From memory of Ustad Muhammad-'Aliy-i Salmini

From the memoirs of Ustad Muhammad-'Aliy-i Salmani

We remained about fifteen days at the inn in Istanbul, and then rented another place and moved there. It was a stately house. In Istanbul Bahá'u'lláh called on no one, and He told Aqay-i Kalim: "I will go nowhere. You go wherever you think best." And so, Aqay-i Kalim would visit the house of such leaders of state as he felt advisable. The Ottoman Government furnished our expenses in whatever amounts were suggested to them by Shamsi Bey.

In Istanbul, every day at noon Bahá'u'lláh would go to the Mosque of Sultan Muhammad and there recite the prayer in the manner of Islam, and He would chant communes as well. During this period, every seven or eight days, He would frequent the bathhouse, and on occasion I would be with Him. There was another mosque known as Khirqiy-i Sharif [the Mosque of the Prophets's Cloak], and He would visit there, too.

There in Istanbul people would come to visit, and Bahá'u'lláh would converse with them. Finally, word was brought that by government order He must leave for Edirne.

Azal was his usual self: to Shamsi Bey he had not made himself known as Bahá'u'lláh's brother, but had presented himself as a servant of the Darvish Mirza 'Ali Khan of Khurasan. Most days he would come to see Bahá'u'lláh, and one day, contrary to his custom, he brought in some news, saying: "There is talk that You will be obliged to leave for Edirne."                                                      Photo: A portrait of Mirza Musa

Then Shamsi Bey paid an official call and declared on behalf of the government: "You are ordered to Edirne."

Bahá'u'lláh categorically stated: "We refuse."

After Shamsi Bey had gone, Bahá'u'lláh came out and said to the friends "Be confident. Nothing bad will happen." Smiling, He added: "And anyway, what could be the harm of it if I should give them two or three of you no-goods to put to death?" And then He left. Later, into the biruni came Azal and Siyyid Muhammad and Haji Mirza Ahmad of Kashan. They sat together, and Azal said, "If you want to cross a stream, which is better, that half your satchel should get wet, or all of it?"  

"Obviously, half of it," was their answer.

Afterward we reported to Bahá'u'lláh what Azal had said. He replied: "I stand by my statement."

Mirza Safa of Khurasan came in, and said among other things: "By the government's edict, you must go to Edirne. None can refuse to obey the government's edict."

Bahá'u'lláh replied, "Mirza Safa, are you trying to frighten me with this government? Even if all the inhabitants of the world should come against me with drawn swords, I will still fear no man."

Azal sent in word: "They will trample down our wives and children! They will put us all to death! We will go."

And Bahá'u'lláh answered: "It makes no difference if they kill us. As for our families, we can arrange things in such a way that they will not be held. What could be better for us than to be slain by them in the path of God?" Then very firmly He said, "We will not go."

However, Azal and Siyyid Muhammad and Haji Mirza Ahmad and his wife and children kept at it, constantly repeating: "We will go."

And people from the government came again, and still they received the identical reply from Bahá'u'lláh: "I stand by what I have already said. No matter that some others are saying we will go, no matter that they are consenting to depart, my answer is the same as before."

At a later time He commented: "That fellow [Azal] thwarted us. Otherwise the Faith would have been widely proclaimed -- and now this will not come to pass." And another time he said, "If, in Istanbul, Azal had allowed it to happen, there would have been a wonderful proclamation of the Cause of God. Had they killed us, this would have spread the Faith far and wide, and had they not killed us -- and they would not have -- this too would have widely proclaimed, it." He said this with great regret.

Finally, what with the others' insistence, entreaties, supplications, and tears, He bade them prepare for the departure to Edirne, Mirza Musa went wherever he thought best to bid people good-bye. They rented a number of ox-drawn carts. The Master rode on a horse. Mirza Yahya was on a donkey Nothing new happened along the way, except that Bahá'u'lláh would say: "Why did we come?"

IN EDIRNE

At last we reached Edirne,[1] and Bahá'u'lláh chose to stop at a caravanserai. With Him from Constantinople had come a Turkish captain -- a yuz-bashi -- with a number of soldiers, and this captain made a request of Bahá'u'lláh. He said, "I wish to be promoted to major -- bin-bashi." He went back to Istanbul, and he was. An excellent man, and a grateful one too."

