The collapse of the power of the _Sh_i'ih hierarchy, in a land which had
for centuries been one of the impregnable strongholds of Muslim
fanaticism, was the inevitable consequence of that wave of secularization
which, at a later time, was to invade some of the most powerful and
conservative ecclesiastical institutions in both the European and American
continents. Though not the direct outcome of the last war, this sudden
trembling which had seized this hitherto immovable pillar of Islamic
orthodoxy accentuated the problems and deepened the restlessness with
which a war-weary world was being afflicted. _Sh_i'ih Islam had lost once
for all, in Baha'u'llah's native land and as the direct consequence of its
implacable hostility to His Faith, its combative power, had forfeited its
rights and privileges, had been degraded and demoralized, and was being
condemned to hopeless obscurity and ultimate extinction. No less than
twenty thousand martyrs, however, had to sacrifice their lives ere the
Cause for which they had stood and died could register this initial
victory over those who were the first to repudiate its claims and mow down
its gallant warriors. "Vileness and poverty were stamped upon them, and
they returned with wrath from God."
"Behold," writes Baha'u'llah, commenting on the decline of a fallen
people, "how the sayings and doings of _Sh_i'ih Islam have dulled the joy
and fervor of its early days, and tarnished the pristine brilliancy of its
light. In its primitive days, whilst they still adhered to the precepts
associated with the name of their Prophet, the Lord of mankind, their
career was marked by an unbroken chain of victories and triumphs. As they
gradually strayed from the path of their Ideal Leader and Master, as they
turned away from the light of God and corrupted the principle of His
Divine unity, and as they increasingly centered their attention upon them
who were only the revealers of the potency of His Word, their power was
turned into weakness, their glory into shame, their courage into fear.
Thou dost witness to what a pass they have come."
The downfall of the Qajar Dynasty, the avowed defender and the willing
instrument of a decaying clergy, almost synchronized with the humiliation
which the _Sh_i'ih ecclesiastical leaders had suffered. From Muhammad
_Sh_ah down to the last and feeble monarch of that dynasty, the Faith of
Baha'u'llah was denied the impartial consideration, the disinterested and
fair treatment which its cause had rightly demanded. It had, on the
contrary, been atrociously harassed, consistently betrayed and prosecuted.
The martyrdom of the Bab; the banishment of Baha'u'llah; the confiscation
of His earthly possessions; His incarceration in Mazindaran; the reign of
terror that confined Him in the most pestilential of dungeons; the
intrigues, the protests, and calumnies which thrice renewed His exile and
led to His ultimate imprisonment in the most desolate of cities; the
shameful sentences passed, with the connivance of the judicial and
ecclesiastical authorities, against the person, the property, and the
honor of His innocent followers--these stand out as among the blackest acts
for which posterity will hold this blood-stained dynasty responsible. One
more barrier that had sought to obstruct the forward march of the Faith
was now removed.
Though Baha'u'llah had been banished from His native land, the tide of
calamity which had swept with such fury over Him and over the followers of
the Bab, was by no means receding. Under the jurisdiction of the Sultan of
Turkey, the arch-enemy of His Cause, a new chapter in the history of His
ever-recurring trials had opened. The overthrow of the Sultanate and the
Caliphate, the twin pillars of Sunni Islam, can be regarded in no other
light except as the inevitable consequence of the fierce, the sustained
and deliberate persecution which the monarchs of the tottering House of
U_th_man, the recognized successors of the Prophet Muhammad, had launched
against it. From the city of Constantinople, the traditional seat of both
the Sultanate and the Caliphate, the rulers of Turkey had, for a period
covering almost three quarters of a century, striven, with unabated zeal,
to stem the tide of a Faith they feared and abhorred. From the time
Baha'u'llah set foot on Turkish soil and was made a virtual prisoner of
the most powerful potentate of Islam to the year of the Holy Land's
liberation from Turkish yoke, successive Caliphs, and in particular the
Sultans 'Abdu'l-'Aziz and 'Abdu'l-Hamid, had, in the full exercise of the
spiritual and temporal authority which their exalted office had conferred
upon them, afflicted both the Founder of our Faith and the Center of His
Covenant with such pain and tribulation as no mind can fathom nor pen or
tongue describe. They alone could have measured or borne them.
