasing calamities, Our soul was wrapt in blissful joy, and Our whole being evinced an ineffable gladness.
- Baha’u’llah (‘The Kitab-i-Iqan’)
Mírzá Áqá Ján himself has testified: “That Blessed Beauty evinced such sadness that the limbs of my body trembled.” He has, likewise, related, as reported by Nabil in his narrative, that, shortly before Bahá'u'lláh's retirement, he had on one occasion seen Him, between dawn and sunrise, suddenly come out from His house, His night-cap still on His head, showing such signs of perturbation that he was powerless to gaze into His face, and while walking, angrily remark:
"These creatures are the same creatures who for three thousand years have worshipped idols, and bowed down before the Golden Calf. Now, too, they are fit for nothing better. What relation can there be between this people and Him Who is the Countenance of Glory? What ties can bind them to the One Who is the supreme embodiment of all that is lovable?”
“I stood,' declared Mírzá Áqâ Ján, “rooted to the spot, lifeless, dried up as a dead tree, ready to fall under the impact of the stunning power of His words. Finally, He said:
"Bid them recite: “Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!” Tell them to repeat it five hundred times, nay, a thousand times, by day and by night, sleeping and waking, that haply the Countenance of Glory may be unveiled to their eyes, and tiers of light descend upon them." He Himself, I was subsequently informed, recited this same verse, His face betraying the utmost sadness. ...
“Several times during those days, He was heard to remark: ’We have, for a while, tarried amongst this people, and failed to discern the slightest response on their part.’ Oftentimes He alluded to His disappearance from our midst, yet none of us understood His meaning.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
“In these days,” He, describing in the Kitáb-i-Íqán the virulence of the jealousy which, at that time, was beginning to bare its venomous fangs, has written, “such odors of jealousy are diffused, that … from the beginning of the foundation of the world … until the present day, such malice, envy and hate have in no wise appeared, nor will they ever be witnessed in the future.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
Furthermore, in His Qasídiy-i-Varqá’íyyih, an ode revealed during the days of His retirement to the mountains of Kurdistán, in praise of the Maiden personifying the Spirit of God recently descended upon Him, He thus gives vent to the agonies of His sorrow-laden heart: “Noah’s flood is but the measure of the tears I have shed, and Abraham’s fire an ebullition of My soul. Jacob’s grief is but a reflection of My sorrows, and Job’s afflictions a fraction of my calamity.” “Pour out patience upon Me, O My Lord!”—such is His supplication in one of His prayers, “and render Me victorious over the transgressors.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
And again: “I [Baá’u’lláh] have borne what no man, be he of the past or of the future, hath borne or will bear.” “Oceans of sadness,” He testifies in the Tablet of Qullu’ṭ-Ta‘ám, “have surged over Me, a drop of which no soul could bear to drink. Such is My grief that My soul hath well nigh departed from My body.” “Give ear, O Kamál!” He, in that same Tablet, depicting His plight, exclaims, “to the voice of this lowly, this forsaken ant, that hath hid itself in its hole, and whose desire is to depart from your midst, and vanish from your sight, by reason of that which the hands of men have wrought. God, verily, hath been witness between Me and His servants.” And again: “Woe is Me, woe is Me … All that I have seen from the day on which I first drank the pure milk from the breast of My mother until this moment hath been effaced from My memory, in consequence of that which the hands of the people have committed.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
“The wrongs which I suffer,” He [Bahá’u’lláh], in His Lawh-i-Maryam, laments, “have blotted out the wrongs suffered by My First Name (the Báb) from the Tablet of creation.” “O Maryam!” He continues, “From the Land of Ṭá (Tihrán), after countless afflictions, We reached ‘Iráq, at the bidding of the Tyrant of Persia, where, after the fetters of Our foes, We were afflicted with the perfidy of Our friends. God knoweth what befell Me thereafter!”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows was now running over. All His exhortations, all His efforts to remedy a rapidly deteriorating situation, had remained fruitless. The velocity of His manifold woes was hourly and visibly increasing. Upon the sadness that filled His soul and the gravity of the situation confronting Him, His writings, revealed during that somber period, throw abundant light. In some of His prayers He poignantly confesses that “tribulation upon tribulation” had gathered about Him, that “adversaries with one consent” had fallen upon Him, that “wretchedness” had grievously touched Him, and that “woes at their blackest” had befallen Him. God Himself He calls upon as a Witness to His “sighs and lamentations,” His “powerlessness, poverty and destitution,” to the “injuries” He sustained, and the “abasement” He suffered. “So grievous hath been My weeping,” He, in one of these prayers, avows, “that I have been prevented from making mention of Thee and singing Thy praises.” “So loud hath been the voice of My lamentation,” He, in another passage, avers, “that every mother mourning for her child would be amazed, and would still her weeping and her grief.”