[1 On December 12, 1863]

He rented a house for Bahá'u'lláh, another for the friends, and third for Mirza Musa. The house assigned to the friends had a stable room, and the horses were brought there. The house of Mirza Musa had a bathhouse and they fired it up -- for we had reached Edirne at that beginning of winter and it was bitterly cold. None of us, not even Bahá'u'lláh, had proper clothing, since we had come from an Arab country. It was so cold that all the town's springs were frozen over. The house of Bahá'u'lláh was near the takyih [lodge house] of the Mawlavi's.[1]

[1 A sufi order of dervishes founded by Jalalu'd-Din Rumi in the thirteenth century -- the so-called dancing dervishes.]

As for the bathhouse: Azal would usually be sent there first. One day I went to the bath at Mirza Musa's. Now Azal was very hairy -- so much so that from the back of his head to his feet, he seemed to be one sweep of hair. After he was bathed I was attending to him when, at that moment, Bahá'u'lláh came in. Azal moved, and, out of respect, he placed his hands one upon the other and stood up. Bahá'u'lláh said, "His shoulders are bushy. You shave them." I came forward to shave them.

Azal covered his shoulders with both hands and said "Don't!"

Bahá'u'lláh said, "Let him have his way. It doesn't matter."

Bahá'u'lláh stayed in this house all winter. When the weather turned beautiful and we were on the threshold of spring, He came to the believers' lodging one day to express His consideration of us, and His loving care. That day, a bird was singing in our tree, and He commented: "Better get him something for his throat -- he isn't doing too well."

Well, in this house Siyyid Muhammad and Haji Ahmad of Kashan and I and the other friends were all living together, though we had our separate rooms. The upstairs was reserved for Siyyid Muhammad and Haji Ahmad, and I too lived upstairs with them. Every day the Master would come to us at noontime and leave around that time. One day he told us that the Blessed Beauty had directed us to find another lodging so that we could all be together. The friends searched high and low until they located a house opposite the Mosque of Sultan Salim. It was very spacious, and in all, outside and inside it required forty keys. The name of this residence was Bayt-i Amru'llah.[1]

[1 The name can be translated as "House of God's Command" or "House of the Cause of God."]  

In this house a Tablet was revealed and was sent to Mirza Yahya through Mirza Aqa Jan. This Tablet is known as the Tablet of the Summons to Azal, and it calls upon Azal to believe in Bahá'u'lláh. Seeing it, Azal repudiated the Tablet at once, and remarked to Mirza Aqa Jan, "He has even written it in Arabic."

The house of Azal was a few steps away from that of Bahá'u'lláh, and Mirza Musa had a separate residence opposite. The other friends, the Branches[1]and Mirza Muhammad-Quli, the Consort,[2] and Bahá'u'lláh, Himself, and the rest of us, were all in the House of God's Command.

[1 That is, the sons of Bahá'u'lláh.]

[2 Bahá'u'lláh's wife, Asiyih Khanum, Navvab.]

Siyyid Muhammad and Haji Mirza Ahmad had a room to themselves. The Master would go to the andarun only to sleep. Usually he would have lunch                         Photo: House of Bahá'u'lláh in Adrianople and dinner with Siyyid Muhammad. Most of the time, Haji Mirza
Ahmad would be present as well.   

PLOTTINGS OF COVENANT-BREAKERS

Azal would come to the bath every week, that is, to the bathhouse in the House of God's Command. At this time no one had even an inkling of his being a violator, a breaker of the Covenant, but he had become somewhat lukewarm. When he visited the bath, he would carry on a conversation with me about this and that (this period was during the third year after our arrival in Edirne [1866]), and, in his own way, he was trying to convert me, but I pretended not to understand what he was after.

Siyyid Muhammad and Haji Ahmad had only recently become acquainted with Azal and they took to one another. Every day Siyyid Muhammad would go to the Mosque of Sultan Salim where he was working on a book he called "A Summary of the Bayan." Haji Ahmad, Aqa Riday-i Qannad, the confectioner, and Aqa Mirza Mahmud would also copy out Tablets and send them about. The Master, too, would be writing most of the time.

In Istanbul was revealed the Tablet that begins:

All praise be to Thee,

O Thou Who art He that is He.

After a time, Siyyid Muhammad had taken himself to the takyih of the Mawlavis and told the leader: "I will come to you and instruct you in the Mathnavi of Rumi."[1] Thus he had struck up an acquaintance with him, and little by little he had begun to converse with him in an unseemly way. He would read the Mathnavi all the time. Once he said to me, "What are these verses?" I quoted him back a few lines from Rumi, and he commented on them. Then he went to Mirza Musa and praised my intelligence. At this time Siyyid Muhammad was about sixty years old.

