23

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH

I testify, O my God,

that if I were given a thousand lives by Thee,

and offered them up all in Thy path,

I would still have failed to repay

the least of the gifts which, by Thy grace,

Thou hast bestowed upon me.

Bahá’u’lláh¹

Born in 1817, Bahá’u’lláh was two years older than the Báb. His father was an advisor to the shah, and the family was quite wealthy, owning houses in both Tehran and Mázindarán. When Bahá’u’lláh was just twenty-two years old, His father died. Bahá’u’lláh became head of the large household (His father had four wives, three concubines, and seventeen children, several of whom were still young). Everyone expected Him to assume His father’s position in the shah’s court, but He refused to follow a political path. Instead, He spent a great deal of time using His inherited wealth to minister to the needs of the less fortunate, and within a few years, He acquired the nickname Father of the Poor. Bahá’u’lláh’s wife, Navváb, who wholeheartedly assisted Him, was affectionately referred to as the Mother of Consolation.

Less than three months after the Báb announced His Mission, Bahá’u’lláh learned of it. And even though this new religion, the Bábí Faith, was regarded by the powers of the day as a threat to the existing political and ecclesiastical order, Bahá’u’lláh declared Himself a follower and began teaching others about it. In 1848, He was arrested for this activity and punished by being bastinadoed (having the soles of his feet beaten until they bled).

After the Báb was executed by a firing squad in 1850, there was a concerted effort to obliterate the Bábí Faith. More than a thousand Bábís were killed, and many were tortured. Numerous others were arrested, including Bahá’u’lláh. For four months, He was imprisoned in a filthy underground prison in Tehran, where He was forced to wear a hundred-pound chain around His neck while His feet were immobilized by stocks.

During His short ministry, the Báb, like John the Baptist, had warned those who would listen that a Messenger greater than He would soon appear. During His imprisonment, Bahá’u’lláh was summoned to His destiny as that very Messenger, an experience He later described in these terms: “I lay asleep on the bed of self when lo, Thou didst waken me with the divine accents of Thy voice, and didst unveil to me Thy beauty, and didst enable me to listen to Thine utterances, and to recognize Thy Self, and to speak forth Thy praise, and to extol Thy virtues, and to be steadfast in Thy love.”²

For many people, the most exhilarating facet of Bahá’u’lláh’s role as the next Manifestation of God was the way He simultaneously fulfilled prophecies and expectations from all of the world’s major religions. From the Bahá’í point of view, Bahá’u’lláh was the mystical return of Christ, ushering in the Day of Resurrection promised by the New Testament and the Qur’án. He was also the King of Glory mentioned in Psalms and awaited by Judaism. He was the tenth Avatar of Hinduism, the Shah Bahram or Saoshyant (Savior) of Zoroastrianism, and the Great Spirit anticipated by many American Indian tribes. He was also the Buddha Maitreye—the Buddha of universal fellowship. But, fascinating as it might be to investigate these claims, the primary goal of this chapter is to sketch out the genetic lines connecting Bahá’u’lláh to Abraham—which means it’s time to take a look at the family tree.³

A COMPLICATED FAMILY

Bahá’u’lláh was a descendant of Abraham’s third wife, Keturah. He was also a descendant of Sarah through the line of Isaac, Jacob, Jesse, and King David.⁴

The descent from Keturah is easy to understand. As described in Chapter 17, Keturah’s six sons spread out to the east of Canaan along various trade routes. Each son carried “gifts” from Abraham, and one of the most enduring was the gift of His genes. Because a major trade route ran though northern Iran, the genes might have reached that area within a century or so of Abraham’s death. Or they could have filtered in later, through liaisons facilitated by invasions and counter-invasions among the various tribal nations of greater Mesopotamia. In either case, Bahá’u’lláh’s ancestors, who came from northern Iran, carried the link, and every generation passed the heritage of Keturah along until, finally, it was inherited by the mother of Bahá’u’lláh.*

The descent from Sarah is much more complicated. It begins with a line leading back from Bahá’u’lláh’s father to two of the twelve Sasanian kings who ruled Persia (including what is now Iran) for four centuries, from AD 224 to AD 636. From there, as laid out in a series of genealogical documents penned c. AD 900 by Muslim historian Muḥammad Al-Tabari, it moves back to a man named Sasan, who was the grandfather of the first Sasanian king and gave his name to the dynasty of Sasanian kings.⁵

Sasan was born within a century or so of Jesus. He was a Zoroastrian priest and perhaps also a minor prince, but he is important here because according to Al-Tabari’s genealogy, Sasan was a descendant of Cyrus the Great of Persia. Cyrus was a Zoroastrian and an empire-builder who raised an army, marched out of Persia and conquered Babylon in the sixth century BC. After adding the conquered lands to the Persian Empire, Cyrus did something so memorable that he is mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament: he freed the Jews, who had been in Babylonian captivity for a half-century, and allowed them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild Solomon’s temple.⁶

Al-Tabari indicates that while Cyrus was in Babylon, he took a Jewish woman named Rahab as a concubine. Rahab had a brother named Zerubbabel, and she asked Cyrus to appoint Zerubbabel as the leader of the exiles who were returning to Palestine. The appointment took place, and the Old Testament confirms that Zerubbabel left Babylon and moved to Jerusalem to lay the foundation of the second temple. Rahab, however, was content to stay with Cyrus, and she bore him a son named Sasan.

Naturally enough, Rahab shared Zerubbabel’s genealogy, which is outlined in the Bible and clarified in the Bahá’í writings. Their line traces back through King David, through David’s father, Jesse, and then to Jacob, to Isaac and, finally, to Sarah and Abraham.⁷ In a genetic sense, then, Bahá’u’lláh “sits” on the throne of David, an attribute stressed in several Old Testament prophecies.

