“As we passed that morning through the town of Mardín,” [on
the way to Constantinople] … [a] fellow-traveler relates, “we were preceded by
a mounted escort of government soldiers, carrying their banners, and beating
their drums in welcome. The mutisárrif, together with officials and notables,
accompanied us, while men, women and children, crowding the housetops and
filling the streets, awaited our arrival. With dignity and pomp we traversed
that town, and resumed our journey, the mutisárrif and those with him escorting
us for a considerable distance.” “According to the unanimous testimony of those
we met in the course of that journey,” Nabíl has recorded in his narrative,
“never before had they witnessed along this route, over which governors and
mushírs continually passed back and forth between Constantinople and Baghdád,
any one travel in such state, dispense such hospitality to all, and accord to
each so great a share of his bounty.” Sighting from His howdah the Black Sea,
as He approached the port of Sámsun, Bahá’u’lláh, at the request of Mírzá Áqá
Ján, revealed a Tablet, designated Lawḥ-i-Hawdaj (Tablet of the Howdah), which
by such allusions as the “Divine Touchstone,” “the grievous and tormenting
Mischief,” reaffirmed and supplemented the dire predictions recorded in the
recently revealed Tablet of the Holy Mariner.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By)