- Shoghi Effendi ('God Passes By’)
Mirza Yahyá had never lifted a finger to protect the Faith of which he was supposed to be the nominal head. Now, incited and aided by Siyyid Muhammad and a few, very few, others of the same nature, Mirza Yahyá began a secret campaign to discredit Bahá’u’lláh. He circulated wild rumors, ascribed to Bahá'u'lláh actions, opinions, views and intentions totally at variance with truth. These undercurrents and innuendoes became so perilous for the integrity of the Faith of the Báb, threatening it with bitter controversies and even fatal divisions…"
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
A clandestine opposition, whose aim was to nullify every effort exerted, and frustrate every design conceived, by Bahá’u’lláh for the rehabilitation of a distracted community, could now be clearly discerned. Insinuations, whose purpose was to sow the seeds of doubt and suspicion and to represent Him as a usurper, as the subverter of the laws instituted by the Báb, and the wrecker of His Cause, were being incessantly circulated. His Epistles, interpretations, invocations and commentaries were being covertly and indirectly criticized, challenged and misrepresented. An attempt to injure His person was even set afoot but failed to materialize.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
To these evidences of an ever deepening veneration for Bahá’u’lláh and of a passionate attachment to His person were now being added further grounds for the outbreak of the pent-up jealousies which His mounting prestige evoked in the breasts of His ill-wishers and enemies. The steady extension of the circle of His acquaintances and admirers; His friendly intercourse with officials including the governor of the city; the unfeigned homage offered Him, on so many occasions and so spontaneously, by men who had once been distinguished companions of Siyyid Káẓim; the disillusionment which the persistent concealment of Mírzá Yaḥyá, and the unflattering reports circulated regarding his character and abilities, had engendered; the signs of increasing independence, of innate sagacity and inherent superiority and capacity for leadership unmistakably exhibited by Bahá’u’lláh Himself—all combined to widen the breach which the infamous and crafty Siyyid Muhammad had sedulously contrived to create.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
The fame of the Tablet of Kullu’t-Ta‘ám aroused fresh jealousy in the heart of Mirzá Yahá, who could not realize his own inability. Siyyid Muhammad-i-Isfaháni, the Antichrist of the Bahá'í Revelation, was pushing Mirzá Yahyá more and more to oppose and thwart Bahá’u’lláh. Friends were gathering around Bahá’u’lláh from every side, not only from the ranks of the Bábís, who were just beginning to hold their heads high once again, but from circles well beyond. The Válí of Baghdád had come to see that this Exile, recently arrived from Irán, was of a different category from the many Persian princes and princelings banished to Iráq or who had fled there. Bahá’u’lláh was well in the public eye. It was He Who had suffered months of inhuman incarceration in the dungeon of Tihrán, whereas Mirzá Yahyá's cowardice had condemned him to feel always insecure, to be always on the run and, not daring to use his own name, to pursue an obscure existence in a dilapidated corner of Baghdád.
