Sacred & Inspired Writings

From the Tablet of Patience, or Tablet of Job by Bahá'u'lláh

O people of Nayriz! Thank ye God your creator who vouchsafed His bounty upon you, preferred you upon the peoples of the earth, honored you with attaining His presence, made you aware of His own self, nourished you from the fruits of the Tree of paradise at a time when all were depriving themselves of it. God gave you the bounty of appreciating His Days, God sent you the breezes of holiness and turned you to the right hand of divine unity and enabled you to get close to the holy Vale. Thus does God vouchsafe unto whomever He wishes and He chooses to confer His mercy upon those who have detached themselves of all earthly things. Thus cheer yourselves and pride yourselves over all the peoples of the earth. Know you that God has written your names upon Holy Tablets and has ordained for you a praiseworthy station in paradise. I swear by God! If the station of anyone of you should become clear all the peoples will give their lives in their desire for this station created by the hand of God. But this station is hidden from the eyes of men that the good may be distinguished from the corrupt and thus does God test the people in this world that what is in their hearts may become manifest and you have been a witness to all that.

How many servants of God who worshipped God in the days of their life and who would order the people to good and righteousness and would weep over the afflictions of the family of God and who would cast their eyes down when they would recite their prayers and their Tablets of Visitation all these to express their devotion and adoration to the Seat of Sanctity. But when the Truth came to them they turned away and disbelieved in Him until they slew Him with their own hands and were happy in their deeds. Thus does God bring to naught the deeds of those who show pride and will accept the deeds of those who turn solely unto Him, and humble themselves before His countenance and tread the path of His good pleasure.

O people of Nayriz! Recall the bounty of God wherewith He has graciously vouchsafed unto you and whereby He has taught you what He has not taught the divines of the earth -- divines who because of the great size of their turbans cannot even walk on earth and when they move it is as if a mountain of hatred moves.

I swear by God! It behooves you, O friends of God, that you sanctify yourselves from all that ye have been forbidden and thank God in all your days and your nights because He chose you for a bounty from of which others did not have a portion. You must give account of your Lord, your Creator, so that because of you the fragrances of God may be wafted and in this way you may be distinguished from those who have disbelieved and joined partners unto God. Thus does the Nightingale give counsel unto you and teach you the ways of knowledge that you may become steadfast in the religion of God and constant in that religion of love. Fear God and do not dissipate your deeds through negligence and do not impress on God as a favor that they believe in God and the person of His Manifestation. Rather it is God that has conferred the favor on you in that He has assisted you to recognize the Revelation and has shown you the paths of dignity and righteousness and has inspired you with His wondrous and treasured knowledge.

Blessed are ye the people of Nayriz in that you are patient in your suffering and afflictions in these times ordained by God and in all you heard with your ears and as all you witnessed soon God will reward you with the best reward and He shall give you what shall be pleasing to your souls and what shall establish your names in his hidden and holy Book. Strive therefore that you do not waste your fortitude with complaints and be ye acquiescent with what God has ordained unto you and what He shalt ordain in the future. For this world and its ornaments and its treasures shall all vanish in less than a moment for there is no permanence in it and you shall attain the presence of the glorious Beloved. Great is your blessedness therefore and those who sacrificed themselves in the days of God for they are of those who soared in the atmosphere of divine love until they reached a place that was forbidden unto those other than them.

Text of complete tablet
Translated by Khazeh Fananapazir, 1997-04-21
Originally written as "Súrih-i-Sabr, or Lawh-i-Ayyúb", 1863

