Marzieh Gail Dawn Over Mount Hira and Other Essays
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MARZIEH GAIL DAWN OVER MOUNT HIRA AND OTHER ESSAYS GR GEORGE RONALD OXFORD George Ronald 46 High Street, Kidlington, Oxford Introduction, selection and notes © George Ronald 1976 ISBN 0 85398 0632 Cased 0 85398 0640 Paper SET IN GREAT BRITAIN BY W & J MACKAY LIMITED AND PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. ii Contents FOREWORD vii I Paradise Brought Near Dawn Over Mount Hira 1 From Sa‘dí’s Garden of Roses 9 ‘Alí 12 From the Sayings of ‘Alí 14 II Take the Gentle Path There Was Wine 19 ‘For Love of Me …’ 29 Notes on Persian Love Poems 33 Current Mythology 43 III Headlines Tomorrow The Carmel Monks 49 Headlines Tomorrow 50 IV Bright Day of the Soul That Day in Tabríz 57 Bright Day of the Soul 62 The White Silk Dress 80 The Poet Laureate 91 Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl in America 105 iii V Age of All Truth The Goal of a Liberated Mind 117 This Handful of Dust 121 The Rise of Women 128 Till Death Do Us Part 137 Atomic Mandate 145 VI The Divine Encounter Echoes of the Heroic Age 153 Millennium 165 Easter Sunday 170 Bahá’u’lláh’s Epistle to the Son of the Wolf 176 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in America 184 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Portrayals from East and West 194 VII Where’er You Walk In the High Sierras 219 Midnight Oil 222 Will and Testament 226 Where’er You Walk 232 NOTES AND REFERENCES 237 iv Foreword THE UNION OF EAST AND WEST has been and is the dream of many. Visionaries, statesmen, artists, philosophers, poets and scientists have believed in it and worked for its realization. But it did not become an essential principle of religion until, in the 19th century, Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed the principles of world order. To the unity of mankind, which is the social aim of the Bahá’í Faith, the marriage of East and West is a sine qua non. Marzieh Gail, child of a Persian father and American mother, inherits and successfully combines in her own person, both cultures. She has been able, as demonstrated in her book Persia and the Victorians, to interpret each to the other. But, as other devotees of this union have found, the most realistic, powerful and hopeful programme lies in the promotion of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings on the unity of the world. Most of Mrs. Gail’s literary activity has been in support of this aim, and the essays in this collection have appeared, over the years, in the chief publications of the Bahá’ís. Their variety is remarkable. Whether presenting Muḥammad and Islám attractively to Western readers, or relating heroic epi- sodes in that most heroic of all epics, ‘The Episode of the Báb’, or reflecting on the Persian mystical poets, the emancipation of women, human evolution or the world of tomorrow, she conveys a sense of ever present drama, a heightened awareness of the great- ness of the day in which we live, its crisis and its portent. She makes the martyrs and heroes of the Báb’s dispensation—the Dawn-Breakers—real and believable to western readers. Above all her portrayal of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Mystery of God, both in these essays and elsewhere, ensures the enduring value of her writing. DAVID HOFMAN v I Paradise Brought Near vi Dawn Over Mount Hira ‘BY THE NOON-DAY BRIGHTNESS, and by the night when it darkeneth! Thy Lord hath not forsaken Thee, neither hath He been displeased. And surely the future shall be better for Thee than the past. Did He not find Thee an orphan and give Thee a home? And found Thee erring and guided Thee, and found Thee needy and enriched Thee?’ … For some days before this, the voice had been silent; now again the comforting spirit enfolded Muḥam- mad, under the stars on Mount Hira. He remembered how the voice had broken through His thoughts, before, and terrified Him. He had heard on the mountain the word: ‘Read!’—and had answered: ‘I do not know how to read.’ ‘Read!’ ‘What shall I read?’ ‘Read: In the name of Thy Lord who created, Created man from clots of blood: Read! by Thy most beneficent Lord, who hath taught the use of the pen; Hath taught man that which He knoweth not …’ He remembered His struggle against the voice; how He had gone from the mountain, thinking Himself possessed. And Khadíjih had believed in Him, and Varaqa, a man old and blind, and versed in the Scripture, had cried, ‘Holy, holy, verily this is the Voice that came to Moses. Tell Him—bid Him be of brave heart.’ Then for some time the voice had been silent, and now it had come to Him again. And Muḥammad looked down over Mecca, and He thought of His city, and He began to preach against the things men loved. ‘Not a blade of grass to rest the eye … no hunting … instead, only merchants, that most contemptible of all professions …’ wrote a black poet, of Mecca. No trees, gardens, orchards. Only a Reprinted by permission from World Order, 6, no. 7 (Oct. 1940), 229–39 Copyright 1939 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States few spiny bushes. And the black flagstones around the Ka‘bih had to be sprinkled to cool them for the barefoot processions, and the wells were irregular and brackish. Caravans came, with jewels and spices, with skins and metals, and the whole town turned out to meet them; caravans of two or three thousand camels, of several hundred men. And men speculated, winning a fortune in a day, and lending it out for usury, and hoarding, and counting it over; and Muḥammad said to them: ‘The emulous desire of multiplying riches employeth you, until ye visit the graves … Hereafter shall ye know your folly … Again, hereafter shall ye know your folly.’ Then He bade them give alms, telling them: ‘What good ye have sent before for your souls, ye shall find it with God.’ The wealthy merchants lived in the central part of Mecca; they swelled with pride, but Muḥammad urged them to walk not proudly in the earth, because all men are brothers. The common people lived farther off from the Ka‘bih, in the slanting streets, and the rabble beyond them; and away from the town were the desert Arabs, in their goat-skin tents. There was wine and gambling, and Muḥam- mad forbade them; there were singing girls, and He was chaste. There were brawls and blood feuds and feastings; women playing upon lutes, to welcome such things as the birth of a boy, the coming to light of a poet, or the foaling of a mare. Over this reigned a vague Being, a supreme Alláh, and his three daughters; yet Muḥammad said: ‘He begetteth not, neither is He begotten.’ And closer to earth, a crowd of idols, who lived in and about the Ka‘bih, with their leader, a bearded old man of cornelian, with one hand made of gold; and his name was Hubal. And Muḥammad laughed at the Ka‘bih gods: ‘Is this wondrous world, the sun and moon, the drops of rain, the ships that move across the waters—are these the work of your stone and wooden gods?’ Then He spoke of the true God, saying: ‘The seven heavens praise Him, and the earth, and all who are therein; neither is there anything which doth not celebrate His praise; but ye understand not.’ Here too, set in the Ka‘bih, was the Black Stone; men said it was the only thing from Paradise to be found on earth, and that it had once been white, till it was blackened by human sins. There were other gods to worship in Arabia, and stars and planets, but the Ka‘bih drew all men from near and far on pilgrimage. Muḥammad’s kinsmen were chieftains in Mecca, and they lived 2 by the things which He now arose to destroy. He summoned them together, told them of His mission; and they laughed Him to scorn. ‘May you be cursed for the rest of your life,’ cried Abú Lahab; ‘why gather us together for trifles like this?’ And when He walked abroad, the wife of Abú Lahab strewed thorns before Him to wound His feet. And Muḥammad preached to the tribes, when they flocked to Mecca and the neighbouring fairs, during the pilgrimage seasons; then His uncle, Abú Lahab, would follow, and shout: ‘He is an impostor who seeketh to draw you from the faith of your fathers …’; and the tribesmen would laugh at Him, saying: ‘Thine own people and kindred know Thee best: then wherefore do they not believe?’ One day as He prayed at the Ka‘bih, men turned upon Him, and mocked Him, saying: ‘It is you who pretend that our fathers were in the wrong! It is you who call our gods impotent!’ ‘Yes, it is I who say that.’ And they struck Him, and would have put Him to death. And once He went back to His dwelling without having met that day ‘a single man, a single woman, a single child, a single slave, who did not insult Him on His way, calling Him madman and liar …’ And as men do in every age, the Meccans called for signs and wonders, bidding Him turn their hills to gold, or bring them a well of pure water, or prophesy the coming price of goods. ‘Cannot your God disclose which merchandise will rise in price?’ He answered, saying, ‘The miracle that I bring you is the Qur’án, a Book revealed to an illiterate man, a Book no other man can equal.’ Then He taught them of the life after death; and one, who owed money to a Muslim, said that he would repay him in the next world.