Sequential excerpts from the book ‘God Passes By’, written in 1944 by Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith
Princes of the royal blood, amongst whom were such personages as the Ná’ibu’l-Íyálih, the Shujá‘u’d-Dawlih, the Sayfu’d-Dawlih, and Zaynu’l-‘Ábidín Khán, the Fakhru’d-Dawlih, were, likewise, irresistibly drawn into the ever-widening circle of His associates and acquaintances.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
Nor could those distinguished Persians, who either lived in Baghdád and its environs or visited as pilgrims the holy places, remain impervious to the spell of His charm.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
Government officials, foremost among whom were ‘Abdu’lláh Páshá and his lieutenant Maḥmúd Áqá, and Mullá ‘Alí Mardán, a Kurd well-known in those circles, were gradually brought into contact with Him, and lent their share in noising abroad His fast-spreading fame.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
The unqualified recognition by these outstanding leaders of those traits that distinguished the character and conduct of Bahá’u’lláh stimulated the curiosity, and later evoked the unstinted praise, of a great many observers of less conspicuous position, among whom figured poets, mystics and notables, who either resided in, or visited, the city.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
Astonished at the sight of so many ‘ulamás and Súfís of Kurdish origin, of both the Qádiríyyih and Khálidíyyih Orders, thronging the house of Bahá’u’lláh, and impelled by racial and sectarian rivalry, the religious leaders of the city, such as the renowned Ibn-i-Álúsí, the Muftí of Baghdád, together with Shaykh ‘Abdu’s-Salám, Shaykh ‘Abdu’l-Qádir and Siyyid Dáwúdí, began to seek His presence, and, having obtained completely satisfying answers to their several queries, enrolled themselves among the band of His earliest admirers.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
During the seven years that elapsed between the resumption of His labors and the declaration of His prophetic mission—years to which we now direct our attention—it would be no exaggeration to say that the Bahá’í community, under the name and in the shape of a re-arisen Bábí community was born and was slowly taking shape, though its Creator still appeared in the guise of, and continued to labor as, one of the foremost disciples of the Báb.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
Now, however, the tide that had ebbed in so alarming a measure was turning, bearing with it, as it rose to flood point, those inestimable benefits that were to herald the announcement of the Revelation already secretly disclosed to Bahá’u’lláh.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
The Faith of the Báb, as already observed, had, in consequence of the successive and formidable blows it had received, reached the verge of extinction. Nor was the momentous Revelation vouchsafed to Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-Chál productive at once of any tangible results of a nature that would exercise a stabilizing influence on a well-nigh disrupted community. Bahá’u’lláh’s unexpected banishment had been a further blow to its members, who had learned to place their reliance upon Him. Mírzá Yaḥyá’s seclusion and inactivity further accelerated the process of disintegration that had set in. Bahá’u’lláh’s prolonged retirement to Kurdistán seemed to have set the seal on its complete dissolution.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
Now at last, in spite of Bahá’u’lláh’s reluctance to unravel the mystery surrounding His own position, the Bábís found themselves able to center both their hopes and their movements round One Whom they believed (whatever their views as to His station) capable of insuring the stability and integrity of their Faith. The orientation which the Faith had thus acquired and the fixity of the center towards which it now gravitated continued, in one form or another, to be its outstanding features, of which it was never again to be deprived.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
The return of Bahá’u’lláh from Sulaymáníyyih to Baghdád marks a turning point of the utmost significance in the history of the first Bahá’í century. The tide of the fortunes of the Faith, having reached its lowest ebb, was now beginning to surge back, and was destined to roll on, steadily and mightily, to a new high water-mark, associated this time with the Declaration of His Mission, on the eve of His banishment to Constantinople. With His return to Baghdád a firm anchorage was now being established, an anchorage such as the Faith had never known in its history. Never before, except during the first three years of its life, could that Faith claim to have possessed a fixed and accessible center to which its adherents could turn for guidance, and from which they could derive continuous and unobstructed inspiration. No less than half of the Báb’s short-lived ministry was spent on the remotest border of His native country, where He was concealed and virtually cut off from the vast majority of His disciples. The period immediately after His martyrdom was marked by a confusion that was even more deplorable than the isolation caused by His enforced captivity. Nor when the Revelation which He had foretold made its appearance was it succeeded by an immediate declaration that could enable the members of a distracted community to rally round the person of their expected Deliverer. The prolonged self-concealment of Mírzá Yaḥyá, the center provisionally appointed pending the manifestation of the Promised One; the nine months’ absence of Bahá’u’lláh from His native land, while on a visit to Karbilá, followed swiftly by His imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál, by His banishment to ‘Iráq, and afterwards by His retirement to Kurdistán—all combined to prolong the phase of instability and suspense through which the Bábí community had to pass.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)
Deciding to terminate the period of His retirement Bahá’u’lláh bade farewell to the shaykhs of Sulaymáníyyih, who now numbered among His most ardent and, as their future conduct demonstrated, staunchest admirers. Accompanied by Shaykh Sulṭán, He retraced His steps to Baghdád, on “the banks of the River of Tribulations,” as He Himself termed it, proceeding by slow stages, realizing, as He declared to His fellow-traveler, that these last days of His retirement would be “the only days of peace and tranquillity” left to Him, “days which will never again fall to My lot.”
