'Abdu'l-Baha's unexpected and dramatic release from His forty-year
confinement dealt a blow to the ambitions cherished by the
Covenant-breakers as devastating as that which, a decade before, had
shattered their hopes of undermining His authority and of ousting Him from
His God-given position. Now, on the very morrow of His triumphant
liberation a third blow befell them as stunning as those which preceded it
and hardly less spectacular than they. Within a few months of the historic
decree which set Him free, in the very year that witnessed the downfall of
Sultan 'Abdu'l-Hamid, that same power from on high which had enabled
'Abdu'l-Baha to preserve inviolate the rights divinely conferred on Him,
to establish His Father's Faith in the North American continent, and to
triumph over His royal oppressor, enabled Him to achieve one of the most
signal acts of His ministry: the removal of the Bab's remains from their
place of concealment in Tihran to Mt. Carmel. He Himself testified, on
more than one occasion, that the safe transfer of these remains, the
construction of a befitting mausoleum to receive them, and their final
interment with His own hands in their permanent resting-place constituted
one of the three principal objectives which, ever since the inception of
His mission, He had conceived it His paramount duty to achieve. This act
indeed deserves to rank as one of the outstanding events in the first
Baha'i century.
As observed in a previous chapter the mangled bodies of the Bab and His
fellow-martyr, Mirza Muhammad-'Ali, were removed, in the middle of the
second night following their execution, through the pious intervention of
Haji Sulayman _Kh_an, from the edge of the moat where they had been cast
to a silk factory owned by one of the believers of Milan, and were laid
the next day in a wooden casket, and thence carried to a place of safety.
Subsequently, according to Baha'u'llah's instructions, they were
transported to Tihran and placed in the shrine of Imam-Zadih Hasan. They
were later removed to the residence of Haji Sulayman _Kh_an himself in the
Sar-_Ch_a_sh_mih quarter of the city, and from his house were taken to the
shrine of Imam-Zadih Ma'sum, where they remained concealed until the year
1284 A.H. (1867-1868), when a Tablet, revealed by Baha'u'llah in
Adrianople, directed Mulla 'Ali-Akbar-i-_Sh_ahmirzadi and
Jamal-i-Burujirdi to transfer them without delay to some other spot, an
instruction which, in view of the subsequent reconstruction of that
shrine, proved to have been providential.
Unable to find a suitable place in the suburb of _Sh_ah 'Abdu'l-'Azim,
Mulla 'Ali-Akbar and his companion continued their search until, on the
road leading to _Ch_a_sh_mih-'Ali, they came upon the abandoned and
dilapidated Masjid-i-Ma_sh_a'u'llah, where they deposited, within one of
its walls, after dark, their precious burden, having first re-wrapt the
remains in a silken shroud brought by them for that purpose. Finding the
next day to their consternation that the hiding-place had been discovered,
they clandestinely carried the casket through the gate of the capital
direct to the house of Mirza Hasan-i-Vazir, a believer and son-in-law of
Haji Mirza Siyyid 'Aliy-i-Tafri_sh_i, the Majdu'l-A_sh_raf, where it
remained for no less than fourteen months. The long-guarded secret of its
whereabouts becoming known to the believers, they began to visit the house
in such numbers that a communication had to be addressed by Mulla
'Ali-Akbar to Baha'u'llah, begging for guidance in the matter. Haji _Sh_ah
Muhammad-i-Man_sh_adi, surnamed Aminu'l-Bayan, was accordingly
commissioned to receive the Trust from him, and bidden to exercise the
utmost secrecy as to its disposal.
Assisted by another believer, Haji _Sh_ah Muhammad buried the casket
beneath the floor of the inner sanctuary of the shrine of Imam-Zadih Zayd,
where it lay undetected until Mirza Asadu'llah-i-Isfahani was informed of
its exact location through a chart forwarded to him by Baha'u'llah.
