- 1868-00-00 —
During this period Bahá'u'lláh revealed a number of Tablets to rulers including the Lawh-i-Ra'ís to `Alí Páshá, His second Tablet to Napoleon III and Tablets to Czar Alexander II, Queen Victoria and Pope Pius IX. [BBD13]
The writings of Bahá'u'lláh during this period, as we survey the vast field which they embrace, seem to fall into three distinct categories. The first comprises those writings which constitute the sequel to the proclamation of His Mission in Adrianople. The second includes the laws and ordinances of His Dispensation, which, for the most part, have been recorded in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy Book. To the third must be assigned those Tablets which partly enunciate and partly reaffirm the fundamental tenets and principles underlying that Dispensation. [GPB205-206]
- See Wikipedia for a synopsis of Law-i-Ra'ís..
- The Súriy-i-Haykal (Súrih of the Temple) was also revealed in Adrianople, and later recast after His arrival in `Akká. In this version He incorporated His messages addressed to individual potentates -- Pope Pius IX, Napoleon III, Czar Alexander II, Queen Victoria, and Násiri'd-Dín Sháh. Bahá'u'lláh instructed it to be written in the form of a pentacle, symbolizing the human temple. See the Introduction Summons of the Lord of Hosts pgi.
- An Introduction to the Súratu'l-Haykal (Discourse of The Temple) by Mohamad Ghasem Bayat.
- President Grant of the United States was in office when Bahá'u'lláh addressed a Tablet to the `Rulers of America and the Presidents of the Republics therein'. Copied below is a list of other heads of state of the Americas who were contemporary with Bahá'u'lláh in 1872-1873 as compiled by Bahá'í scholar Peter Terry.
[BFA1:80N]
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, president of Argentina; John A. Macdonald,
prime minister of Canada; Federico Errázuriz Zanartu, president of Chile;
Eustorgio Salgar and Manuel Murillo Toro, presidents of Colombia; Tomás
Guardia Gutiérrez, president of Costa Rica; Buenaventura Báez, president of
the Dominican Republic; Gabriel García Moreno, president of Ecuador; Justo
Rufino Barrios, president of Guatemala; Nissage Saget, president of Haiti;
Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, presidents of Mexico; José
Vicente Cuadra, president of Nicaragua; Francisco Solano López, president
of Paraguay; Manuel Pardo, president of Peru; Ulysses S. Grant, president of
the United States of America; Lorenzo Batlle y Grau and Tomás Gomensoro,
presidents of Uruguay; and Antonio Guzmán Blanco, president of Venezuela.
...some of the most celebrated passages of that Book (Kitáb-i-Aqdas) to the Chief Magistrates of the entire American continent, bidding them "bind with the hands of justice the broken," and "crush the oppressor" with the "rod of the commandments" of their Lord. Unlike the kings of the earth whom He had so boldly condemned in that same Book, unlike the European Sovereigns whom He had either rebuked, warned or denounced, such as the French Emperor, the most powerful monarch of his time, the Conqueror of that monarch, the Heir of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Caliph of Islám, the Rulers of America were not only spared the ominous and emphatic warnings which He uttered against the crowned heads of the world, but were called upon to bring their corrective and healing influence to bear upon the injustices perpetrated by the tyrannical and the ungodly. [MA91]
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