Transcript:Filmstrip/Land of Resplendent Glory Part 3
[ Music ]
It was intended on the capital of Persia and among the snowy albores mountains to the north of it.
But the greatest mystery of the high-world faith had long since the days of the letters of the living begun to unfold.
It was the home country of the one who's coming the Bob had foretold, the one greater than himself who would fulfill the promises of the prophets of all ages
and changed the whole world by igniting an unprecedented spiritual explosion in a single century.
For here, in a beautiful Teheron mansion, very in the century, Baha'u'llah was born.
His father was a high official of state, a favored minister of the crown.
This is said to be the room Baha'u'llah was born in, appropriately between dawn and sunrise, November 12, 1817.
It was the main parlor of the house.
Pings in the upper window are colored red, blue, yellow, and green.
The brick courtyard has great arbours and trees of many varieties.
Upstairs are ample rooms for guests with balconies and terraces for sleeping on hot summer nights.
While below are doors leading to the basement quarters with their ventilated gills on the left in black, blue, and buff brick.
Inside the vaulted brick basement, it is cool and aerated on the hottest days as the air is conducted upward through large, concealed ventilator shafts to emerge out of special exhaust towers on the roof.
The Ha'u'llah, as he grew to manhood, however, preferred the natural beauty of the mountains to his city mansion and leaving it in the hands of important guests, would ride northward to spend his summers in villages such as Ta'u'llah in the rugged district of Newark, which means light.
His house was hidden in the right background of this old picture of that village.
Here's another view of Ta'u'llah, showing the mosque behind which the Ha'u'llah's father had a house.
And this is a close-up of his house in A'tche, one of the family's places near to the capital.
He rode on his horse all over Nure, staying or visiting at many villages, some of which he personally owned.
Others were lived his innumerable relatives and friends.
Perhaps he would sleep in caves such as this one, cut into soft rock beside a mountain road, even living horses or donkeys inside for their protection when there was room.
Stopping the next night, perhaps, in some settlements such as this, beside a roaring mountain stream, or pitching his tent on a height from where he might give a wild mountain goat or hear a pheasant calling.
But after the barbe appeared, the Ha'u'llah in his late twenties began to participate in the cause to such a degree that he too was declared a heretic and in this town square of Amor by the Caspian Sea.
He was subjected to the torture of the Vastanado by the local governor who felt the need of appeasing a crowd of fanatical sayyads, demanding the Ha'u'llah's death.
This building had served as a mosque since 1839, but earlier it was a theater with a stage on the left that was decorated with interesting murals, hundreds of years old.
Depicting mounted saints on parade and birds fighting in a rose garden, perhaps not inappropriate on this terrible occasion.
It was in a rear courtyard that the Ha'u'llah was subjected to the torture of the Vastanado when his solos of his feet were beaten until they bled.
On another occasion in Amor, a follower of the Barbe was martyred upon this old bridge of twelve arches and his body thrown into the torrent below.
And back in Tehran, the killings increased from month to month, encouraged by fearful more laws and such decrees as this of the Shah dated 1849, ordering the killing of all known followers of the Barbe.
Shortly afterward in this public square of the nation's capital were beheaded with famous seven marchers of Tehran who chose that fate rather than renounce their beloved cause.
The square looked like this at about the time the event occurred with a tall elm tree in the background and busy shops all around.
When in the summer of 1852 a demented youth tried to kill the Shah, whose summer palace overlooks Tehran as shown here, and the Ha'u'llah was arrested and falsely accused of having plotted the deed.
Their foot, bareheaded and in chains, he was driven down his road by a philosophical abusive mob, whose summer palace took a dreaded sea of chal or black pit, some ten miles in the blazing sun of August.
When into the dungeon which being underground is not visible here, but its location is just beyond the wall behind the rope poplars in the center of this picture.
For four months he lay there in heavy neck chains, his feet in stocks in continuous darkness, the lack of food and water and the foul stench were almost not to be endured.
Yet he continually prayed with fellow believers who regarded it a glorious fate to be taken away one by one to be tortured and killed.