Instructed by Baha'u'llah to conceal it elsewhere, he first removed the
remains to his own house in Tihran, after which they were deposited in
several other localities such as the house of Husayn-'Aliy-i-Isfahani and
that of Muhammad-Karim-i-'Attar, where they remained hidden until the year
1316 (1899) A.H., when, in pursuance of directions issued by 'Abdu'l-Baha,
this same Mirza Asadu'llah, together with a number of other believers,
transported them by way of Isfahan, Kirman_sh_ah, Ba_gh_dad and Damascus,
to Beirut and thence by sea to Akka, arriving at their destination on the
19th of the month of Ramadan 1316 A.H. (January 31, 1899), fifty lunar
years after the Bab's execution in Tabriz.
In the same year that this precious Trust reached the shores of the Holy
Land and was delivered into the hands of 'Abdu'l-Baha, He, accompanied by
Dr. Ibrahim _Kh_ayru'llah, whom He had already honored with the titles of
"Baha's Peter," "The Second Columbus" and "Conqueror of America," drove to
the recently purchased site which had been blessed and selected by
Baha'u'llah on Mt. Carmel, and there laid, with His own hands, the
foundation-stone of the edifice, the construction of which He, a few
months later, was to commence. About that same time, the marble
sarcophagus, designed to receive the body of the Bab, an offering of love
from the Baha'is of Rangoon, had, at 'Abdu'l-Baha's suggestion, been
completed and shipped to Haifa.
No need to dwell on the manifold problems and preoccupations which, for
almost a decade, continued to beset 'Abdu'l-Baha until the victorious hour
when He was able to bring to a final consummation the historic task
entrusted to Him by His Father. The risks and perils with which
Baha'u'llah and later His Son had been confronted in their efforts to
insure, during half a century, the protection of those remains were but a
prelude to the grave dangers which, at a later period, the Center of the
Covenant Himself had to face in the course of the construction of the
edifice designed to receive them, and indeed until the hour of His final
release from His incarceration.
The long-drawn out negotiations with the shrewd and calculating owner of
the building-site of the holy Edifice, who, under the influence of the
Covenant-breakers, refused for a long time to sell; the exorbitant price
at first demanded for the opening of a road leading to that site and
indispensable to the work of construction; the interminable objections
raised by officials, high and low, whose easily aroused suspicions had to
be allayed by repeated explanations and assurances given by 'Abdu'l-Baha
Himself; the dangerous situation created by the monstrous accusations
brought by Mirza Muhammad-'Ali and his associates regarding the character
and purpose of that building; the delays and complications caused by
'Abdu'l-Baha's prolonged and enforced absence from Haifa, and His
consequent inability to supervise in person the vast undertaking He had
initiated--all these were among the principal obstacles which He, at so
critical a period in His ministry, had to face and surmount ere He could
execute in its entirety the Plan, the outline of which Baha'u'llah had
communicated to Him on the occasion of one of His visits to Mt. Carmel.
"Every stone of that building, every stone of the road leading to it," He,
many a time was heard to remark, "I have with infinite tears and at
tremendous cost, raised and placed in position." "One night," He,
according to an eye-witness, once observed, "I was so hemmed in by My
anxieties that I had no other recourse than to recite and repeat over and
over again a prayer of the Bab which I had in My possession, the recital
of which greatly calmed Me. The next morning the owner of the plot himself
came to Me, apologized and begged Me to purchase his property."
Finally, in the very year His royal adversary lost his throne, and at the
time of the opening of the first American Baha'i Convention, convened in
Chicago for the purpose of creating a permanent national organization for
the construction of the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar, 'Abdu'l-Baha brought His
undertaking to a successful conclusion, in spite of the incessant
machinations of enemies both within and without. On the 28th of the month
of Safar 1327 A.H., the day of the first Naw-Ruz (1909), which He
celebrated after His release from His confinement, 'Abdu'l-Baha had the
marble sarcophagus transported with great labor to the vault prepared for
it, and in the evening, by the light of a single lamp, He laid within it,
with His own hands--in the presence of believers from the East and from the
West and in circumstances at once solemn and moving--the wooden casket
containing the sacred remains of the Bab and His companion.