[1 A six-volume classical epic of mystic poems by Jalalu'd-Din Rumi.]

Once when the Master was present, I said: "That Nabil certainly has strange things to say. One night in Istanbul, when you, Siyyid Muhammad, were speaking, Nabil commented: 'That Siyyid Muhammad talks like an atheist.'"

The siyyid was very angry at this, but from fear of the Master, he could say nothing. Well, that night passed by, and in the morning when he was going to the Mawlavis to give his lesson, he said to me: 'Ustad Muhammad-'Ali you and I come from the same city, and wherever I go I sing your praises...(and so on and so on). Now what, what did you mean at the meeting last night? How was it that you said to me that I, according to Nabil, had said thus and so?'

"How should I know?" I shrugged.

He went on: 'You should have whispered all that in my ear."

I answered: "This place is not the thieves' court of Husayn the Kurd, where everybody does as he pleases."[1]

[1 Husayn the Kurd was a legendary outlaw who become so powerful and brazen that he would hold court at night in the bazaar of Isfahan.]

Anyway, Siyyid Muhammad would go to that place and give lessons, and most days Mirza Musa would come to the apartment of Siyyid Muhammad an Master. Here he would smoke his water pipe and then take his leave.  

One day when the Master was present, Siyyid Muhammad was carrying on a conversation with Haji Ahmad, and I was standing there. At that moment, in the street below, a cart went by. Siyyid Muhammad said, "His Holiness the Báb, the Remembrance of God, was like that cart: even as the next man, He came, He went."

Mirza Musa was indignant. "You shameless fellow!" he said. "Remember that this place is directly behind the house of Bahá'u'lláh." Angrily, he rose and left the room.

Siyyid Muhammad was in a rage. Later he betook himself to Mirza Musa, to plead his case with him, and said, "You made me lose face."

Mirza Musa became angry all over again.

Siyyid Muhammad complained to him: "Ustad Muhammad-'Ali has said thus and so about me."

Mirza Musa said, "This Muhammad-'Ali is the same man you used to praise so highly. How is it that you are against him now?" The matter was also reported to Bahá'u'lláh.

And so, after an interval of three or four days, Siyyid Muhammad went back to the same takyih of the Mawlavis, and he stayed there. As the saying goes, he was sulking. Two or three nights went by. There was a certain Ibrahim, a former steward of Bahá'u'lláh who later became a Covenant-breaker and still lives and now claims to be a firm believer. This Ibrahim was summoned by Mirza Aqa Jan and given money and a parcel of clothing to take to Siyyid Muhammad. Two days or so afterward, Siyyid Muhammad wrote a letter to the mother of the Greater Branch [Mirza Muhammad-'Ali] saying that he was in the takyih of the Mawlavis and so hungry that he was reduced to eating the leaves of the trees. This, although only three days before, money and clothing had been sent to him, in addition to which the Mawlavis paid his expenses.

The following day was the day when Bahá'u'lláh was accustomed to frequent the bath. I went there, and Azal came in first. Up to now, for quite a while, he had secretly, stealthily, been trying to make me his disciple. I applied his henna and he began talking to me. "Last night," he said, "I had a dream. I saw a person with a broom in his hand, and he was sweeping up all around me." He managed to convey the idea that it was Bahá'u'lláh who was plying the broom around him in the dream. And so, I understood that this worthless fellow wanted me to do something for him. But he said nothing more, and went away.

Then the Blessed Beauty entered the bath. There was a mirror fastened to the wall and I ld see Him in the mirror. He said to me, "You are great and your image will not        Photo: Bahhiyeh Khanum and  'Abdu'l-Bahá - Photo: Ivan Lloyd
fit in a little mirror."[1]

[1 Azal was known as one of the "Mirrors" of the Bábí Revelation. See God Passes By, p. 114]

I pondered what Azal had said. I kept asking myself what his purpose was, telling me by indirection and in code that "Bahá'u'lláh was sweeping up all around me." It was clear, however, that he had some special plan with regard to me.

Furthermore, Haji Mirza Ahmad kept trying to convert me to Azal. I noticed in particular that over a period of several days he repeatedly tried most urgently to pull me his way. One day I told him: "Haji, you have been teaching people about the invisible Lord. Do you yourself believe in that Lord?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Down your throat with the Lord that you imagine!" And so we quarreled.

