Baha'u'llah's mission began in a subterranean dungeon in Teheran in August
1852. Born into a noble family that could trace its ancestry back to the
great dynasties of Persia's imperial past, He declined the ministerial
career open to Him in government, and chose instead to devote His energies
to a range of philanthropies which had, by the early 1840s, earned Him
widespread renown as "Father of the Poor." This privileged existence
swiftly eroded after 1844, when Baha'u'llah became one of the leading
advocates of a movement that was to change the course of His country's
history.
The early nineteenth century was a period of messianic expectations in
many lands. Deeply disturbed by the implications of scientific inquiry and
industrialization, earnest believers from many religious backgrounds
turned to the scriptures of their faiths for an understanding of the
accelerating processes of change. In Europe and America groups like the
Templers and the Millerites believed they had found in the Christian
scriptures evidence supporting their conviction that history had ended and
the return of Jesus Christ was at hand. A markedly similar ferment
developed in the Middle East around the belief that the fulfillment of
various prophecies in the Qur'an and Islamic Traditions was imminent.
By far the most dramatic of these millennialist movements had been the one
in Persia, which had focused on the person and teachings of a young
merchant from the city of Shiraz, known to history as the Bab.(4) For nine
years, from 1844 to 1853, Persians of all classes had been caught up in a
storm of hope and excitement aroused by the Bab's announcement that the
Day of God was at hand and that He was himself the One promised in Islamic
scripture. Humanity stood, He said, on the threshold of an era that would
witness the restructuring of all aspects of life. New fields of learning,
as yet inconceivable, would permit even the children of the new age to
surpass the most erudite of nineteenth-century scholars. The human race
was called by God to embrace these changes through undertaking a
transformation of its moral and spiritual life. His own mission was to
prepare humanity for the event that lay at the heart of these
developments, the coming of that universal Messenger of God, "He Whom God
will make manifest," awaited by the followers of all religions.(5)
The claim had evoked violent hostility from the Muslim clergy, who taught
that the process of Divine Revelation had ended with Muhammad; and that
any assertion to the contrary represented apostasy, punishable by death.
Their denunciation of the Bab had soon enlisted the support of the Persian
authorities. Thousands of followers of the new faith had perished in a
horrific series of massacres throughout the country, and the Bab had been
publicly executed on July 9, 1850.(6) In an age of growing Western
involvement in the Orient, these events had aroused interest and
compassion in influential European circles. The nobility of the Bab's life
and teachings, the heroism of His followers, and the hope for fundamental
reform that they had kindled in a darkened land had exerted a powerful
attraction for personalities ranging from Ernest Renan and Leo Tolstoy to
Sarah Bernhardt and the Comte de Gobineau.(7)
Because of His prominence in the defense of the Bab's cause, Baha'u'llah
was arrested and brought, in chains and on foot, to Teheran. Protected in
some measure by an impressive personal reputation and the social position
of His family, as well as by protests which the Babi pogroms had evoked
from Western embassies, He was not sentenced to death, as influential
figures at the royal court were urging. Instead, He was cast into the
notorious Siyah-_Ch_al, the "Black Pit", a deep, vermin-infested dungeon
which had been created in one of the city's abandoned reservoirs. No
charges were laid but He and some thirty companions were, without appeal,
kept immured in the darkness and filth of this pit, surrounded by hardened
criminals, many of them under sentence of death. Around Baha'u'llah's neck
was clamped a heavy chain, so notorious in penal circles as to have been
given its own name. When He did not quickly perish, as had been expected,
an attempt was made to poison Him. The marks of the chain were to remain
on His body for the rest of His life.
Central to Baha'u'llah's writings is an exposition of the great themes
which have preoccupied religious thinkers throughout the ages: God, the
role of Revelation in history, the relationship of the world's religious
systems to one another, the meaning of faith, and the basis of moral
authority in the organization of human society. Passages in these texts
speak intimately of His own spiritual experience, of His response to the
Divine summons, and of the dialogue with the "Spirit of God" which lay at
the heart of His mission. Religious history has never before offered the
inquirer the opportunity for so candid an encounter with the phenomenon of
Divine Revelation.
Toward the end of His life, Baha'u'llah's writings on His early
experiences included a brief description of the conditions in the
Siyah-_Ch_al.
We were consigned for four months to a place foul beyond comparison....
The dungeon was wrapped in thick darkness, and Our fellow-prisoners
numbered nearly a hundred and fifty souls: thieves, assassins and
highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other outlet than the passage by
which We entered. No pen can depict that place, nor any tongue describe
its loathsome smell. Most of these men had neither clothes nor bedding to
lie on. God alone knoweth what befell Us in that most foul-smelling and
gloomy place!(8)
Each day the guards would descend the three steep flights of stairs of the
pit, seize one or more of the prisoners, and drag them out to be executed.
In the streets of Teheran, Western observers were appalled by scenes of
Babi victims blown from cannon mouths, hacked to death by axes and swords,
and led to their deaths with burning candles inserted into open wounds in
their bodies.(9) It was in these circumstances, and faced with the
prospect of His own imminent death, that Baha'u'llah received the first
intimation of His mission:
One night, in a dream, these exalted words were heard on every side:
"Verily, We shall render Thee victorious by Thyself and by Thy Pen. Grieve
Thou not for that which hath befallen Thee, neither be Thou afraid, for
Thou art in safety. Erelong will God raise up the treasures of the
earth--men who will aid Thee through Thyself and through Thy name,
wherewith God hath revived the hearts of such as have recognized Him."(10)
The experience of Divine Revelation, touched on only at secondhand in
surviving accounts of the lives of the Buddha, Moses, Jesus Christ, and
Muhammad, is described graphically in Baha'u'llah's own words:
During the days I lay in the prison of Tihran, though the galling weight
of the chains and the stench-filled air allowed Me but little sleep, still
in those infrequent moments of slumber I felt as if something flowed from
the crown of My head over My breast, even as a mighty torrent that
precipitateth itself upon the earth from the summit of a lofty mountain.
Every limb of My body would, as a result, be set afire. At such moments My
tongue recited what no man could bear to hear.(11)