When all was finished, and the earthly remains of the Martyr-Prophet of
_Sh_iraz were, at long last, safely deposited for their everlasting rest
in the bosom of God's holy mountain, 'Abdu'l-Baha, Who had cast aside His
turban, removed His shoes and thrown off His cloak, bent low over the
still open sarcophagus, His silver hair waving about His head and His face
transfigured and luminous, rested His forehead on the border of the wooden
casket, and, sobbing aloud, wept with such a weeping that all those who
were present wept with Him. That night He could not sleep, so overwhelmed
was He with emotion.
"The most joyful tidings is this," He wrote later in a Tablet announcing
to His followers the news of this glorious victory, "that the holy, the
luminous body of the Bab ... after having for sixty years been transferred
from place to place, by reason of the ascendancy of the enemy, and from
fear of the malevolent, and having known neither rest nor tranquillity
has, through the mercy of the Abha Beauty, been ceremoniously deposited,
on the day of Naw-Ruz, within the sacred casket, in the exalted Shrine on
Mt. Carmel... By a strange coincidence, on that same day of Naw-Ruz, a
cablegram was received from Chicago, announcing that the believers in each
of the American centers had elected a delegate and sent to that city ...
and definitely decided on the site and construction of the
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar."
With the transference of the remains of the Bab--Whose advent marks the
return of the Prophet Elijah--to Mt. Carmel, and their interment in that
holy mountain, not far from the cave of that Prophet Himself, the Plan so
gloriously envisaged by Baha'u'llah, in the evening of His life, had been
at last executed, and the arduous labors associated with the early and
tumultuous years of the ministry of the appointed Center of His Covenant
crowned with immortal success. A focal center of Divine illumination and
power, the very dust of which 'Abdu'l-Baha averred had inspired Him,
yielding in sacredness to no other shrine throughout the Baha'i world
except the Sepulcher of the Author of the Baha'i Revelation Himself, had
been permanently established on that mountain, regarded from time
immemorial as sacred. A structure, at once massive, simple and imposing;
nestling in the heart of Carmel, the "Vineyard of God"; flanked by the
Cave of Elijah on the west, and by the hills of Galilee on the east;
backed by the plain of Sharon, and facing the silver-city of Akka, and
beyond it the Most Holy Tomb, the Heart and Qiblih of the Baha'i world;
overshadowing the colony of German Templars who, in anticipation of the
"coming of the Lord," had forsaken their homes and foregathered at the
foot of that mountain, in the very year of Baha'u'llah's Declaration in
Ba_gh_dad (1863), the mausoleum of the Bab had now, with heroic effort and
in impregnable strength been established as "the Spot round which the
Concourse on high circle in adoration." Events have already demonstrated
through the extension of the Edifice itself, through the embellishment of
its surroundings, through the acquisition of extensive endowments in its
neighborhood, and through its proximity to the resting-places of the wife,
the son and daughter of Baha'u'llah Himself, that it was destined to
acquire with the passing of the years a measure of fame and glory
commensurate with the high purpose that had prompted its founding. Nor
will it, as the years go by, and the institutions revolving around the
World Administrative Center of the future Baha'i Commonwealth are
gradually established, cease to manifest the latent potentialities with
which that same immutable purpose has endowed it. Resistlessly will this
Divine institution flourish and expand, however fierce the animosity which
its future enemies may evince, until the full measure of its splendor will
have been disclosed before the eyes of all mankind.
"Haste thee, O Carmel!" Baha'u'llah, significantly addressing that holy
mountain, has written, "for lo, the light of the Countenance of God ...
hath been lifted upon thee... Rejoice, for God hath, in this Day,
established upon thee His throne, hath made thee the dawning-place of His
signs and the dayspring of the evidences of His Revelation. Well is it
with him that circleth around thee, that proclaimeth the revelation of thy
glory, and recounteth that which the bounty of the Lord thy God hath
showered upon thee." "Call out to Zion, O Carmel!" He, furthermore, has
revealed in that same Tablet, "and announce the joyful tidings: He that
was hidden from mortal eyes is come! His all-conquering sovereignty is
manifest; His all-encompassing splendor is revealed. Beware lest thou
hesitate or halt. Hasten forth and circumambulate the City of God that
hath descended from heaven, the celestial Kaaba round which have circled
in adoration the favored of God, the pure in heart, and the company of the
most exalted angels."