To these afflictive trials Baha'u'llah has repeatedly testified: "By the
righteousness of the Almighty! Were I to recount to thee the tale of the
things that have befallen Me, the souls and minds of men would be
incapable of sustaining its weight. God Himself beareth Me witness."
"Twenty years have passed," He, addressing the kings of Christendom, has
written, "during which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh
tribulation. No one of them that were before Us hath endured the things We
have endured. Would that ye could perceive it! They that rose up against
us have put us to death, have shed our blood, have plundered our property,
and violated our honor." "Recall to mind My sorrows," He, in another
connection, has revealed, "My cares and anxieties, My woes and trials, the
state of My captivity, the tears that I have shed, the bitterness of Mine
anguish, and now Mine imprisonment in this far-off land... Couldst thou be
told what hath befallen the Ancient Beauty, thou wouldst flee into the
wilderness, and weep with a great weeping... Every morning I arose from my
bed, I discovered the hosts of countless afflictions massed behind My
door; and every night when I lay down, lo, My heart was torn with agony at
what it had suffered from the fiendish cruelty of its foes."
The orders which these foes issued, the banishments they decreed, the
indignities they inflicted, the plans they devised, the investigations
they conducted, the threats they pronounced, the atrocities they were
prepared to commit, the intrigues and baseness to which they, their
ministers, their governors, and military chieftains had stooped,
constitute a record which can hardly find a parallel in the history of any
revealed religion. The mere recital of the most salient features of that
sinister theme would suffice to fill a volume. They knew full well that
the spiritual and administrative Center of the Cause they had striven to
eradicate had now shifted to their dominion, that its leaders were Turkish
citizens, and that whatever resources these could command were at their
mercy. That for a period of almost three score years and ten, while still
in the plenitude of its unquestioned authority, while reinforced by the
endless machinations of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of a
neighboring nation, and assured of the support of those of Baha'u'llah's
kindred who had rebelled against, and seceded from, His Cause, this
despotism should have failed in the end to extirpate a mere handful of its
condemned subjects must, to every unbelieving observer, remain one of the
most intriguing and mysterious episodes of contemporary history.
The Cause of which Baha'u'llah was still the visible leader had, despite
the calculations of a short-sighted enemy, undeniably triumphed. No
unbiased mind, penetrating the surface of conditions surrounding the
Prisoner of Akka, could any longer mistake or deny it. Though the tension
which had been relaxed was, for a time, heightened after Baha'u'llah's
ascension and the perils of a still unsettled situation were revived, it
was becoming increasingly evident that the insidious forces of decay,
which for many a long year were eating into the vitals of a diseased
nation, were now moving towards a climax. A series of internal
convulsions, each more devastating than the previous one, had already been
unchained, destined to bring in their wake one of the most catastrophic
occurrences of modern times. The murder of that arrogant despot in the
year 1876; the Russo-Turkish conflict that soon followed in its wake; the
wars of liberation which succeeded it; the rise of the Young Turk
movement; the Turkish Revolution of 1909 that precipitated the downfall of
'Abdu'l-Hamid; the Balkan wars with their calamitous consequences; the
liberation of Palestine enshrining within its bosom the cities of Akka and
Haifa, the world center of an emancipated Faith; the further dismemberment
decreed by the Treaty of Versailles; the abolition of the Sultanate and
the downfall of the House of U_th_man; the extinction of the Caliphate;
the disestablishment of the State Religion; the annulment of the
_Sh_ari'ah Law and the promulgation of a universal Civil Code; the
suppression of various orders, beliefs, traditions and ceremonials
believed to be inextricably interwoven with the fabric of the Muslim
Faith--these followed with an ease and swiftness that no man had dared
envisage. In these devastating blows, administered by friend and foe
alike, by Christian nations and professing Muslims, every follower of the
persecuted Faith of Baha'u'llah recognized evidences of the directing Hand
of the departed Founder of his religion, Who, from the invisible Realm,
was unloosing a flood of well-deserved calamities upon a rebellious
religion and nation.
