“sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were endured by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá”

To the mounting tide of trials which laid low the Báb, to the long-drawn-out calamities which rained on Bahá’u’lláh, to the warnings sounded by both the Herald and the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation, must be added the sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were endured by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as well as His pleas, and entreaties, uttered in the evening of His life, in connection with the dangers that increasingly threatened the whole of mankind.

• Born in the very year that witnessed the inception of the Bábí Revelation;
• baptized with the initial fires of persecution that raged around that nascent Cause;
• an eyewitness, when a boy of eight, of the violent upheavals that rocked the Faith which His Father had espoused;
• sharing with Him, the ignominy, the perils, and rigors consequent upon the successive banishments from His native-land to countries far beyond its confines;
• arrested and forced to support, in a dark cell, the indignity of imprisonment soon after His arrival in Akká;
• the object of repeated investigations and the target of continual assaults and insults under the despotic rule of Sultán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, and later under the ruthless military dictatorship of the suspicious and merciless Jamál Páshá—

He, too, the Center and Pivot of Bahá’u’lláh’s peerless Covenant and the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, was made to taste, at the hands of potentates, ecclesiastics, governments and peoples, the cup of woe which the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, as well as so many of their followers, had drained. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The world turned a deaf ear to the message of Baha’u’llah

Who is the ruler, may it not be confidently asked, whether of the East or of the West, who, at any time since the dawn of so transcendent a Revelation, has been prompted to raise his voice either in its praise or against those who persecuted it? Which people has, in the course of so long a captivity, felt urged to arise and stem the tide of such tribulations? Who is the sovereign, excepting a single woman, shining in solitary glory, who has, in however small a measure, felt impelled to respond to the poignant call of Bahá’u’lláh? Who amongst the great ones of the earth was inclined to extend this infant Faith of God the benefit of his recognition or support? Which one of the multitudes of creeds, sects, races, parties and classes and of the highly diversified schools of human thought, considered it necessary to direct its gaze towards the rising light of the Faith, to contemplate its unfolding system, to ponder its hidden processes, to appraise its weighty message, to acknowledge its regenerative power, to embrace its salutary truth, or to proclaim its eternal verities? Who among the worldly wise and the so-called men of insight and wisdom can justly claim, after the lapse of nearly a century, to have disinterestedly approached its theme, to have considered impartially its claims, to have taken sufficient pains to delve into its literature, to have assiduously striven to separate facts from fiction, or to have accorded its cause the treatment it merits? Where are the preeminent exponents, whether of the arts or sciences, with the exception of a few isolated cases, who have lifted a finger, or whispered a word of commendation, in either the defense or the praise of a Faith that has conferred upon the world so priceless a benefit, that has suffered so long and so grievously, and which enshrines within its shell so enthralling a promise for a world so woefully battered, so manifestly bankrupt? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Some passages from Baha’u’llah concerning His sufferings

No wonder that from the Pen of Him Who bore this anguish with such sublime patience these words should have been revealed:

• “He Who is the Lord of the seen and unseen is now manifest unto all men. His blessed Self hath been afflicted with such harm that if all the seas, visible and invisible, were turned into ink, and all that dwell in the kingdom into pens, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth into scribes, they would, of a certainty, be powerless to record it.”
• And again: “I have been, most of the days of My life, even as a slave, sitting under a sword hanging on a thread, knowing not whether it would fall soon or late upon him.”
• “All this generation,” He affirms, “could offer Us were wounds from its darts, and the only cup it proffered to Our lips was the cup of its venom. On Our neck We still bear the scar of chains, and upon Our body are imprinted the evidences of an unyielding cruelty.”
• “Twenty years have passed, O kings!” He, addressing the kings of Christendom, at the height of His mission, has written, “during which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh tribulation. No one of them that were before Us hath endured the things We have endured. Would that ye could perceive it! They that rose up against Us have put Us to death, have shed Our blood, have plundered Our property, and violated Our honor. Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye, nevertheless, have failed to stay the hand of the aggressor. For is it not your clear duty to restrain the tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal equitably with your subjects, that your high sense of justice may be fully demonstrated to all mankind?” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Some of the “ordeal[s] and…indignities” that Baha’u’llah suffered

To enumerate a few of the outstanding features of this moving drama will suffice to evoke in the reader of these pages, already familiar with the history of the Faith, the memory of those vicissitudes which it has experienced, and which the world has until now viewed with such frigid indifference.

