A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
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The Covenant of God with Humankind |
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In June 1877, Bahá’u’lláh at last emerged from the strict confinement of
the prison-city of ‘Akká, and moved with His family to “Mazra‘ih”, a small
estate a few miles north of the city.
1
As had been predicted in His statement
to the Turkish government, Sulṭán Abdu’l-’Aziz had been overthrown and
assassinated in a palace coup, and gusts from the winds of political change
sweeping the world were beginning to invade even the shuttered precincts of the
Ottoman imperial system. After a brief two-year stay at Mazra‘ih,
Bahá’u’lláh moved to “Bahjí”, a large mansion surrounded by gardens, which
His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had rented for Him and the members of His extended
family.
2
The remaining twelve years of His life were devoted to His writings
on a wide range of spiritual and social issues, and to receiving a stream of
Bahá’í pilgrims who made their way, with great difficulty, from Persia and
other lands.
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Throughout the Near and Middle East the nucleus of a community life was
beginning to take shape among those who had accepted His message. For its
guidance, Bahá’u’lláh had revealed a system of laws and institutions designed
to give practical effect to the principles in His writings.
3
Authority was
vested in councils democratically elected by the whole community, provisions
were made to exclude the possibility of a clerical elite arising, and principles
of consultation and group decision making were established.
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At the heart of this system was what Bahá’u’lláh termed a “new Covenant”
between God and humankind. The distinguishing feature of humanity’s coming of
age is that, for the first time in its history, the entire human race is consciously
involved, however dimly, in the awareness of its own oneness and of the
earth as a single homeland. This awakening opens the way to a new relationship
between God and humankind. As the peoples of the world embrace the spiritual
authority inherent in the guidance of the Revelation of God for this age,
Bahá’u’lláh said, they will find in themselves a moral empowerment which
human effort alone has proven incapable of generating. “A new race of men”
4
will emerge as the result of this relationship, and the work of building a
global civilization will begin. The mission of the Bahá’í community was to
demonstrate the efficacy of this Covenant in healing the ills that divide the
human race.
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Bahá’u’lláh died at Bahjí on May 29, 1892, in His 75th year. At the time
of His passing, the cause entrusted to Him forty years earlier in the darkness
of Teheran’s Black Pit was poised to break free of the Islamic lands where it
had taken shape, and to establish itself first across America and Europe and
then throughout the world. In doing so, it would itself become a vindication
of the promise of the new Covenant between God and humankind. For alone of
all the world’s independent religions, the Bahá’í Faith and its community of
believers were to pass successfully through the critical first century of
their existence with their unity firmly intact, undamaged by the age-old
blight of schism and faction. Their experience offers compelling evidence for
Bahá’u’lláh’s assurance that the human race, in all its diversity, can learn
to live and work as one people, in a common global homeland.
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Just two years before His death, Bahá’u’lláh received at Bahjí one of the
few Westerners to meet Him, and the only one to leave a written account of the
experience. The visitor was Edward Granville Browne, a rising young orientalist
from Cambridge University, whose attention had originally been attracted by the
dramatic history of the Báb and His heroic band of followers. Of his meeting
with Bahá’u’lláh, Browne wrote:
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Though I dimly suspected whither I was going and whom I was to behold
(for no distinct intimation had been given to me), a second or two elapsed
ere, with a throb of wonder and awe, I became definitely conscious that
the room was not untenanted. In the corner where the divan met the wall
sat a wondrous and venerable figure… The face of him on whom I gazed
I can never forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes
seemed to read one’s very soul; power and authority sat on that ample
brow… No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself
before one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might
envy and emperors sigh for in vain! A mild dignified voice bade me be
seated, and then continued:—“Praise be to God that thou hast
attained!…Thou hast come to see a prisoner and an exile…We desire
but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; yet they
deem us a stirrer up of strife and sedition worthy of bondage and
banishment…That all nations should become one in faith and all men
as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of
men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and
differences of race be annulled—what harm is there in this?…Yet so
it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away,
and the ‘Most great Peace’ shall come…”
5
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| 1. |
Although Sulṭán Abdu’l-’Aziz’ order of banishment was never formally revoked, the responsible political authorities came to regard it as null and void. They, therefore, indicated that Bahá’u’lláh could establish His residence outside the city walls, should He choose to do so.
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| 2. |
The mansion, which had been built by a wealthy Christian Arab merchant of ‘Akká, had been abandoned by him when an outbreak of plague began to spread. The property was first rented and, some years after Bahá’u’lláh’s passing, purchased by the Bahá’í community. Bahá’u’lláh’s grave is located in a Shrine in the gardens of Bahjí, and is now the focal point of pilgrimage for the Bahá’í world.
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| 3. |
For a summary of this body of teaching see World Order, pp. 143–57, and Shoghi Effendi’s Principles of Bahá’í Administration (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1973), throughout. A fully annotated English translation of the central document in this body of writings, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (“The Most Holy Book”), is being published to coincide with the centenary of Bahá’u’lláh’s passing, 1992.
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| 4. |
Advent, p. 16.
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| 5. |
Edward G. Browne, A Traveller’s Narrative (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1930), pp. xxxix-xl.
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