To the Sultan of Ottoman Empire - by Bahá’u’lláh

-- provisional translation by Ahmad Sohrab

He is the Possessor in His Might and Power!

The Supreme Pen proclaims:

O thou personage, who considerers thyself the greatest of all men, while looking upon the Divine Youth, thinking Him to be the lowest of men, yet through Him the Eye of the Supreme Concourse is brightened and illumined. This Youth has never made nor will He ever make a request of thee.

For from the beginning every one of the Manifestations of Mercifulness and the Dawning-Places of the Glory of the Almighty, who have stepped forth from the Realm of Immortality upon the arena of existence and shone forth with great splendor for the quickening of the dead, men like thee have considered those Sanctified Souls and Temples of Oneness upon whom the reformation of the world depends, as the people of strife, and wrong-doers. Verily, their names (the deniers) are forgotten and ere long thy name will also be forgotten and thou shalt find thyself in great loss.

According to thy opinion this Quickener of the World and its Peace-Maker is culpable and seditious. What crime have the women, children and suffering babes committed, to merit thy wrath, oppression and hate? In every religion and community the children are considered innocent, nor does the Pen of Divine Command hold them responsible, yet the reign of thy tyranny and despotism has surrounded them. If thou art the follower of any religion or sect, read thou the Heavenly Books, the Inspired Epistles and the Divine Writings, so that thou mayest realize the irresponsibility of children. On the other hand, even those people who do not believe in God, have never committed such crimes.

In everything an effect is hidden, and no one has denied the effects of things except an ignorant one who is completely denied and deprived of intelligence. Therefore, undoubtedly the lamentation of these children and the cries of these wronged ones will produce a great effect.

You have persecuted a number of souls who have shown no opposition in your country and who have instigated no revolution against the government; nay, rather, days and nights they have been peacefully engaged in the mentioning of God. You have pillaged their properties and through your tyrannical acts, all they had was taken from them. When the order was issued for the banishment of this Youth, these souls began to lament, but the officers who constituted my guard mentioned that these souls had committed no wrong, nor has the government banished them, but if they desire they may follow You, for no one will oppose them. Consequently, they paid all their own expenses and leaving their property behind, they were contented with the Countenance of this Youth and trusting upon God they departed again with the True One, until the fortress of Akka became the place of the incarceration of Baha.

Tablet of the Manifestation (Lawh-i-Zuhúr) – by Bahá’u’lláh

-- provisional translation by Joshua Hall

In the Name of God, the Most Holy, the Omniscient, the Omnipotent, the Almighty

O thou who hast fixed thy gaze on the direction of God and art immersed in the sea of His presence and good pleasure: Know thou that the Manifestation is not an entity composed of the four elements. He is rather the inner Mystery of Divine Unity, the Pre-existent Being, the Eternal Substance, and the Unknowable Essence. He cannot be known by anything save Himself, such that one could conceive Him to be a reality emergent from the four elements or any of the fundamental constituents discussed by the philosophers, much less the four natural qualities. All such things have, instead, proceeded from His command and through the operation of His will. Always hath He existed, and forever shall He abide, without anything subsisting with Him, even as He is now in truth.

He established Himself upon the throne and revealeth to thee the verses, for He hath perceived in thy heart the fire of thy love. Is there anyone in this mortal realm so possessed of eloquence as to equal Him, any revelator who could stand before Him to surpass Him in His Cause, any being who could even claim to exist when brought face to face with Him? Nay, by thy Lord, the All-Merciful! All are nothing, void. If He were to be known through another, it could not be established that His essence transcendeth likeness, that His being is sanctified of similitude, and that He, in His singularity, is utterly distinct from the phenomena of created being.

This Ocean none may traverse, for by His speech hath been created all thou seest in the heavens or on earth. By My Self, the True One! Were He to make Himself known, as He truly is, to His creatures, they would each and all sever themselves from all things beside Him and dwell in the precincts of His presence. Indeed, thou wouldst see the kings priding themselves in their servitude to their true King, and sultans casting aside their crowns, hastening toward His direction, and walking the paths of His good pleasure. Since [this reality] is concealed from the eyes of men, they have turned toward things beside Him and, flying on the wings of self, soar in the atmosphere of their idle fancies and delusions.