Dawn over Mount Hira and Other Essays

by Marzieh Gail

Oxford: George Ronald, 1976

From the book jacket:

The essays in this book are selected from the work, during the last forty years, of not only a distinguished social historian but a distinguished member of the Bahá’í Faith, the most recent of the world religions. Since the inception of the Bahá’í Faith just over 130 years ago, its chief goal has been the unity of mankind—a goal which is gradually coming to be seen by thinking people as the necessary and indeed the only possible solution to the problems of our age.

Such a concept of world unity bears on every field of human activity, thought and feeling. The wide range of subjects in this collection of essays should therefore come as no surprise to the reader. In her approach to questions which affect us all, the author has drawn on her knowledge of the intellectual and cultural traditions of both East and West, and has presented the Bahá’í viewpoint cogently and attractively. And in the biographical essays, through her concern for historical accuracy blended with her sense of the immediate, she is specially able to bring to life events long gone, painted as freshly as if we had experienced them ourselves.

Marzieh Gail is a daughter of the late Persian diplomat and scholar Ali-Kuli Khan Nabil, Persia’s chief diplomatic representative to the United States during the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson. Born in the United States of an American mother, Marzieh Gail accompanied her parents to various official posts including Tihrán, where she was presented at the court of the then Crown Prince Regent.

Mrs Gail graduated “With Great Distinction” and Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University, and has an M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley. She was the first woman to work on the staff of a Tihrán newspaper. Later, as a Bahá’í pioneer, Mrs Gail spent ten years in Europe, where she also did historical research on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Mrs Gail is well known to the Bahá’ís for her translations from Persian and Arabic of The Seven Valleys by Bahá’u’lláh and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s The Secret of Divine Civilization and Memorials of the Faithful. Her historical works include Persia and the Victorians (a Book Society recommendation), The Sheltering Branch, and two studies of the medieval Papacy, Avignon in Flower and The Three Popes. Her Life in the Renaissance has been translated into Italian, French and Spanish.

Contents

FOREWORD vii

I Paradise Brought Near

Dawn Over Mount Hira 1
From Sa‘dí’s Garden of Roses 9
‘Alí 12
From the Sayings of ‘Alí 14

II Take the Gentle Path
There Was Wine 19
‘For Love of Me …’ 29
Notes on Persian Love Poems 33
Current Mythology 43

III Headlines Tomorrow

The Carmel Monks 49
Headlines Tomorrow 50

IV Bright Day of the Soul

That Day in Tabríz 57
Bright Day of the Soul 62
The White Silk Dress 80
The Poet Laureate 91
Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl in America 105

V Age of All Truth

The Goal of a Liberated Mind 117
This Handful of Dust 121
The Rise of Women 128
Till Death Do Us Part 137
Atomic Mandate 145

VI The Divine Encounter

Echoes of the Heroic Age 153
Millennium 165
Easter Sunday 170
Bahá’u’lláh’s Epistle to the Son of the Wolf 176
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in America 184
‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Portrayals from East and West 194

VII Where’er You Walk

In the High Sierras 219
Midnight Oil 222
Will and Testament 226
Where’er You Walk 232

NOTES AND REFERENCES 237