On the 12th of Rajab 1272 A.H. (March 19, 1856) He arrived in Baghdád, exactly two lunar years after His departure for Kurdistán.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
No less urgent were the pleadings of His own kindred and friends, particularly His twelve-year old Son, ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, Whose grief and loneliness had so consumed His soul that, in a conversation recorded by Nabíl in his narrative, He had avowed that subsequent to the departure of Bahá’u’lláh He had in His boyhood grown old.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
Mírzá Yahyá, realizing full well to what a pass his unrestrained leadership of the Faith had brought him, had, moreover, insistently and in writing, besought Him to return.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
The tragic situation that had developed in the course of His two years’ absence now imperatively demanded His return. “From the Mystic Source,” He Himself explains in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “there came the summons bidding Us return whence We came. Surrendering Our will to His, We submitted to His injunction.” “By God besides Whom there is none other God!” is His emphatic assertion to Shaykh Sultán, as reported by Nabíl in his narrative, “But for My recognition of the fact that the blessed Cause of the Primal Point was on the verge of being completely obliterated, and all the sacred blood poured out in the path of God would have been shed in vain, I would in no wise have consented to return to the people of the Bayán, and would have abandoned them to the worship of the idols their imaginations had fashioned.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
Such was the sadness that overwhelmed Him on His arrival that He refused for some time to leave His house, except for His visits to Káẓimayn and for His occasional meeting with a few of His friends who resided in that town and in Baghdád.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
Little wonder that on His return to Baghdád Bahá’u’lláh should have described the situation then existing in these words: “We found no more than a handful of souls, faint and dispirited, nay utterly lost and dead. The Cause of God had ceased to be on any one’s lips, nor was any heart receptive to its message.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
Such was the decline in their fortunes that they hardly dared show themselves in public. Kurds and Persians vied with each other, when confronting them in the streets, in heaping abuse upon them, and in vilifying openly the Cause which they professed.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
Such was the audacity and effrontery of these demoralized and misguided Bábís that no less than twenty-five persons, according to ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s testimony, had the presumption to declare themselves to be the Promised One foretold by the Báb!
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
The depths of degradation to which these so-called adherents of the Faith of the Báb had sunk could not but evoke in Nabíl the memory of the sublime renunciation shown by the conduct of the companions of Mullá Ḥusayn, who, at the suggestion of their leader, had scornfully cast by the wayside the gold, the silver and turquoise in their possession, or shown by the behavior of Vaḥíd who refused to allow even the least valuable amongst the treasures which his sumptuously furnished house in Yazd contained to be removed ere it was pillaged by the mob, or shown by the decision of Ḥujjat not to permit his companions, who were on the brink of starvation, to lay hands on the property of others, even though it were to save their own lives.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)
As to Siyyid Muhammad, now given free rein by his master, Mírzá Yahyá, he had surrounded himself, as Nabíl who was at that time with him in Karbilá categorically asserts, with a band of ruffians, whom he allowed, and even encouraged,