Compare the evidences of Divine visitation which befell the persecutors of
Jesus Christ with these historic retributions which, in the latter part of
the first century of the Baha'i Era, have hurled to dust the chief
adversary of the religion of Baha'u'llah. Had not the Roman Emperor, in
the second half of the first century of the Christian Era, after a
distressful siege of Jerusalem, laid waste the Holy City, destroyed the
Temple, desecrated and robbed the Holy of Holies of its treasures, and
transported them to Rome, reared a pagan colony on the mount of Zion,
massacred the Jews, and exiled and dispersed the survivors?
Compare, moreover, these words which the persecuted Christ, as witnessed
by the Gospel, addressed to Jerusalem, with Baha'u'llah's apostrophe to
Constantinople, revealed while He lay in His far-off Prison, and recorded
in His Most Holy Book: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
Prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings!" And again, as He wept over the city: "If thou hadst known,
even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy
peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon
thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee
round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the
ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one
stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."
"O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas!" Baha'u'llah thus
apostrophizes the City of Constantinople, "The throne of tyranny hath,
verily, been established upon thee, and the flame of hatred hath been
kindled within thy bosom, in such wise that the Concourse on high and they
who circle around the Exalted Throne have wailed and lamented. We behold
in thee the foolish ruling over the wise, and darkness vaunting itself
against the light. Thou art indeed filled with manifest pride. Hath thine
outward splendor made thee vainglorious? By Him Who is the Lord of
mankind! It shall soon perish, and thy daughters and thy widows and all
the kindreds that dwell within thee shall lament. Thus informeth thee the
All-Knowing, the All-Wise."
To Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, the monarch who decreed each of Baha'u'llah's
three banishments, the Founder of our Faith, while a prisoner in the
Sultan's capital, addressed these words: "Hearken, O king, to the speech
of Him that speaketh the truth, Him that doth not ask thee to recompense
Him with the things God hath chosen to bestow upon thee, Him Who
unerringly treadeth the Straight Path ...Set before thine eyes God's
unerring Balance and, as one standing in His presence, weigh in that
Balance thine actions every day, every moment of thy life. Bring thyself
to account ere thou art summoned to a reckoning, on the day when no man
shall have strength to stand for fear of God, the day when the hearts of
the heedless ones shall be made to tremble."
To the Ministers of the Turkish State, He, in that same Tablet, revealed:
"It behooveth you, O Ministers of State, to keep the precepts of God, and
to forsake your own laws and regulations, and to be of them who are guided
aright... Ye shall, erelong, discover the consequences of that which ye
shall have done in this vain life, and shall be repaid for them... How
great the number of those who, in bygone ages, have committed the things
ye have committed, and who, though superior to you in rank, have, in the
end, returned unto dust, and been consigned to their inevitable doom!...
Ye shall follow in their wake, and shall be made to enter a habitation
wherein none shall be found to befriend or help you... The days of your
life shall roll away, and all the things with which ye are occupied, and
of which ye boast yourselves, shall perish, and ye shall, most certainly,
be summoned by a company of His angels to appear at the spot where the
limbs of the entire creation shall be made to tremble, and the flesh of
every oppressor to creep... This is the day that shall inevitably come
upon you, the hour that none can put back."
To the inhabitants of Constantinople, while He lived the life of an exile
in their midst, Baha'u'llah, in that same Tablet, addressed these words:
"Fear God, ye inhabitants of the City, and sow not the seeds of dissension
amongst men... Your days shall pass away as have the days of them who were
before you. To dust shall ye return, even as your fathers of old did
return." "We found," He, moreover, remarks, "upon Our arrival in the City
its governors and elders as children gathered about and disporting
themselves with clay... Our inner eye wept sore over them, and over their
transgressions and their total disregard of the thing for which they were
created... The day is approaching when God will have raised up a people
who will call to remembrance Our days, who will tell the tale of Our
trials, who will demand the restitution of Our rights from them that,
without a tittle of evidence, have treated Us with manifest injustice. God
assuredly dominateth the lives of them that wronged Us, and is well aware
of their doings. He will, most certainly, lay hold on them for their sins.
