O ye two handmaidens of Bahá! The Ancient Beauty, the Most Great Name—may my life, my soul, and mine inmost being be offered up for His sacred dust—was burdened with anguish at every breath. At one time, He was a captive to unyielding cruelty, and at another, a target to the darts of woe. At one time, He was a wanderer on the plain of Badasht, and at another He suffered the tribulations of Níyálá. At one point, He was bound with chains and shackles, and afflicted by grievous torment in Ámul; at another He had for associates His most despicable and cruel enemies. By day He was assailed by sorrow and grief in Karbilá; by night He lay within the embrace of afflictions in the camp of adversity. One day, He was conducted in chains, with bared head and bare feet, all the way from Shimírán to Tihrán. There He remained in confinement for four months, weighed down with fetters and irons and threatened at every breath by blades and arrows. At another time, He was exiled to Iraq, and at yet another He roamed the wilderness of Kurdistan, where the birds of the air and the beasts of the field were His only companions. For many a long year, He was beset from all sides by the onslaught of His foes in Baghdad, and was encompassed by the fiercest woes and troubles. Every day brought a fresh adversity, and every night season an arduous calamity. Not for a moment did He rest; not for a second did He find repose. He was then exiled to the Great City [Constantinople] and was pierced by the arrows of gross calumny. Men of high rank and stature arose, one and all, to denigrate Him, whilst the leaders of nations were intent upon His demise. Thereupon they banished Him to the Land of Mystery, where they submerged Him in dire adversities and woeful tribulations.
At this time, the one whom He had, with loving-kindness,
nurtured in His own bosom ever since his earliest years, the one upon whom He
had showered at every moment His tender care, rose up against Him with
passionate hatred and assailed Him like a horde of calamities. Mírzá Yahyá even
attempted to shed the sacred blood of the Ancient Beauty, and like a venomous
viper he pierced the blessed body of Bahá’u’lláh. Mírzá Yahyá then began to
moan and lament, and raised the cry of the oppressed, claiming to be an
innocent victim and alleging that he had been most grievously wronged. He
wailed and groaned, sighed and moaned. And like the envious brothers, he cast
the Joseph of the Egypt of Existence into the depths of a darksome pit. He then
raised a plaintive cry, sobbed and wept, and made manifest the verse “And they
came at nightfall to their father weeping.” [Qur’án 12:16] And then he began to
keep company with the estranged, and became a confidant of the enemies. He
accused the Peerless Beauty of having committed mischief and sedition, and he
circulated leaflets of falsified Text amongst the malicious. All this, in order
to extinguish the candle of the Company on high, consign the celestial
Teachings to oblivion, turn the Morn of divine Oneness into night, and cause
the Day-Star of Truth to set, the verses of guidance to be annulled, and the
banquet table of the Eternal Covenant to be brought to naught.
Thus, confinement in the Most Great Prison came to pass, and inexorable adversity ensued. The Wronged One of the worlds fell prey to the people of iniquity, and suffered fresh trials and new afflictions at every hour. Every door was shut and every way was barred. The darts of tyranny descended upon Him in ceaseless showers from every land, and the swords of iniquity were drawn against His luminous and ethereal Being by the hosts of the earth. In brief, at each breath He was beset by the cruelty of a capricious foe, and at every moment He was afflicted and oppressed by a fresh sorrow, until at last His Countenance was veiled from the horizon of the world and shone forth from the firmament of the Placeless.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a Tablet,
“Light of the World’)
