It was on the fifth of Naw-Rúz (1863), while Bahá’u’lláh was celebrating
that festival in the Mazrá’iy-i-Va_shsh_á_sh_, in the outskirts of
Ba_gh_dád, and had just revealed the “Tablet of the Holy Mariner,” whose
gloomy prognostications had aroused the grave apprehensions of His
Companions, that an emissary of Námiq Pá_sh_á arrived and delivered into
His hands a communication requesting an interview between Him and the
governor.
Already, as Nabíl has pointed out in his narrative, Bahá’u’lláh had, in
the course of His discourses, during the last years of His sojourn in
Ba_gh_dád, alluded to the period of trial and turmoil that was inexorably
approaching, exhibiting a sadness and heaviness of heart which greatly
perturbed those around Him. A dream which He had at that time, the ominous
character of which could not be mistaken, served to confirm the fears and
misgivings that had assailed His companions. “I saw,” He wrote in a
Tablet, “the Prophets and the Messengers gather and seat themselves around
Me, moaning, weeping and loudly lamenting. Amazed, I inquired of them the
reason, whereupon their lamentation and weeping waxed greater, and they
said unto me: ‘We weep for Thee, O Most Great Mystery, O Tabernacle of
Immortality!’ They wept with such a weeping that I too wept with them.
Thereupon the Concourse on high addressed Me saying: ‘...Erelong shalt
Thou behold with Thine own eyes what no Prophet hath beheld.... Be
patient, be patient.’... They continued addressing Me the whole night
until the approach of dawn.” “Oceans of sorrow,” Nabíl affirms, “surged in
the hearts of the listeners when the Tablet of the Holy Mariner was read
aloud to them.... It was evident to every one that the chapter of
Ba_gh_dád was about to be closed, and a new one opened, in its stead. No
sooner had that Tablet been chanted than Bahá’u’lláh ordered that the
tents which had been pitched should be folded up, and that all His
companions should return to the city. While the tents were being removed
He observed: ‘These tents may be likened to the trappings of this world,
which no sooner are they spread out than the time cometh for them to be
rolled up.’ From these words of His they who heard them perceived that
these tents would never again be pitched on that spot. They had not yet
been taken away when the messenger arrived from Ba_gh_dád to deliver the
afore-mentioned communication from the governor.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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