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
Mirza Áqá Jàn further related to Nabil that, one day in Kázimayn, when both he and Aqá Muhammad-Hasan-i-Isfahání [a merchant] were in the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, in the house of Hájí ‘Abdu'l-Majid-i-Shirázi, He asked the host whether he wished to hear the Badí’ (Unique) language, which, He said, was the language used by the denizens of one of the worlds of God. He then proceeded to chant in that language. Mirzá Áqá Ján said that hearing this language had a wonderful effect on the listener. One day, Mirzá Áqá Ján related, Bahá'u'lláh said to Haji ‘Abdu’l-Majid: ‘Haji, you have heard the Badí’ language, and witnessed God's supremacy over His worlds. Render thanks for this bounty and appreciate its worth.’” "
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
“That day, when I [Mírzá “Áqá Ján] attained His [Bahá’u’lláh] Blessed Presence,[in Kázimayn] He was saying to Àqâ Muhammad-Hasan, the Isfahâni merchant: “Prior to your coming, Háji Mirzâ Kamâlu'd-Din-i-Narâqi was here. He had asked a question regarding the verse, Kullu’t-Ta‘ám, from there [meaning Azal], but not having understood anything from his answer, he asked Me the same. I wrote an answer for him, read it to him, but did not give it to him. I want to read it to you now." He began to chant and read. How can I describe what hearing every word, uttered in that blessed tone, did to one? In between, He read a number of verses in the same tone He had used that first night in Karbilá, on the roof of the Dáru'sh-shafá [the House of Treatment]. When He reached the end, He said: ‘What do you say?’ I offered the comment: ‘If there be fairness, all of the learned men [ulamá] should bow their heads.’ His Blessed Person replied: ‘As thou sayest, if there be fairness.’"
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
It was at this time that Haji Mirza Kamálu’d-Din-i-Naráqí came to Baghdad. He was a grandson of Hàji Mullá Ahmad-i-Naràqi, a distinguished divine of past times, and was himself a man of learning. Through Áqáy-i-Kalím, he asked Mirza Yahyá to write for him a commentary on the Qur'ânic verse: ‘All food was allowed to the children of Israel'. Of course as soon as Mirza Yahyá became aware of the fact that the Bábís of Naráq had learned of his whereabouts, fear overcame him. Nevertheless, he wrote a commentary, but it was an affront to the intellect of such a man as Hájí Mirzá Kamálu'd-Dín, who saw clearly Mirzá Yahyá's incompetence. Instead he looked to Bahá'u'lláh for guidance and enlightenment, and in response to his request Bahá'u'lláh revealed a Tablet which is known as the Tablet of Kullu't-Ta'am (All Food). In this Tablet, as the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith writes,
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
The confidence instilled in Mírzá Áqá Ján by this unexpected and sudden contact with the spirit and directing genius of a new-born Revelation stirred his soul to its depths—a soul already afire with a consuming love born of his recognition of the ascendancy which his newly-found Master had already achieved over His fellow-disciples in both ‘Iráq and Persia. This intense adoration that informed his whole being, and which could neither be suppressed nor concealed, was instantly detected by both Mírzá Yaḥyá and his fellow-conspirator Siyyid Muḥammad.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
 |
Mirzá ‘Áqá Ján |
“I stayed in Karbilá for three months. I used to gather thorn and sell it to the bath-keepers. One day. Shaykh Abú-Turáb [-i-Ishtahárdí] told me, ‘If I could get hold of a copy of the Persian Bayán, I would read something out of it to you.’ I said: ‘It can be found.’ ‘Where?’ enquired Shaykh Abú-Turáb. I replied that Háji ’Abdu’l-Majíd-i-Shírází in Kázimayn had a copy, and I left that very hour for Kázimayn to obtain it. When I neared Baghdád I ran into Abu’l-Qásim-i-Káshání and enquired about Háji ‘Abdu'l-Majid. At first, he thought that I intended to meet Azal, but when he realized that my heart had been captivated by someone else, he asked me for a reason, and, when I mentioned the gait and the speech of the Abhá Beauty, he gave me a luminous Tablet revealed for me, in which the People of Bahá and the qualities of the Abhá Beauty had been mentioned. When the news of my coming was given to His Blessed Person, He summoned Me and said that He had intended to send for me.”