Tablet of Visitation From Bahá'u'lláh for Vahíd-i-Dárábí

  • He is Supreme over His Cause and Almighty over His Creation.
  • May the first wave of exaltation breaking forth from the sea of the mercy of Thy Lord, the All-Compassionate, be upon thee, O mystery of the Qur’an and possessor of the secrets of the Bayan!
  • I testify that thou hast quaffed the nectar of inspiration from the chalice of the Hand of His favor and grace and attained the presence of Him Who is the Promised One of all the heavenly Books, the Scriptures and Tablets.
  • Thou didst hearken to the Divine Call when it was raised and perceived its dawning above the Exalted Horizon on the Day when all the kingdoms of the earth turned their backs on God, the Lord of all men.
  • Thou dist inhale the fragrance of the Great Announcement as it wafted from the garment of the King of Eternity.
  • I testify that thou hast championed the religion of God and His Cause through thy pen, thy tongue, and thy hand until thou didst surrender thy very self in His path and drank from the Kawthar of martyrdom in His Name and in His Love.
  • Thou wert inebriated through the Salsabíl of His Knowledge until thou didst soar upon the wings of certitude into a space where naught can be heard but for the stirrings of the soft breezes of the mercy of Thy Lord, the King of all religions.
  • Thou art he by whose calamity all the atoms of the universe have wailed and all the eyes of its creatures have wept. I testify that through thee hath appeared all the treasures of the earth and all the pearls of its seas.
  • Through thee the Brow of True Knowledge was adorned with the Crown of the Bayan, O thou who didst imbibe the choice, sealed wine before all eyes in the Name of Thy Lord, the Self-Subsisting.
  • The Glory that hath dawned from the Horizon of Bounty and the Light that hath shone from the Heaven of Justice be upon thee and upon all those who have striven with thee; who accepted Him Whom thou didst approach and repudiated whosoever had risen against thee; who arose to champion the Cause of God with thee and in thy shadow; and who gained thy presence and circled around thee.
  • I beg of Thee O my God and the God of Names, My Fashioner and the Fashioner of the Heavens, by the pearls of the Ocean of Thy Oneness and by the mysteries of Thy Book and by the sighing of Thy loved ones in their remoteness from Thee and by the cries of the sincere ones in their separation from Thee and by this sacred resting place and this exalted shrine, to forgive me and my parents and whosoever hath drawn nigh unto or will draw nigh unto this purified tomb, and he who hath visited or will visit it for Thy sake, O King of Destiny.
  • Moreover, I ask of Thee My Lord, by Him and by those who suffered martyrdom in Thy Path, to supply me with the necessities of life and to sustain Thy creatures who have laid firm hold on Thy Covenant and who have tasted the sweetness of Thy Utterance.
  • Thou art the Sovereign, the All-Knowing the All-Wise.
  • Bahá’u’lláh

Quotations from Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith

This stirring episode (…) was soon succeeded by a parallel upheaval, strikingly similar in its essential features. The scene of woeful tribulations was now shifted to the south, to the province of Fars, not far from the city where the dawning light of the Faith had broken. Nayriz and its environs were made to sustain the impact of this fresh ordeal in all its fury. The Fort of Khajih, in the vicinity of the Chinar-Sukhtih quarter of that hotly agitated village became the storm-center of the new conflagration. The hero who towered above his fellows, valiantly struggled, and fell a victim to its devouring flames was that "unique and peerless figure of his age," the far-famed Siyyid Yahyay-i-Darabi, better known as Vahid. Foremost among his perfidious adversaries, who kindled and fed the fire of this conflagration was the base and fanatical governor of Nayriz, Zaynu'l-'Abidin Khan, seconded by Abdu'llah Khan, the Shuja'u'l-Mulk, and reinforced by Prince Firuz Mirza, the governor of Shiraz. Of a much briefer duration than the Mazindaran upheaval, which lasted no less than eleven months, the atrocities that marked its closing stage were no less devastating in their consequences. Once again a handful of men, innocent, law-abiding, peace-loving, yet high-spirited and indomitable, consisting partly, in this case, of untrained lads and men of advanced age, were surprised, challenged, encompassed and assaulted by the superior force of a cruel and crafty enemy, an innumerable host of able-bodied men who, though well-trained, adequately equipped and continually reinforced, were impotent to coerce into submission, or subdue, the spirit of their adversaries.    Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p.42

The commotion that had seized Tihran and had given rise to the campaign of outrage and spoliation in Mazindaran spread even as far as Yazd, Nayriz and Shiraz, rocking the remotest hamlets, and rekindling the flames of persecution. Once again greedy governors and perfidious subordinates vied with each other in despoiling the innocent, in massacring the guiltless, and in dishonoring the noblest of their race. A carnage ensued which repeated the atrocities already perpetrated in Nayriz and Zanjan. "My pen," writes the chronicler of the bloody episodes associated with the birth and rise of our Faith, "shrinks in horror in attempting to describe what befell those valiant men and women.... What I have attempted to recount of the horrors of the siege of Zanjan ... pales before the glaring ferocity of the atrocities perpetrated a few years later in Nayriz and Shiraz." The heads of no less than two hundred victims of these outbursts of ferocious fanaticism were impaled on bayonets, and carried triumphantly from Shiraz to Abadih. Forty women and children were charred to a cinder by being placed in a cave, in which a vast quantity of firewood had been heaped up, soaked with naphtha and set alight. Three hundred women were forced to ride two by two on bare-backed horses all the way to Shiraz. Stripped almost naked they were led between rows of heads hewn from the lifeless bodies of their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers. Untold insults were heaped upon them, and the hardships they suffered were such that many among them perished.    Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 79

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