Passing of Abdu'l-Baha Sources

Aziz Yazdi

Source: Tarikh 28 November 2005 13:08

Greatest Holy Leaf's Precautions

According to the eyewitness account of Mr. Aziz Yazdi, on the day of the Master's funeral the Greatest Holy Leaf directed all the friends to attend His funeral. She alone remained behind, in the Master's House alone. She arranged for a policeman to be posted at the front gate to the Master's house, and had locksmith come and change the locks on all of the doors, and the keys were brought to her. She instructed Aziz Yazdi's brother, a boy, to ensure that no one entered the holy household without her express permission. Aziz Yazdi was outside in the street in the great thong of mourners in front of the Master's house, when he observed the crowd part, and two men approach the policeman at the gate. It was Mirza Muhammad-Ali and his brother. Feigning sadness, they asked the policeman if they could enter the Master's house to express their condolences to the Greatest Holy Leaf. Mr. Yazdi's brother ran from the gate to the presence of the Greatest Holy Leaf to inform her of this, while Mirza Muhammad-'Ali waited at the front gate with the policeman. The boy returned with her words to the effect, "Today is not the day for such things." Everyone in the crowd saw Muhammad-'Alí turned away at the gate. In this way, the Greatest Holy Leaf protected the Cause, preventing Muhammad-'Alí from seizing the Master's house. He was attempting a kind of a palace coup; and the Greatest Holy Leaf had foreseen that he would attempt just that. The House of the Master was more than a residence; it was the visible administrative center of the Cause. Other than the Shrine of the Bab, it was the only Baha'i edifice in the Holy Land at that time. The Greatest Holy Leaf, who was then 75 years of age, protected it, with a locksmith, a policeman, and a trusted boy from a trusted family.

(Reference: "Remembrances of 'Abdu'l-Bahá by Aziz Yazdi," a videotape available from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Hawaiian Islands, and personal conversations with Mr. Yazdi)

1922.05.17 - Abdu'l-Bahá's "Return"

Src : Star of West Vol 13 No 4 p73 - "The Bahai Congress for Teaching and the Fourteenth Annual Convention" By LoUIS O. GREGORY.

"When Abdu'l-Bahá ascended, he left the door open that we may follow him. We can find him now in each other. 'The reality of the Cause has not yet appeared in America,' said Abdu'l-Bahá. 'When I come a second time, my coming will be very different!'

Priceless Pearl

Already, during the visit in March 1922 of Mr Remey, Shoghi Effendi had discussed with him at length various possibilities for the ultimate construction of a tomb for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the site of the future Bahá’í Temple on Mt Carmel and a general landscaping plan for the Bahá’í properties there.

TO CHECK

Obituary by Frederic Dean in the Independent and the Weekly Review

322

THE INDEPENDENT AND THE WEEKLY REVIEW

Vol. 107, No. 8797

‘Abd-Ul Baha

- Abbas Effendi

A Personal Reminiscence

By Frederic Dean

A BD-UL BAHA, whose death was chronicled in the press the other day, was more than a personality— he was an inspiration; an idealist, whose self-de votion breathed new life into dying creeds. His gospel ap pealed with equal force to Christians, Moslems, and Jews; to Buddhists and Hindus, Shintoists and Parsis. His ideal ism was to many a manifestation of the very source of life, light, and love. He came at a time when the soul’s craving for hope and faith was—seemingly—unappeased by any one of the many organized and acknowledged re ligions.

I first met the teacher in an up-town church. I had been sent by my paper to report the sermon. The speaker’s likeness to my own father was so

startling that, immediately after the service, I entered the ante.. room and told him of the remark able resemblance. Very quietly he answered: “I am your father and you are my son. Come and dine with me.” Another engagement prevented, but I asked if I might take breakfast with him the fol lowing morning. “Come,” he said. I went. And after that first meeting followed others. We walked In his garden, and, as we walked, we tailced. I told him of his peculiar attraction to me on account of my Own outlook on life; that I came from Southern Asia and that I was a Buddhist— a Buddhist-Christian. “So am I,” replied the teacher. “I am also a Confucian-Christian and a Brah mm-Christian; a Jewish and a Mohammedan-Christian. I am a brother to all who love truth— truth in whatsoever garb they choose to clothe it.”