One last tidbit of information about Bahá’u’lláh’s complicated genealogy is the information that He was also a descendant of Zoroaster. The first Sasanian king (Ardashir) was one of the hereditary guardians of a major Zoroastrian temple, a position indicating his descent from Zoroaster’s children.⁸ The succeeding Sasanian kings shared this link to Zoroaster, and thus Bahá’u’lláh did, too.

PRAISING THE PAST

Bahá’u’lláh frequently mentioned the Messengers of God Who preceded Him, and He praised Their accomplishments. He described Moses as the “Revealer of the Pentateuch,” Who “held converse with God” and was “armed with the rod of celestial dominion.” He wrote of Jesus as the “Spirit of God,” and the “Author of the Gospel,” Who came with “sovereignty and power.”⁹

Muḥammad was described as a “Daystar of Truth,” Whose Revelation was a trumpet call “sounded in the heart of the universe.” Bahá’u’lláh also lauded the Báb, calling Him the “Primal Point” and the “Most Exalted One,” whose countenance was so bright that it “hath enveloped, and will continue to envelop, the whole of creation.”¹⁰

Bahá’u’lláh likened the previous Messengers to “Birds of the celestial Throne” who “all drink from the one Cup of the love of God,” and proclaim the irresistible Faith of God. Although each Manifestation of God has a different personality, has been commissioned to reveal Himself though specific acts, bears a different name, and has a special mission, Bahá’u’lláh explained that all of them came in order “to liberate the children of men from the darkness of ignorance, and guide them to the light of true understanding.”¹¹

Bahá’u’lláh referred to Himself as a Voice, whose “sole purpose hath been to hand down unto men that which I was bidden to deliver by God …”, and Whose objective was “the betterment of the world and the tranquility of its peoples.”¹²

PARALLELS BETWEEN BAHÁ’U’LLÁH AND ABRAHAM

To mark Abraham’s status as a Divine Messenger, God changed His birth name of Abram to Abraham, meaning father of a multitude. The same thing happened to Bahá’u’lláh, whose birth name of Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alí was changed to Bahá’u’lláh, which means Glory of God.

Like Abraham, Bahá’u’lláh was banished more than once, and His final destination was the same: the Land of Canaan.

The first exile came in 1853, when the Persian government sent Bahá’u’lláh from Tehran in Persia to Baghdad, which at that time was under the rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Although Baghdad had not yet been built when Abraham was alive, and Abraham’s birthplace lay in ruins by the time Bahá’u’lláh entered the world, the two cities were just miles apart, smack dab in the middle of Babylon or, as Genesis terms it, Ur of the Chaldees.

From Babylon / Ur / Mesopotamia, both Bahá’u’lláh and Abraham were banished to Turkey, and both of them were accompanied in their exile by family members. Constantinople (Istanbul) was the first Turkish city to which Bahá’u’lláh was sent. The exiles rode mules (women and children rode in howdahs—special seats strapped onto the backs of the mules), and the caravan was guarded by soldiers on horseback.

The thousand-mile journey from Baghdad to Constantinople took Bahá’u’lláh’s party almost four months. The first half of the route ran along the Tigris River, paralleling the trek Abraham made along the Euphrates River during His move from Ur to Harran.

After three months in Constantinople, Bahá’u’lláh was sent to Adrianople (Edirne). Then, in 1868, He was exiled to the Land of Canaan (Palestine / Israel). He, His family, and a group of other Bahá’í prisoners—seventy people in all—were taken by boat from Gallipoli (Gelibolu) to Alexandria in Egypt (the land where Moses was born and that both Abraham and Jesus visited). From Alexandria, the boat sailed northwest to Canaan, landing at the prison of Acre. Acre is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world, and it is quite possible Abraham, too, passed through Acre when going from Harran to Canaan.

There is no record of the prophecies that might have been fulfilled through the successive banishments of Abraham, but when pondering the exiles of Bahá’u’lláh, one can readily connect His movements with a biblical passage found in the Book of Micah: “In that day also he shall come even to thee from Assyria, and from the fortified cities, and from the fortress even to the river, and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain.”¹³

Bahá’u’lláh came to the Land of Canaan by way of Baghdad (Assyria), and from the fortified cities of Constantinople and Adrianople. He was then confined to a fortress—the prison-fortress of Acre. After two years in the fortress, He was released and allowed to live in the countryside near a stream. During that period, He was given the opportunity to make frequent visits to a quiet island in the stream, and a garden fragrant with the scent of jasmine and orange flowers was gradually created there. The island became known as the Ridván Garden (Paradise Garden), and today it welcomes a steady flow of Bahá’í pilgrims.

“Sea to sea” matches the manner in which Bahá’u’lláh was forced to sail on the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and then across the Mediterranean Sea to Acre. The final phrase of the verse in Micah—“mountain to mountain”—is an apt description of the way in which Bahá’u’lláh spent the early part of His life in the Alborz mountains of northern Iran, traveled into exile through the mountains of Iraq and Turkey, and then, near the end of His life, traveled around the bay from Acre to Haifa, Israel, where He pitched a tent and camped on the mountain whose name means Vineyard of God—Mount Carmel.

* In God Passes By, p. 94, Shoghi Effendi describes the lineage of Bahá’u’lláh, his great-grandfather, this way: “He derived His descent, on the one hand, from Abraham (the Father of the Faithful) through his wife Keturah, and on the other from Zoroaster, as well as from Yazdigird, the last king of the Sasaniyan dynasty.” Because it was Bahá’u’lláh’s father who was descended from Zoroaster and Yazdigird, the presumption I have made from Shoghi Effendi’s wording is that it was Bahá’u’lláh’s mother whose family traced its heritage to Katurah.