In one of the Shah's palaces that happened to be near the black pit, the Shah could hear the Ha'u'llah and his comrades chanting at night, which may even have disturbed his sleep.
At any rate, after a strong protest by the Russian ambassador, the Shah ordered the Ha'u'llah to be released from the dungeon, then exiled him from Persia forever.
Thus began in the winter of 1853, that difficult journey of the ailing the Ha'u'llah and his family to Baghdad, which may be suggested slightly by this picture taken on the same road 111 years later.
Even the trees looked tortured as they stood gesturing in silent sympathy by the roadside.
The few settlements presented a feudal apprehensive appearance, under the northern 500 miles to cover, with precious little food or shelter for man or beast.
It was far too early for the farmers to start their spring plowing, even though they normally do this before the snow has entirely melted.
Yet Baha'u'llah saw at least the beauty of a few dry clumps of fissile on passing road banks like this, and occasional shepherds searching for hard to find edible stalks for their scrambly flocks.
A few times he came to cities such as Hamadon, which still lives on the same site as ancient Ekbatana, Persia's capital before the great days of Cyrus and Darius.
Further on, the travelers entered the country of the Kurds, those fierce traditional enemies of the Persians, with their black tents.
The tribesmen forever yearned for independence, as this Kurd is tassel turban, would readily admit.
Or this proud woman riding a donkey with two children, the one behind munching bread, and the one in front, drinking from the breast.
Nevertheless, when Baha'u'llah reached the Kurdish town of Karan, set in a narrow valley between two sawtooth bridges close to the western frontier of Persia, he decided to stop over as a guest of an old friend for a much needed rest.
And so he rolled through this main street of the town, past little shops of gossiping merchants and craftsmen dizzy at their trade like this man, preparing wool for quilts and mattresses.
To arrive at this brick mansion with a courtyard shaded by giant poplars and a river with an earshot, it must have been a heavenly relief.
After a few days of relative ease, the exiles were on their way again, soon crossing the border into arid arach, where dust storms are frequent, where dead sheep dogs seem to appear every few miles.
And youths in pajamas stroll all day reading the Qur'an for practicing the recital of their favorite poems.
Baghdad, on the Tigris, offered Baha'u'llah a new life, and he soon settled his family in city, presumably under the surveillance of the Sultan's local officials, whose heirs, the Baghdad police, today dress in spiked helmets.
But within a year, he found his cause was producing so much envy and dissension among his relatives and associates that he quietly departed for the north country once more, telling no one, that even his beloved wife or son, Abdul Baha'u'llah.
Disguised as a dairish, he headed for Bleak, Kurdistan, perhaps carrying the traditional dairish beads, battle acts, and baking bowl.
A dairish, by the way, nearly anything from a holy man to a champ.
He likely passed this old pineapple tower in the cemetery of Tawuz, and possibly the more spectacular spiral tower of Samara on the east banks of the Tigris.
No one knows exactly where he wondered, but he evidently passed through one part or another of this eroded country, taking within perhaps no more than goat cheese, dry bread, and tea for sustenance.
In the summer of 1854, he was seen by shepherds and farmers on the lonely mountain slopes north of the principal Kurdish town of Soleimani Ye.
And he is remembered to have lived in certain caves, just above this waterfall beside the mountain village of Sargallu, taken by the only behind known to have visited this isolated spot since Baha'u'llah left.
Certainly by 1855, he visited Soleimani Ye itself, a somewhat ramshackle place bustling with turban mountain folk seeking the benefits of the settled way of life.
And here, he took a room in this seminary for their wishes, called Ta'kiye Mo'lana-Haleid, whose dark gate opens on a garden surrounding a flat-roofed building of perhaps a dozen rooms.
But by 1856, he was back in Baghdad, and with a growing community of followers, he began his world-changing work of divine revelation.
At least it was accepted as such by thousands who came to read or hear about it.
He would stroll along the banks of the Tigris in the pool of the morning or twilight, jotting down extraordinary verses, sometimes in Persian, and sometimes in Arabic, such as this complete original manuscript in his own hand, written beside the Tigris.
