Eventually, still without trial or recourse, Baha'u'llah was released from
prison and immediately banished from His native land, His wealth and
properties arbitrarily confiscated. The Russian diplomatic representative,
who knew Him personally and who had followed the Babi persecutions with
growing distress, offered Him his protection and refuge in lands under the
control of his government. In the prevailing political climate, acceptance
of such help would almost certainly have been misrepresented by others as
having political implications.(12) Perhaps for this reason, Baha'u'llah
chose to accept banishment to the neighboring territory of Iraq, then
under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. This expulsion was the beginning of
forty years of exile, imprisonment, and bitter persecution.
In the years which immediately followed His departure from Persia,
Baha'u'llah gave priority to the needs of the Babi community which had
gathered in Baghdad, a task which had devolved on Him as the only
effective Babi leader to have survived the massacres. The death of the Bab
and the almost simultaneous loss of most of the young faith's teachers and
guides had left the body of the believers scattered and demoralized. When
His efforts to rally those who had fled to Iraq aroused jealousy and
dissension,(13) He followed the path that had been taken by all of the
Messengers of God gone before Him, and withdrew to the wilderness,
choosing for the purpose the mountain region of Kurdistan. His withdrawal,
as He later said, had "contemplated no return." Its reason "was to avoid
becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of disturbance
unto Our companions." Although the two years spent in Kurdistan were a
period of intense privation and physical hardship, Baha'u'llah describes
them as a time of profound happiness during which He reflected deeply on
the message entrusted to Him: "Alone, We communed with Our spirit,
oblivious of the world and all that is therein."(14)
Only with great reluctance, believing it His responsibility to the cause
of the Bab, did He eventually accede to urgent messages from the remnant
of the desperate group of exiles in Baghdad who had discovered His
whereabouts and appealed to Him to return and assume the leadership of
their community.
Two of the most important volumes of Baha'u'llah's writings date from this
first period of exile, preceding the declaration of His mission in 1863.
The first of these is a small book which He named The Hidden Words.
Written in the form of a compilation of moral aphorisms, the volume
represents the ethical heart of Baha'u'llah's message. In verses which
Baha'u'llah describes as a distillation of the spiritual guidance of all
the Revelations of the past, the voice of God speaks directly to the human
soul:
O Son of Spirit!
The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away
therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in
thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the
eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the
knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee
to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My
loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.
O Son of Being!
Love Me that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no
wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.
O Son of Man!
Sorrow not save that thou art far from Us. Rejoice not save that thou art
drawing near and returning unto Us.
O Son of Being!
With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I
created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be
thou content with it and seek naught else, for My work is perfect and My
command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof.(15)
The second of the two major works composed by Baha'u'llah during this
period is The Book of Certitude, a comprehensive exposition of the nature
and purpose of religion. In passages that draw not only on the Qur'an, but
with equal facility and insight on the Old and New Testaments, the
Messengers of God are depicted as agents of a single, unbroken process,
the awakening of the human race to its spiritual and moral potentialities.
A humanity which has come of age can respond to a directness of teaching
that goes beyond the language of parable and allegory; faith is a matter
not of blind belief, but of conscious knowledge. Nor is the guidance of an
ecclesiastical elite any longer required: the gift of reason confers on
each individual in this new age of enlightenment and education the
capacity to respond to Divine guidance. The test is that of sincerity:
No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding except
he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth.... The essence of
these words is this: they that tread the path of faith, they that thirst
for the wine of certitude, must cleanse themselves of all that is
earthly--their ears from idle talk, their minds from vain imaginings,
their hearts from worldly affections, their eyes from that which
perisheth. They should put their trust in God, and, holding fast unto Him,
follow in His way. Then will they be made worthy of the effulgent glories
of the sun of divine knowledge and understanding, ... inasmuch as man can
never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the All-Glorious ... unless and
until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard
for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets.
Consider the past. How many, both high and low, have, at all times,
yearningly awaited the advent of the Manifestations of God in the
sanctified persons of His chosen Ones.... And whensoever the portals of
grace did open, and the clouds of divine bounty did rain upon mankind, and
the light of the Unseen did shine above the horizon of celestial might,
they all denied Him, and turned away from His face--the face of God
Himself....
Only when the lamp of search, of earnest striving, of longing desire, of
passionate devotion, of fervid love, of rapture, and ecstasy, is kindled
within the seeker's heart, and the breeze of His loving-kindness is wafted
upon his soul, will the darkness of error be dispelled, the mists of
doubts and misgivings be dissipated, and the lights of knowledge and
certitude envelop his being.... Then will the manifold favors and
outpouring grace of the holy and everlasting Spirit confer such new life
upon the seeker that he will find himself endowed with a new eye, a new
ear, a new heart, and a new mind.... Gazing with the eye of God, he will
perceive within every atom a door that leadeth him to the stations of
absolute certitude. He will discover in all things the ... evidences of an
everlasting Manifestation.
When the channel of the human soul is cleansed of all worldly and impeding
attachments, it will unfailingly perceive the breath of the Beloved across
immeasurable distances, and will, led by its perfume, attain and enter the
City of Certitude....
That city is none other than the Word of God revealed in every age and
dispensation.... All the guidance, the blessings, the learning, the
understanding, the faith, and certitude, conferred upon all that is in
heaven and on earth, are hidden and treasured within these Cities.(16)
No overt reference is made to Baha'u'llah's own as yet unannounced
mission; rather, The Book of Certitude is organized around a vigorous
exposition of the mission of the martyred Bab. Not the least of the
reasons for the book's powerful influence on the Babi community, which
included a number of scholars and former seminarians, was the mastery of
Islamic thought and teaching its author displays in demonstrating the
Bab's claim to have fulfilled the prophecies of Islam. Calling on the
Babis to be worthy of the trust which the Bab had placed in them and of
the sacrifice of so many heroic lives, Baha'u'llah held out before them
the challenge not only of bringing their personal lives into conformity
with the Divine teachings, but of making their community a model for the
heterogeneous population of Baghdad, the Iraqi provincial capital.
Though living in very straitened material circumstances, the exiles were
galvanized by this vision. One of their company, a man called Nabil, who
was later to leave a detailed history of both the ministries of the Bab
and Baha'u'llah, has described the spiritual intensity of those days:
Many a night no less than ten persons subsisted on no more than a
pennyworth of dates. No one knew to whom actually belonged the shoes, the
cloaks, or the robes that were to be found in their houses. Whoever went
to the bazaar could claim that the shoes upon his feet were his own, and
each one who entered the presence of Baha'u'llah could affirm that the
cloak and robe he then wore belonged to him.... O, for the joy of those
days, and the gladness and wonder of those hours!(17)
To the dismay of the Persian consular authorities who had believed the
Babi "episode" to have run its course, the community of exiles gradually
became a respected and influential element in Iraq's provincial capital
and the neighboring towns. Since several of the most important shrines of
Shi'ih Islam were located in the area, a steady stream of Persian pilgrims
was also exposed, under the most favorable circumstances, to the renewal
of Babi influence. Among dignitaries who called on Baha'u'llah in the
simple house He occupied were princes of the royal family. So enchanted by
the experience was one of them that he conceived the somewhat naive idea
that by erecting a duplicate of the building in the gardens of his own
estate, he might recapture something of the atmosphere of spiritual purity
and detachment he had briefly encountered. Another, more deeply moved by
the experience of his visit, expressed to friends the feeling that "were
all the sorrows of the world to be crowded into my heart they would, I
feel, all vanish, when in the presence of Baha'u'llah. It is as if I had
entered Paradise..."(18)