He, verily, is the fiercest of avengers." "Wherefore," He graciously
exhorteth them, "hearken ye unto My speech, and return ye to God and
repent, that He, through His grace, may have mercy upon you, may wash away
your sins, and forgive your trespasses. The greatness of His mercy
surpasseth the fury of His wrath, and His grace encompasseth all who have
been called into being and been clothed with the robe of life, be they of
the past or of the future."
And, finally, in the Lawh-i-Ra'is we find these prophetic words recorded:
"Hearken, O Chief ... to the Voice of God, the Sovereign, the Help in
Peril, the Self-Subsisting... Thou hast, O Chief, committed that which
hath made Muhammad, the Apostle of God, groan in the Most Exalted
Paradise. The world hath made thee proud, so much so that thou hast turned
away from the Face through Whose brightness the Concourse on high hath
been illumined. Soon thou shalt find thyself in evident loss... The day is
approaching when the Land of Mystery (Adrianople) and what is beside it
shall be changed, and shall pass out of the hands of the King, and
commotions shall appear, and the voice of lamentation shall be raised, and
the evidences of mischief shall be revealed on all sides, and confusion
shall spread by reason of that which hath befallen these captives at the
hands of the hosts of oppression. The course of things shall be altered,
and conditions shall wax so grievous, that the very sands on the desolate
hills will moan, and the trees on the mountain will weep, and blood will
flow out of all things. Then wilt thou behold the people in sore
distress."
Thirteen hundred years had to elapse from the death of the Prophet
Muhammad ere the illegitimacy of the institution of the Caliphate, the
founders of which had usurped the authority of the lawful successors of
the Apostle of God, would be fully and publicly demonstrated. An
institution which in its inception had trampled upon so sacred a right and
unchained the forces of so distressful a schism, an institution which, in
the latter days, had dealt so grievous a blow to a Faith Whose Forerunner
was Himself a descendant of the very Imams whose authority that
institution had repudiated, deserved full well the chastisement that had
sealed its fate.
The text of certain Muhammadan traditions, the authenticity of which
Muslims themselves recognize, and which have been extensively quoted by
eminent Oriental Baha'i scholars and authors, will serve to corroborate
the argument and illuminate the theme I have attempted to expound: "In the
latter days a grievous calamity shall befall My people at the hands of
their ruler, a calamity such as no man ever heard to surpass it. So fierce
will it be that none can find a shelter. God will then send down One of My
descendants, One sprung from My family, Who will fill the earth with
equity and justice, even as it hath been filled with injustice and
tyranny." And, again: "A day shall be witnessed by My people whereon there
will have remained of Islam naught but a name, and of the Qur'an naught
but a mere appearance. The doctors of that age shall be the most evil the
world hath ever seen. Mischief hath proceeded from them, and on them will
it recoil." And, again: "At that hour His malediction shall descend upon
you, and your curse shall afflict you, and your religion shall remain an
empty word on your tongues. And when these signs appear amongst you,
anticipate the day when the red-hot wind will have swept over you, or the
day when ye will have been disfigured, or when stones will have rained
upon you."
"O people of the Qur'an," Baha'u'llah, addressing the combined forces of
Sunni and _Sh_i'ih Islam, significantly affirms, "Verily, the Prophet of
God, Muhammad, sheddeth tears at the sight of your cruelty. Ye have
assuredly followed your evil and corrupt desires, and turned away your
face from the light of guidance. Erelong will ye witness the result of
your deeds; for the Lord, My God, lieth in wait and is watchful of your
behavior... O concourse of Muslim divines! By your deeds the exalted
station of the people hath been abased, the standard of Islam hath been
reversed, and its mighty throne hath fallen."