Memorials
of the Faithful

By
'ABDU'L-BAHÁ

Translated from the original Persian text and annotated by Marzieh Gail

BAHÁ'Í PUBLISHING TRUST
WILMETTE, ILLINOIS


This translation is dedicated to
Shoghi Effendi
Guardian of the Baha'i Faith

Love alters not with his brief hours


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For consultation on certain Persian and Arabic terms, grateful acknowledgement is made to Ali-Kuli Khan, Nabílu'd-Dawlih, Mrs. Bahia Gulick, and Allah K. Kalántar, as well as to Dr. Amín Banání who helpfully compared the Persian original with the present text.
THE TRANSLATOR


CONTENTS
Proem 1
Nabíl-i-Akbar 5
etc. 9
13
16
21
23
26
29
32
36
39
41
43
45
48
49
54
57
59
61
62
64
66
67
70
72
73
75

77
81
83
84
86
91
94
95
97
102
104
106
108
117
118
120
122
126
129
131
134
139
140
141
142
143
145
148
150
154
156
159
161
164
167
170

171
173
175
190
Guide to Persian Pronunciation 205
Glossary 207


Nota bene. There is no standard English Qur'an text. The original and several translations were used by the translator, with the preference given to Rodwell. Súrih and verse numbers are as in Rodwell.


PROEM

      This is a book about people who were trying to get into prison rather than to escape from it, because they were prisoners of a great love. Their love was tor Bahá'u'lláh, Whom the nineteenth century world bound with chains and tried to silence by shutting Him, ultimately, in the Crusaders' stronghold at 'Akká. Like the eye of the storm, He is the center of these accounts, but hardly appears in them‹remaining, as the Guardian has described Him, "transcendental in His majesty, serene, awe-inspiring, unapproachably glorious."
      The reader will probably find himself in these pages, whether he is the jeweler from Baghdad, one of the dishwashers, or the professor who could not endure the arrogance of his compeers. Mystic, feminist, cleric, artisan, merchant prince are here. Even modern Western youth will be found here, for example in the chapter on dervishes. For this is more than the brief annals of early Bahá'í disciples; it is, somehow, a book of prototypes; and it is a kind of testament of values endorsed and willed to us by the Bahá'í Exemplar, values now derided, but‹if the planet is to be made safe for humanity‹indispensable. These are short and simple accounts, but they constitute a manual of how to live, and how to die.
      The task of putting these biographies into English was given me by the Guardian many years ago, when I was on a pilgrimage to the Bahá'í world center in Haifa. Shortly afterward the Guardian sent me, to Tihrán, the text from which this translation was made. According to its Persian title page, this was the first Bahá'í book to be printed in Haifa under the Guardianship. A Persian introduction


states that 'Abdu'l-Bahá wrote the book in 1915, and granted permission to M. A. Kahrubá'í to have it published. The text, which is dated 1924, bears the seal of the Haifa Bahá'í Assembly. A second title page, in English, describes the work as "An account, from the pen of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, of the lives of some of the early Bahá'í believers who passed away during His lifetime," although the work was actually recorded from His utterances.
      Here, then, almost half a century after His passing, is a new book given to the world by 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
      We wonder how many of us, at the close of unbelievably painful and arduous years, would devote the waning time not to our own memories but to the lives of some seventy companions, many of them long dead, to save them from oblivion. 'Abdu'l-Bahá was present at many of these scenes, yet time after time He effaces Himself to focus on some companion, often on one so humble that the passing years would surely have refused him a history. And if, to the cynical, these believers seem better than ordinary men, we should remember that the presence of the Manifestation made them so, and that they are being looked at through the eyes of the Master‹Who said that the imperfect eye beholds imperfections, and that it is easier to please God than to please people.
      Thus the book is still another token of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's partiality for the human race. The love He personified was not blind but observant, not impersonal but warm and tender; it was a continual attitude of unobtrusive care. Such love, from such a Being, does not end with one lifespan. He left the world half a century ago, and most of those who longed for Him so much that the hostile said they were not Bahá'ís, but 'Abdu'l-Bahá'ís, are now vanished from our sight. But still, His love is here, for new millions to find.
THE TRANSLATOR
Keene, New Hampshire, December 1969