• The forced and sudden retirement of Bahá’u’lláh to the mountains of Sulaymáníyyih, and the distressing consequences that flowed from His two years’ complete withdrawal;
• the incessant intrigues indulged in by the exponents of Shí’ih Islám in Najaf and Karbilá, working in close and constant association with their confederates in Persia;
• the intensification of the repressive measures decreed by Sultán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz which brought to a head the defection of certain prominent members of the exiled community;
• the enforcement of yet another banishment by order of that same Sultán, this time to that far off and most desolate of cities, causing such despair as to lead two of the exiles to attempt suicide;
• the unrelaxing surveillance to which they were subjected upon their arrival in Akká, by hostile officials, and the insufferable imprisonment for two years in the barracks of that town;
• the interrogatory to which the Turkish páshá subsequently subjected his Prisoner at the headquarters of the government;
• His confinement for no less than eight years in a humble dwelling surrounded by the befouled air of that city, His sole recreation being confined to pacing the narrow space of His room—

these, as well as other tribulations, proclaim, on the one hand, the nature of the ordeal and the indignities He suffered, and point, on the other, the finger of accusation at those mighty ones of the earth who had either so sorely maltreated Him, or deliberately withheld from Him their succor. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The “other tribulations which, before and immediately after this dreadful episode [Siyah-Chal], touched Baha’u’llah: - "the greatest drama in the world’s spiritual history"

And what of the other tribulations which, before and immediately after this dreadful episode, touched Him?

• What of His confinement in the home of one of the kad-khudás of Tihrán
• What of the savage violence with which He was stoned by the angry people in the neighborhood of the village of Níyálá?
• What of His incarceration by the emissaries of the army of the Sháh in Mázindarán, and His receiving the bastinado by order, and in the presence, of the assembled siyyids and mujtahids into whose hands He had been delivered by the civil authorities of Ámul?
• What of the howls of derision and abuse with which a crowd of ruffians subsequently pursued Him?
• What of the monstrous accusation brought against Him by the Imperial household, the Court and the people, when the attempt was made on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh?
• What of the infamous outrages, the abuse and ridicule heaped on Him when He was arrested by responsible officers of the government, and conducted from Níyávarán “on foot and in chains, with bared head and bare feet,” and exposed to the fierce rays of the midsummer sun, to the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán?
• What of the avidity with which corrupt officials sacked His house and carried away all His possessions and disposed of His fortune?
• What of the cruel edict that tore Him from the small band of the Báb’s bewildered, hounded, and shepherdless followers, separated Him from His kinsmen and friends, and banished Him, in the depth of winter, despoiled and defamed, to ‘Iráq?

Severe as were these tribulations which succeeded one another with bewildering rapidity as a result of the premeditated attacks and the systematic machinations of the court, the clergy, the government and the people, they were but the prelude to a harrowing and extensive captivity which that edict had formally initiated. Extending over a period of more than forty years, and carrying Him successively to ‘Iráq, Sulaymáníyyih, Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the penal colony of Akká, this long banishment was at last ended by His death, at the age of over three score years and ten, terminating a captivity which, in its range, its duration and the diversity and severity of its afflictions, is unexampled in the history of previous Dispensations.

No need to expatiate on the particular episodes which cast a lurid light on the moving annals of those years. No need to dwell on the character and actions of the peoples, rulers and divines who have participated in, and contributed to heighten the poignancy of the scenes of this, the greatest drama in the world’s spiritual history.

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

“For three days and three nights no manner of food or drink was given to Bahá’u’lláh”

“For three days and three nights,” Nabíl has recorded in his chronicle, “no manner of food or drink was given to Bahá’u’lláh. Rest and sleep were both impossible to Him. The place was infested with vermin, and the stench of that gloomy abode was enough to crush the very spirits of those who were condemned to suffer its horrors.” “Such was the intensity of His suffering that the marks of that cruelty remained imprinted upon His body all the days of His life.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)