Thus began Mirzá Áqá Ján's forty-year-long service to Bahá'u'lláh as attendant, amanuensis and companion.
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
To Mírzá Áqá Ján, “the first to believe” in Him, designated later as Khádimu’lláh (Servant of God)—a Bábí youth, aflame with devotion, who, under the influence of a dream he had of the Báb, and as a result of the perusal of certain writings of Bahá’u’lláh, had precipitately forsaken his home in Káshán and traveled to ‘Iráq, in the hope of attaining His presence, and who from then on served Him assiduously for a period of forty years in his triple function of amanuensis, companion and attendant—to him Bahá’u’lláh, more than to any one else, was moved to disclose, at this critical juncture, a glimpse of the as yet unrevealed glory of His station.
This same Mírzá Áqá Ján, recounting to Nabíl his experiences, on that first and never to be forgotten night spent in Karbilá, in the presence of his newly-found Beloved, Who was then a guest of Hájí Mírzá Hasan-i-Hakím-Báshí, had given the following testimony:
“As it was summer-time Bahá’u’lláh was in the habit of passing His evenings and of sleeping on the roof of the House.… That night, when He had gone to sleep, I, according to His directions, lay down for a brief rest, at a distance of a few feet from Him. No sooner had I risen, and … started to offer my prayers, in a corner of the roof which adjoined a wall, than I beheld His blessed Person rise and walk towards me. When He reached me He said: ‘You, too, are awake.’ Whereupon He began to chant and pace back and forth. How shall I ever describe that voice and the verses it intoned, and His gait, as He strode before me! Methinks, with every step He took and every word He uttered thousands of oceans of light surged before my face, and thousands of worlds of incomparable splendor were unveiled to my eyes, and thousands of suns blazed their light upon me! In the moonlight that streamed upon Him, He thus continued to walk and to chant. Every time He approached me He would pause, and, in a tone so wondrous that no tongue can describe it, would say: ‘Hear Me, My son. By God, the True One! This Cause will assuredly be made manifest. Heed thou not the idle talk of the people of the Bayán, who pervert the meaning of every word.’ In this manner He continued to walk and chant, and to address me these words until the first streaks of dawn appeared.… Afterwards I removed His bedding to His room, and, having prepared His tea for Him, was dismissed from His presence.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
Little wonder that from the pen of Bahá’u’lláh, Who was as yet unable to divulge the Secret that stirred within His bosom, these words of warning, of counsel and of assurance should, at a time when the shadows were beginning to deepen around Him, have proceeded:
“The days of tests are now come. Oceans of dissension and tribulation are surging, and the Banners of Doubt are, in every nook and corner, occupied in stirring up mischief and in leading men to perdition.… Suffer not the voice of some of the soldiers of negation to cast doubt into your midst, neither allow yourselves to become heedless of Him Who is the Truth, inasmuch as in every Dispensation such contentions have been raised. God, however, will establish His Faith, and manifest His light albeit the stirrers of sedition abhor it.… Watch ye every day for the Cause of God.… All are held captive in His grasp. No place is there for any one to flee to. Think not the Cause of God to be a thing lightly taken, in which any one can gratify his whims. In various quarters a number of souls have, at the present time, advanced this same claim. The time is approaching when … every one of them will have perished and been lost, nay will have come to naught and become a thing unremembered, even as the dust itself.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By)