GUIDE TO PERSIAN
PRONUNCIATION

a   as in hat
á   rhymes with mom; or awe
ar   as in Harry
aw   rhymes with no
ch   as in church
d   like z in zebra
dh   like z in zebra
gh   sounds like a French r
h   as in hat
h   as in hat
      N.B. Always pronounce the h. Example: Teh-ron (Tihran)
i   rhymes with bet
í   rhymes with meet
kh sounds like ch in Scotch loch
Q   sounds like a French r
s   like s in yes
s   like s in yes
t   as in tea
t   as in tea
th   like s in yes
u   as "o" in short
ú   sounds like moot
      N.B. Equal emphasis on each syllable: Tá-heh-reh
      Apostrophe denotes a pause: Bahá' . . . í
    The Arabic-Persian alphabet not only represents sounds for which there is no western equivalent, but contains four different z's, three s's, etc. This means that arbitrary marks, letters, and combinations of letters must be used to transliterate Arabic and Persian words into Western tongues. Pronunciation varies all over the Middle East, and heretofore western spelling has gone according to the


nationality of the orientalist, the Englishman writing shah, the Frenchman, chah, the German schah, each nation contributing its own accent as well. To bring order out of chaos, the above system was devised by orientalists, and adopted by the Guardian for Bahá'í use. With it a uniform western spelling is achieved, and a student can tell at a glance how the word is written in the original. Letters not shown are pronounced as in English.


GLOSSARY


'Abá: cloak, mantle

Abhá: superlative of Bahá; Most Glorious; All-Glorious

Abjad reckoning: numerical value of letters in the Arabic-Persian alphabet

Afnán; the Báb's kindred. Cf. God Passes By, 239; 328

The Ancient Beauty: a title of Bahá'u'lláh

The Blessed Beauty: a title of Bahá'u'lláh

Dawlih: state; government

Farmán: order; command; royal decree

Farrásh: attendant; footman

Farsakh: same as parsang; a unit of measurement, varying from three to four miles, according to the terrain

Fatvá: judgment pronounced by a muftí

Hájí: title of a Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca

Hazíratu'l-Quds: the Sacred Fold; Bahá'í administrative center

Imám: title of the twelve Shi'ih successors of Muhammad. Unlike the Caliph of the Sunni Muslims, an elected, outward and visible head‹the vicegerency of the Prophet is to Shí'ihs a purely spiritual matter, conferred by Muhammad and each of His successors until the twelfth. The Imám is the "divinely ordained successor of the Prophet, one endowed with all perfections and spiritual gifts, one whom all the faithful must obey, whose decision is absolute and final, whose wisdom is superhuman, and whose words are authoritative."

Imám: prayer-leader

Imám-Jum'ih: prayer-leader in the Friday or cathedral mosque

Jináb: courtesy title, varying in emphasis; somewhat equivalent to Your Honor, His Honor




Kad-Khuda: borough head; village head

Kalántar: mayor

Lote-Tree: refers to the Manifestation of God

Mashriqu'l-Adhkár: dawning-place of the praise of God; Bahá'í House of Worship

Muftí: expounder of Muslim law

Mujtahid: doctor of the law; cleric whose rank entitles him to practice religious jurisprudence. Most Persian mujtahids have received their diplomas from the leading jurists of Karbilá and Najaf

Mullá: Muslim priest

Nabíl: learned; noble. The Bab and Bahá'u'lláh sometimes referred to a person by a title whose letters, in the abjad reckoning, had the same numerical value as the individual's name. E.g., the numerical value of the letters in Muhammad is 92, and that of the letters in Nabíl is also 92.

Qá'im: He Who Ariseth: a title of the Báb

Shaykhí School: a sect of Shí'ih Islam. The Shí'ihs were divided into two main branches, the "Sect of the Seven" and the "Sect of the Twelve." Sprung from the latter branch, the Shaykhí School was founded by Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kázim, forerunners of the Bab, The Guardian writes in God Passes By, his history of the first hundred years of the Bábí-Bahá'í Faith, p. xii: "I shall seek to represent and correlate . . . those momentous happenings which have insensibly, relentlessly, and under the very eyes of successive generations, perverse, indifferent or hostile, transformed a heterodox and seemingly negligible offshoot of the Shaykhí school . . . into a world religion . . ."

Sirát: bridge or path; denotes the religion of God

Siyyid: title of the Prophet Muhammad's descendants

'Ulamá: divines, scholars


      The text of Memorials of the Faithful has been set in eleven on thirteen point Fairfield, with chapter heads in Deepdene italic and initial letters in Weiss, printed on sixty pound Glatfelter antique hook paper. Composition, printing and binding are by Kingsport Press, Kingsport, Tenn. It is bound in Interlaken natural buckram with Multicolor endleaf paper.
      Calligraphic signature on half-title is by the well-known Bahá'í calligraphist, Mishkín Qalam whose life is extolled in this book. It is an artistic arrangement of the phrase "Bismi'lláhi'l-Bahíyyi'l-Abhá" which means "In the name of God, the Glorious, the Most Glorious."

(insert calligraphy scan)