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The Story of Bahá'u'lláh
Appeared: 03/15/2008
The Story of Bahá'u'lláh: Promised One of All Religions. Druzelle Cederquist. Bahá'í Publishing.
Every religion begins with a story. The oldest religions tell stories overflowing with symbolism, profound yet probably far removed from actual history. More recent religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam tell stories that no doubt contain a mix of the historic and the symbolic. By contrast, the history of the Bahá'í Faith is fairly well-known and has been told many times in many ways.
But there's the history and then there's the story, and the story has never been told quite like this before. Writer and poet Druzelle Cederquist has gathered together a wealth of material about the lives of the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh and woven it into a story that carries us from the earliest glimmerings of the twin revelations through 'Abdu'l-Bahá's assumption of the role of Center of the Covenant assigned to Him by His Father. Along the way, she helps us come about as close as we can to feeling what it must have been like to be an eyewitness to those momentous events. Listen to how she introduces the conference of Badasht:
Warm breezes rustled the leaves of trees whose fruit would slowly ripen into peaches and pomegranates, cherries and apples—plump, juicy, and sweet. It was the end of June, 1848. Northeast of Tehran, on the other side of the Elburz Mountains, Husayn-'Alí chose three gardens outside the village of Badasht for the conference of Bábís. There, near the gentle ripple and splash of a stream, with the mountains tall and purple in the distance, tents were pitched for the eighty-one Bábís who attended.... Each day of the conference a newly revealed tablet was chanted to the gathered Bábís; each day a Muslim law or tradition was repealed. Each Bábí received a new name symbolizing their new spiritual reality. 1
Many events in this story, in spite of being well-known, acquire a new clarity in this book. Bahá'ís are quite familiar, for example, with the story of the tragic death of Bahá'u'lláh's son Midhí. Yet here we come face-to-face with it:
It was early evening. Mírzá Midhí usually spent the last hours of the day with his father, transcribing what Bahá'u'lláh revealed. But today his services had not been needed. Mírzá Midhí was free, instead, to climb the stairs to the flat prison roof, a favorite place for the prisoners to go. How good it felt at the end of a hot summer's day to stand on the roof in the fresh evening air.
Mírzá Midhí loved to walk on the roof, chanting his prayers or quietly meditating. The vast evening sky sprinkled with a few early stars made the prison seem farther away and God that much closer. Mírzá Midhí always walked carefully around the unguarded skylight—a large hole the roof that opened above the kitchen.
This evening, like so many others, Mírzá Midhí paced back and forth on the roof's familiar space. Feelings of joy filled his soul as he wrapped himself deeply in prayer, and as his thoughts centered on the world within, his eyes closed to the world outside. 2
Even those not familiar with the story can guess in general terms what happened next. The youth fell through the open skylight and landed on a wooden crate, the shattered wood of which pierced his body. He didn't die immediately. Cederquist goes on to show us 'Abdu'l-Bahá's terrible grief and Bahá'u'lláh's last conversation with his son, who asked not to be healed but that his life be accepted as a sacrifice so that the Bahá'ís, who had been prevented by the authorities from entering Bahá'u'lláh's presence, could do so. There is more to the story, but I'll let you read it for yourself.
The story of Bahá'u'lláh is not confined to the middle eastern countries through which He passed. His teachings were meant for the whole world and His influence was felt, directly or indirectly, around the globe. Cederquist weaves the global picture into the story, relating not only how word of the new religion made its way to other lands but also pointing to significant events taking place at the time. In part this is to help us integrate the origins of the Bahá'í Faith with the broad sweep of history, but in part it also emphasizes that the very principles Bahá'u'lláh was teaching were simultaneously being taken up by many others who were quite unaware of His existence. We are reminded of Bahá'u'lláh's own statement on the power of the Word of God:
Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God is endowed with such potency as can instill new life into every human frame, if ye be of them that comprehend this truth. All the wondrous works ye behold in this world have been manifested through the operation of His supreme and most exalted Will, His wondrous and inflexible Purpose. Through the mere revelation of the word 'Fashioner,' issuing forth from His lips and proclaiming His attribute to mankind, such power is released as can generate, through successive ages, all the manifold arts which the hands of man can produce. 3
So this is not just the story of Bahá'u'lláh or the Bahá'í Faith, but of humanity as a whole.
Having said all that, something did trip me up. Although she tries to put us there with the action, following what is almost a Bahá'í tradition Cederquist doesn't alter the dialogue she incorporates from earlier histories. Why is this an issue? Well, most of the characters in this story spoke Persian or Arabic. Their words, written down by eyewitnesses or early Bahá'í historians, were most often translated into Elizabethan English. This can be a little hard for some people to get used to, but even worse it sometimes comes across as, to be blunt, silly. The most egregious example occurs when Tahirih is about to be killed. Her captors bring her to the executioner for the coup de grâce. The executioner and his men happen to be drunk at the time and, probably put out at being ordered to actually do some work, he says (according to the English version of The Dawnbreakers), "Interrupt not the gaiety of our festival!"
Which isn't exactly what you'd expect a drunkard to shout. (Or maybe you would. I don't know.) I understand why Cederquist chose not to rephrase it as, say, "Leave us alone!" Baha'is, being used to those sorts of translations, hesitate to alter the dialogue found in their histories. But what the executioner said wasn't Holy Scripture and in point of fact wasn't even English. Sometimes it may make sense to offer a more realistic, less flowery translation. I would argue that in a book such as this which is intended for the general public, it probably does.
But that's merely one small quibble with what is otherwise a remarkable book telling an extraordinary story. Add to all the good things about this book its several helpful appendices, glossary of terms, and solid index, and you have a wonderful addition to your bookshelf.
1. Cederquist, The Story of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 57-58.
2. Cederquist, p. 215.
3. Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, LXXIV, p. 141-142.
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