The former [Mirzá Yahyá] had, after the execution of the Báb, sustained such a violent shock that his faith almost forsook him. Wandering for a time, in the guise of a dervish, in the mountains of Mázindarán, he, by his behavior, had so severely tested the loyalty of his fellow-believers in Núr, most of whom had been converted through the indefatigable zeal of Bahá’u’lláh, that they too wavered in their convictions, some of them going so far as to throw in their lot with the enemy. He subsequently proceeded to Rasht, and remained concealed in the province of Gílán until his departure for Kirmánsháh, where in order the better to screen himself he entered the service of a certain ‘Abdu’lláh-i-Qazvíní, a maker of shrouds, and became a vendor of his goods. He was still there when Bahá’u’lláh passed through that city on His way to Baghdád, and expressing a desire to live in close proximity to Bahá’u’lláh but in a house by himself where he could ply some trade incognito, he succeeded in obtaining from Him a sum of money with which he purchased several bales of cotton and then proceeded, in the garb of an Arab, by way of Mandalíj to Baghdád. He established himself there in the street of the Charcoal Dealers, situated in a dilapidated quarter of the city, and placing a turban upon his head, and assuming the name of Ḥájí ‘Alíy-i-Lás-Furúsh, embarked on his newly-chosen occupation. Siyyid Muhammad had meanwhile settled in Karbilá, and was busily engaged, with Mírzá Yaḥyá as his lever, in kindling dissensions and in deranging the life of the exiles and of the community that had gathered about them.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
As the character of the professed adherents of the Báb declined and as proofs of the deepening confusion that afflicted them multiplied, the mischief-makers, who were lying in wait, and whose sole aim was to exploit the progressive deterioration in the situation for their own benefit, grew ever more and more audacious. The conduct of Mírzá Yahyá, who claimed to be the successor of the Báb, and who prided himself on his high sounding titles of Mir’átu’l-Azalíyyih (Everlasting Mirror), of Ṣubh-i-Azal (Morning of Eternity), and of Ismu’l-Azal (Name of Eternity), and particularly the machinations of Siyyid Muhammad, exalted by him to the rank of the first among the “Witnesses” of the Bayán, were by now assuming such a character that the prestige of the Faith was becoming directly involved, and its future security seriously imperiled.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
The morals of the members of this dwindling community, no less than their numbers, had sharply declined. Such was their “waywardness and folly,” to quote Bahá’u’lláh’s own words, that upon His release from prison, His first decision was “to arise … and undertake, with the utmost vigor, the task of regenerating this people.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
Bahá’u’lláh upon His arrival in Baghdád, a city which had witnessed the glowing evidences of the indefatigable zeal of Táhirih, found among His countrymen residing in that city no more than a single Bábí, while in Kázimayn inhabited chiefly by Persians, a mere handful of His compatriots remained who still professed, in fear and obscurity, their faith in the Báb.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
The black-hearted scoundrel who befooled and manipulated this vain and flaccid man [Mirza Yahyá] with consummate skill and unyielding persistence was a certain Siyyid Muhammad, a native of Isfahán, notorious for his inordinate ambition, his blind obstinacy and uncontrollable jealousy. To him Bahá’u’lláh had later referred in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas as the one who had “led astray” Mírzá Yahyá, and stigmatized him, in one of His Tablets, as the “source of envy and the quintessence of mischief,” while ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá had described the relationship existing between these two as that of “the sucking child” to the “much-prized breast” of its mother. Forced to abandon his studies in the madrisiy-i-Sadr of Isfahán, this Siyyid had migrated, in shame and remorse, to Karbilá, had there joined the ranks of the Báb’s followers, and shown, after His martyrdom, signs of vacillation which exposed the shallowness of his faith and the fundamental weakness of his convictions. Bahá’u’lláh’s first visit to Karbilá and the marks of undisguised reverence, love and admiration shown Him by some of the most distinguished among the former disciples and companions of Siyyid Káẓim, had aroused in this calculating and unscrupulous schemer an envy, and bred in his soul an animosity, which the forbearance and patience shown him by Bahá’u’lláh had served only to inflame. His deluded helpers, willing tools of his diabolical designs, were the not inconsiderable number of Bábís who, baffled, disillusioned and leaderless, were already predisposed to be beguiled by him into pursuing a path diametrically opposed to the tenets and counsels of a departed Leader.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)