Century of Light | Page 6

the legislature was meeting. The so-called "Constitutional Movement" that overthrew him and compelled the last of the Qájár kings, Ahmad Sháh, to summon a third parliament was itself riven by competing factions and shamelessly manipulated by the Shí'ih clergy. Efforts by Bahá'ís to play a constructive role in this process of modernization were repeatedly frustrated by royalist and popular factions alike, both of which were inspired by the prevailing religious prejudice and saw in the Bahá'í community merely a convenient scapegoat. Here again, only a more politically mature age than our own will be able to appreciate the way in which the Master--setting an example for future challenges that the Bahá'í community must inevitably encounter--guided the beleaguered community in doing all it could to encourage political reform, and then in being willing to step aside when these efforts were cynically rebuffed.
It was not only through His Tablets that 'Abdu'l-Bahá exercised this influence on the rapidly developing Bahá'í community in the cradle of the Faith. Unlike Westerners, Persian believers were not distinguished from other peoples of the Near East by dress and appearance, and so travellers from the cradle of the Faith did not arouse the suspicion of the Ottoman authorities. Consequently, a steady stream of Persian pilgrims provided 'Abdu'l-Bahá with another powerful means of inspiring the friends, guiding their activities, and drawing them ever more deeply into an understanding of Bahá'u'lláh's purpose. Some of the greatest names in Persian Bahá'í history were among those who journeyed to 'Akká and returned to their homes prepared to give their lives if necessary for the achievement of the Master's vision. The immortal Varqá and his son Rúhu'lláh were among this privileged number, as were Hájí Mírzá Haydar 'Alí, Mírzá Abu'l Fadl, Mírzá Muhammad-Taqí Afnán and four distinguished Hands of the Cause, Ibn-i-Abhar, Hájí Mullá Alí Akbar, Adíbu'l-Ulamá and Ibn-i-Asdaq. The spirit that today sustains Persian pioneers in every part of the world and that plays so creative a role in the building of Bahá'í community life runs like a straight line through family after family back to those heroic days. In retrospect, it is apparent that the phenomenon we today know as the twin processes of expansion and consolidation itself had its origin in those marvellous years.
Inspired by the Master's words and the accounts brought back from the Holy Land, Persian believers arose to undertake travel-teaching activities in the Far East. During the latter years of Bahá'u'lláh's Ministry, communities had been established in India and Burma, and the Faith carried as far as China; and this work was now reinforced. A demonstration of the new powers released in the Cause was the erection in the Russian province of Turkestan, where a vigorous Bahá'í community life had also developed, of the first Bahá'í House of Worship in the world,(12) a project inspired by the Master and guided, from its inception, by His advice.
It was this broad range of activities, carried out by an increasingly confident body of believers and stretching from the Mediterranean to the China Sea, that built the base of support from which 'Abdu'l-Bahá was able to pursue the promising opportunities which, as the new century opened, had already begun to unfold in the West. Not the least important feature of this base was its embrace of representatives of the Orient's great diversity of racial, religious and national backgrounds. This achievement provided 'Abdu'l-Bahá with the examples on which He would repeatedly draw in His proclamation to Western audiences of the integrating forces that had been released through Bahá'u'lláh's advent.
The greatest victory of these early years was the Master's success in constructing on Mount Carmel, on the spot designated for it by Bahá'u'lláh and through immense effort, a mausoleum for the remains of the Báb, which had been brought at great risk and difficulty to the Holy Land. Shoghi Effendi has explained that whereas in past ages the blood of martyrs was the seed of personal faith, in this day it has constituted the seed of the administrative institutions of the Cause.(13) Such an insight lends special meaning to the way in which the Administrative Centre of Bahá'u'lláh's World Order would take shape under the shadow of the Shrine of the Faith's Martyr-Prophet. Shoghi Effendi sets the Master's achievement in global and historical perspective:
For, just as in the realm of the spirit, the reality of the Báb has been hailed by the Author of the Bahá'í Revelation as "the Point round Whom the realities of the Prophets and Messengers revolve," so, on this visible plane, His sacred remains constitute the heart and center of what may be regarded as nine concentric circles,(14) paralleling thereby, and adding further emphasis to the central position accorded by the Founder of our Faith to One "from Whom God hath caused to proceed the knowledge of all that