We talked of many things—of

the beginnings of religion—of animism and ancestor wor ship, of the mysticism of Indian philosophy, of Hellenic cul ture, and of the coming of the Buddha, of the Christ and of Mohammed. He instructed me in the religion of his own home country—went back to the time when Persia attained her unequalled prosperity under the Sassanide dynasty, in the second century after the coming of the Christ. Persia’s religion was—nominally—that of Zoro aster, but it had been so debased that it could not with stand the fierce onslaught of Mohaminedanism. In Persia there was an order, or sect, of holy men and doctrinal teachers, called Sufis. All the great poets of Iran were Sufis. Omar Khayyam belonged to the brotherhood. It was in 815 that a famous Sufi, named u Sayyid ibn Abi-el-Chair, gathered about him a little band of follow ers to purge the country of the crudities and the restric tions of the Islamic dogmas. He and his disciples believed in the declaration of modern science that life is a con dition of growing or “becoming.” He, in turn, was fol lowed—in 1499—by another reformer, called Ismael, who succeeded in ejecting the Turkomans who had conquered Iran. lemsel founded a national creed. It is most natural that every so often there shall appear a new dispenser of truth; a leader of a revolution; a preacher of a new cult.

In 1844 there emerged from Shiraz a merchant, named Mirza ‘AU Mohammed and known as the “Bab,” or “Gate” (of heaven). This Bab was a novelty for a Sufi, for he proclaimed the great immortal truths to all men without distinction, truths that hitherto had been the sole posses sion of an esoteric sect. Naturally he was fought by the clergy, who had him cast into prison at Tabriz and—in July, 1850—publicly shot.

Among the followers of the Bab was Mirsa Hussein ‘All Baha ‘Ullah, the father of ‘Abd-Ul Baha. An intellectual giant, he chose to devote his entire strength to propagat ing the teachings of the martyred leader. Of course he was imprisoned, of course his property was confiscated by

the state, and he was finally ban ished to Bagdad. Turkey has ever been more tolerant of re ligious heresies than Persia. The Sultan was content to summon Baha ‘Ullah to his capital. From Constantinople the prophet went to Adrianople, where his dii

ciples grew in such numbers that he was again banished, this time

—in 1857—to Acre, a seaport on the Syrian coast, where the tenets of his belief were put into written form and given to his followers. Upon the foundations of Sufism Baha ‘Ullah built a structure of universal “working out”—a work ing out that ha8 much of Buddhism in it.

It was in the year that he an nounced his decision to follow the footsteps of the Bab .that his son, ‘Abd-Ul Baha was born—June 23, 1844. He died in 1892. Upon his death-bed he appointed “this, my eldest son,” to represent him. No sooner had the spies of the ex Sultan carried the news to the

Vildex palace than “He who was to be the Light” was cast into prison and there he remained until 1908—from his forty-eighth to his sixty-fourth year. Once freed, from his first temporary resting place, Haifa—”nestling under the shadow of Mount Carmel”—came the latest word of cheer to the world. From that moment to his last breath, last November, the dominant thought in his mind and the gov erning rule of his life was the universal propagation of the brotherhood of man.

No leader of men could be more simple in his tastes or more naive in his expression of them. On the last day that I saw him he gave me his rose—he always had a freshly picked rose on his table—and kissed me on both cheeks (as was his wont). As he left me at the door he said, “You may be waylaid on your way out. The people who are good enough to come to see me think of me and speak of me as something especially holy and set apart. But do not mind them. Think of me as your loving father and not as some divine thing to be adored.” In the re ception room I was immediately surrounded by the patient watchers, who scrambled for the rose as for some sacred relic.

Those who met him carried away a nameless something that made life’s pleasures brighter.