Haji Mirza Ahmad took the matter to Bahá'u'lláh and complained. "Ustad Muhammad," he said, "has denied the Invisible of the Invisibles."

On the following day, Mirza Aqa Jan came and sat down; we all gathered around and he read the Tablet of the Sermon on the Unity of God. He also read the Persian Tablet of Ahmad,[1] revealed for Haji Mirza Ahmad. In Edirne, the Blessed Beauty was continually revealing Tablets.

[1 This is not the Arabic Tablet of the same name so widely known in the West.]

When the bath day arrived, Azal came in first. He washed his head and body and used the henna. I sat beside him to help. He began to talk, and to give me advice. He said: "There was at one time a Mirza Na'im who was the governor of Nayriz. He persecuted the believers, and killed them, and greatly harmed the Cause." Next, he began to extol the virtues of boldness and courage. He said that some are courageous by nature, and that when the moment came, they would prove themselves brave. Then he went back to the story of Mirza Na'im: he said that of all the Nayriz believers' children, one had survived -- a boy of eleven or twelve. One day Mirza Na'im went into the bath and this boy went there as well, and had brought along a knife with a handle made of horn. When the governor started to come up out of the water tank, the boy plunged the knife into his stomach and ripped it open. Mirza Na'im cried aloud. His servants ran in from outside and saw the knife in the boys's hand. They beat the boy within an inch of his life, and then went to see how their master was faring. Wounded as he was, the child got to his feet and once again drove his knife into Mirza Na'im.

Having said this, Azal started in again, praising the virtue of courage. "How fine a thing it is," he said, "for a man to be brave. Now see what they are doing to the Cause of God! Every one harming the Faith. Every one risen up against me! Even my own brother! And I, never allowed a moment's peace! Never a tranquil breath!"

He managed his tones in such a way as to say: "I, the appointee; I, the helpless victim -- and my brother (God forgive me for repeating this!) a tyrant, a usurper!"

"How wonderful is courage," he went on. "How much needed now, to save the Cause of God!"

Taken all together -- the tone of his voice, the story of Mirza Na'im, the praise of courage, the urging me onward -- all this meant only one thing: "Kill my brother!" That is, kill the Blessed Beauty.

When these words were uttered I was overcome by nausea, and sicker than I had ever been in my whole life. I felt as if the walls of he bath were falling in on me. I was unhinged. Not able to speak, I went away outside the bath, and sat down on a bench. And in my awful inward turmoil, I thought to myself, I will go back into the bath, and I will cut off his head. Then let whatever happens, happen. Then I thought: It would be easy enough to kill him. But suppose when I stood before the Blessed Beauty I should be condemned? Coming before Him in that condition? I went on, thinking it out: After murdering this fellow, if I should go and stand in the presence of Bahá'u'lláh, and if He should say to me, "Why did you kill him?" what answer could I give? It was this thought that stopped me.

Well, I reentered the bath, and violently angry, raging, I said to him, "Get up and get out. God send you to hell!"

"Pour water over me," he wailed as he approached me. I poured one container of water on him and, washed or not washed, in a panic, he went; and I have never laid eyes on him since, from that day to this.

I was in a terrible state and nothing could calm me down. It happened that the Blessed Beauty did not come to the bath that day, but Mirza Musa did, and I told him: "Today Azal made a bonfire of me," and I repeated what he had said.

Mirza Musa replied, "He has had such a plan for many years. Pay no attention to him. The fellow has always had this in mind." He counseled me, and left.

Well, I finished with the bath, and I closed it up, and went to see the Master, and said, "Today Azal said thus and so. I was in a fury and wanted to kill him. But in the end, I did nothing."

The Master replied, "You discovered this matter for yourself. Do not make any mention of it. Best that it should remain hidden."

Then I went and told the story to Mirza Aqa Jan, and asked him to report it to Bahá'u'lláh. He soon came back. Bahá'u'lláh had said to him: "Go and advise my devoted Usta Muhammad-'Ali to say nothing of this anywhere."  

I went and gathered up all of Azal's letters and other writings, and that night I took them to the coffee room in Bahá'u'lláh's house and burned them all in the charcoal brazier. But first I showed them around to everyone, so they could see that they were the writings of Azal. There were seven or eight of the friends present, and they all strongly objected and said, "What have you done? Why this?"

(Ustad Muhammad-'Aliy-i Salmani, My Memories of Baha'u'llah, p. 52)