The extent of “Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows” during the early years in Baghdad – a summary by the Guardian

 The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows was now running over. All His exhortations, all His efforts to remedy a rapidly deteriorating situation, had remained fruitless. The velocity of His manifold woes was hourly and visibly increasing. Upon the sadness that filled His soul and the gravity of the situation confronting Him, His writings, revealed during that somber period, throw abundant light.

• In some of His prayers He poignantly confesses that “tribulation upon tribulation” had gathered about Him,
• that “adversaries with one consent” had fallen upon Him,
• that “wretchedness” had grievously touched Him, and
• that “woes at their blackest” had befallen Him.
• God Himself He calls upon as a Witness to His “sighs and lamentations,” His “powerlessness, poverty and destitution,” to the “injuries” He sustained, and the “abasement” He suffered.
• “So grievous hath been My weeping,” He, in one of these prayers, avows, “that I have been prevented from making mention of Thee and singing Thy praises.”
• “So loud hath been the voice of My lamentation,” He, in another passage, avers, “that every mother mourning for her child would be amazed, and would still her weeping and her grief.”
• “The wrongs which I suffer,” He, in His Lawh-i-Maryam, laments, “have blotted out the wrongs suffered by My First Name (the Báb) from the Tablet of creation.” “O Maryam!” He continues, “From the Land of Tá (Tihrán), after countless afflictions, We reached ‘Iráq, at the bidding of the Tyrant of Persia, where, after the fetters of Our foes, We were afflicted with the perfidy of Our friends. God knoweth what befell Me thereafter!”
• And again: “I have borne what no man, be he of the past or of the future, hath borne or will bear.”

Forms of opposition that Bahá’u’lláh encountered during early years in Baghdad

• A clandestine opposition, whose aim was to nullify every effort exerted, and frustrate every design conceived, by Bahá’u’lláh for the rehabilitation of a distracted community, could now be clearly discerned.
• Insinuations, whose purpose was to sow the seeds of doubt and suspicion and to represent Him as a usurper, as the subverter of the laws instituted by the Báb, and the wrecker of His Cause, were being incessantly circulated.
• His Epistles, interpretations, invocations and commentaries were being covertly and indirectly criticized, challenged and misrepresented.
• An attempt to injure His person was even set afoot but failed to materialize.

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

Factors that evoked “the outbreak of the pent-up jealousies” of Bahá’u’lláh’s “ill-wishers and enemies”

To these evidences of an ever deepening veneration for Bahá’u’lláh and of a passionate attachment to His person were now being added further grounds for the outbreak of the pent-up jealousies which His mounting prestige evoked in the breasts of His ill-wishers and enemies.

• The steady extension of the circle of His acquaintances and admirers;
• His friendly intercourse with officials including the governor of the city;
• the unfeigned homage offered Him, on so many occasions and so spontaneously, by men who had once been distinguished companions of Siyyid Káẓim;
• the disillusionment which the persistent concealment of Mírzá Yahyá, and the unflattering reports circulated regarding his character and abilities, had engendered;
• the signs of increasing independence, of innate sagacity and inherent superiority and capacity for leadership unmistakably exhibited by Bahá’u’lláh Himself—

all combined to widen the breach which the infamous and crafty Siyyid Muhammad had sedulously contrived to create. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

“The circumstances leading to the revelation of the Tablet of Kullu’t-Ṭa‘ám”

The circumstances leading to the revelation of the Tablet of Kullu’t-Ṭa‘ám, written during that period, at the request of Hájí Mírzá Kamálu’d-Dín-i-Naráqí, a Bábí of honorable rank and high culture, could not but aggravate a situation that had already become serious and menacing. Impelled by a desire to receive illumination from Mírzá Yaḥyá concerning the meaning of the Qur’ánic verse “All food was allowed to the children of Israel,” Hájí Mírzá Kamálu’d-Dín had requested him to write a commentary upon it—a request which was granted, but with reluctance and in a manner which showed such incompetence and superficiality as to disillusion Hájí Mírzá Kamálu’d-Dín, and to destroy his confidence in its author. Turning to Bahá’u’lláh and repeating his request, he was honored by a Tablet, in which Israel and his children were identified with the Báb and His followers respectively—a Tablet which by reason of the allusions it contained, the beauty of its language and the cogency of its argument, so enraptured the soul of its recipient that he would have, but for the restraining hand of Bahá’u’lláh, proclaimed forthwith his discovery of God’s hidden Secret in the person of the One Who had revealed it. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

“Mírzá Yahyá and his fellow-conspirator Siyyid Muhammad” “instantly detected” the change in Mírzá Áqá Ján and his reverence towards Bahá’u’lláh

The confidence instilled in Mírzá Áqá Ján by this unexpected and sudden contact with the spirit and directing genius of a new-born Revelation stirred his soul to its depths—a soul already afire with a consuming love born of his recognition of the ascendancy which his newly-found Master had already achieved over His fellow-disciples in both ‘Iráq and Persia. This intense adoration that informed his whole being, and which could neither be suppressed nor concealed, was instantly detected by both Mírzá Yahyá and his fellow-conspirator Siyyid Muhammad. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)