In Baghdad, now known to Baha'is all over the world as the hidden words.
Perhaps he had occasioned during his decade in this part of the Turkish Empire to travel 50 miles downstream to ancient Babylon, the great big city of 3000 years ago on the Euphrates.
Now excavated to reveal such wonders as this beautifully carved dragon on the famous Ishtar Gate, that opened upon the broad avenue leading to the fabulous Tower of Babel.
In case, in April 1863, he had last made his great announcement of the Baha'i World Faith in the now famous Garden of Resvan on the east bank of the Tigris, a mile upstream after the limits of the city at that time.
This picture was taken a few years later before the garden had greatly changed.
Today, however, this is the only part of it that remains as he knew it.
For the whole is being rapidly transformed into a $60 million National Medical Center of Iraq.
Perhaps an appropriate memorial in its way to the great symbolic step he took there toward healing the spiritual ills of all mankind.
And now a 12-story modern hospital stands upon the exact spot for he fulfilled the prophecies of the Bab, Muhammad, Christ and all their predecessors by his great announcement of Resvan in 1863.
The occasion of Resvan, however, was also related to the urgency of Baha'u'll now having been ordered into deeper exile because Sultan and Shah feared his growing influence.
So immediately thereafter he obediently set forth.
It was the month of May, his entourage included his family and 26 disciples using meals and pack horses for the tents and heavy baggage.
After many sad farewells they headed north towards the Black Sea and what was then called Constantinople, the capital of the Turkish Empire.
Soon they had left most of the Arab settlements behind them.
About the last was Mokshul, with its leaning minarets apparently a disease come among minarets past middle age.
Then there was ancient Nineveh, with its wing of guardians in stone.
Taking roughly the route of Xenophon in 400 BC was somewhat more to the west.
The caravan reached the Black Sea at some soon.
West by sea he came to bustling Constantinople, the Istanbul of today.
Although the mansion in which Baha'u'll last stayed here in the autumn of 1863 no longer exists, this mosque adjoining it still stands intact.
Baha'u'llah is said to have worshipped here on occasion, but the Sultan did not favor his remaining in so conspicuous a location and therefore ordered him to move on further west to Aegean Opal.
By now it was December and bitter cold as the thinly clad wafers set out on their five day journey into Europe.
But with God's help they arrived safely and after trying and in their summer house, which was very drafty, and another with other problems,
they settled in this comfortable house of Reza back and lived here during most of the years of 1865 and 66.
The four tall minarets of the huge mosque of the Sultan Salim lean up behind it,
and the Rose Garden offered a pleasant place for Baha'u'llah to meditate and work.
While his son, Abdu'l Baha, 21 years of age, was learning to defend him from the never ending stream of wall wishes,
who daily arrived to pay him their respects.
By 1868 Baha'u'llah was ordered to move again for what turned out to be the last time.
Now it was to the great Turkish prisoner Vaka, where the Sultan hoped his prisoner would die unnoticed in a cell among the most hardened criminals in the empire.
And so Baha'u'llah and his family arrived at this little harbor beside the forbidding walls of the fearsome prison,
and were immediately locked into a cell behind the two barred windows at the extreme upper right end of the prison of Aqah.
This is how the cell looked inside, but the prison must be visualized as crowded with dozens of people stretched out on the floor,
sitting, leaning against the walls, or pacing back and forth during the endless days and nights.
And it was here in Aqah, with Baha'u'llah last built the last quarter century of his life, most of the time under house arrest after 1870.
And he lived his last twelve years in the country mansion called Bathchi, shown here, from whose stately hall the word he revealed continued to pour forth to all the continents upon which it has now established itself with over 317 countries and territories of the earth.
At times, opponents of the faith seem to have thought it had been stamped out, but the news of God have proved always to grind in their quiet way,
and every divine seed somehow sprouts in its due season.
Thus dawned on earth with the high world faith, first in Persia, loins spreading to the west, a faith that is now already well on its way,
to united the hands of all mankind in spiritual government.
