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The House the Prince Wanted to Build
After Bahá’u’lláh had returned to Baghdad from his two years of withdrawal to the mountains of Kurdistan, he lived in a house close to the western bank of the Tigris River. This was the period when increasingly the Babi community began to turn to Bahá’u’lláh. Although he had not announced his mission, his writings and presence attracted the remnants of the followers of the Bab to him. During this period Bahá’u’lláh wrote works such as the Hidden Words and the Book of Certitude. The home where Bahá’u’lláh lived, a modest dwelling: become the focal center of a great number of seekers, visitors and pilgrims, including Kurds, Persians, Arabs and Turks, and … from…
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What’s Happening in October? 200th Anniversary Celebrations
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Baha’u’llah. The anniversary will be celebrated around the world on October 20 and 21. Baha’i communities everywhere will be hosting celebrations for their local areas. Two days are being celebrated is that the Baha’i Faith has two founding messengers (or manifestations) of God. The Bab and Bahá’u’lláh – and their birthdays are celebrated on successive days each year. The Bab, was the prophet-herald of the Baha’i Faith. The Bab prepared his followers for another prophet who would follow him – much in the way John the Baptist prepared people of his time for the coming of Jesus. Bahá’u’lláh was that…
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Effie Baker – Photographer of the Birth of a World Faith
What if photography had existed 2000 years ago and St Paul or St Peter had commissioned a woman to travel to Palestine to compile a photographic archive of all the sites associated with the birth of Christianity? What would our understanding of Jesus be like? In the 1930’s, a task very like this fell to a diminutive Australian woman: Effie Baker. Effie Baker was born in 1880. In her teenage years her aunt gave her a camera: a No 2A Folding Autographic Brownie. For Effie, as a student of the Ballarat East School of Arts, photography was an emerging art-form. An art which she practised together with other arts such…
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The Execution of the Bab
The Bab was in a cell in the barracks of Tabriz. He had already been condemned to death by the Amir Kabir, Persia’s highest official. The death sentence was sanctioned by the religious authority of high clergy. Now it just remained for the sentence to be carried out. Although death approached, the Bab was dictating a letter to one of his followers: Siyyid Husayn. The guards interrupted to take the Bab to his execution. He assured them that until he had completed what he had to say, no power on Earth would be able to prevent him doing so. Nonetheless they determined to take him out. With the Bab went…
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What hath God Wrought? 24 May 1844
We live in the most remarkable of times. The transformation of the material conditions of humanity has a cause. Do we really believe that the human beings who came before us were incapable of what we see in the world today? Great civilizations have come before in history – yet none of them broke out of the same reality that has existed since the dawn of agriculture. It is only in this time that humanity has passed into an entirely new reality. It has a cause. A cause larger than humanity itself. In 1844, in Shiraz, the Bab, Baha’u’llah’s immediate forerunner, spoke these words: The secret of the Day that…
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Tahirih – Herald of the Emancipation of Women
Two hundred years ago, virtually everywhere in the world, women lived in subjugation to men. It was a world so different to our own that it is difficult to imagine. It was a world in which women had little role in public life – little opportunity for education, little opportunity to work – other than in the home. In many countries women did not have the right to own property. It was a world where women were often subject to the legal control of male relatives and the law in the west, as much as the east, defended the right of husbands to beat and control their wives. Tahirih was…
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Before the Dawn: The Bab – Prophet Herald
Several times we’ve encountered mention of the Bab – the prophet-herald of Baha’u’llah. Here, is a little of the story of the time that preceded Baha’u’llah, as told in Nabil’s Narrative. The time before the dawn. Mulla Husayn, a young seminarian, was undertaking a search. He was carrying out the last wishes of his spiritual teacher who had passed away not long before. Before his death, this teacher had instructed Mulla Husayn and his fellow students to disperse and search for the new messenger of God. For this was the time foretold – the time of the return. The time when the ancient promises of sacred writings would be fulfilled. They would find that messenger if…
