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And finally, it was during that period that the first pilgrimages were made to the residence of One Who was now the visible Center of a newly-established Faith—pilgrimages which by reason of their number and nature, an alarmed government in Persia was first impelled to restrict, and later to prohibit, but which were the precursors of the converging streams of Pilgrims who, from East and West, at first under perilous and arduous circumstances, were to direct their steps towards the prison-fortress of Akká—pilgrimages which were to culminate in the historic arrival of a royal convert at the foot of Mt.
Three years after that Declaration, within the walls of the prison-fortress of Máh-Kú, He was dictating to His amanuensis the fundamental and distinguishing precepts of His Dispensation.
During this long period He was subjected to persecution and abuse, was cast into prison, was banished from His native land, underwent severities and humiliation and was exiled four times. He was first exiled from Persia to Baghdád, thence to Constantinople, thence to Rumelia and finally to the great prison-fortress of Akká in Syria, where He passed the remainder of His life.
Behind the walls of the prison-fortress of Akká the Bearer of God’s newborn Revelation had ordained the laws and formulated the principles that were to constitute the warp and woof of His World Order. He had, moreover, prior to His ascension, instituted the Covenant that was to guide and assist in the laying of its foundations and to safeguard the unity of its builders.
Bahá’u’lláh’s incarceration in the prison-fortress of Akká, the manifold tribulations He endured, the prolonged ordeal to which the community of His followers in Persia was being subjected, did not arrest, nor could they even impede, to the slightest degree, the mighty stream of Divine Revelation, which, without interruption, had been flowing from His pen, and on which the future orientation, the integrity, the expansion and the consolidation of His Faith directly depended.
Sunday, July 14, is the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and the occasion will be splendidly celebrated at Paris. In itself the capture of this prison-fortress by the people was not a wonderful achievement; it was ill-defended, and its governor might, had he chosen, have exploded the powder magazine and blown it sky-high. But the event was the parting of the ways.
The laws underlying the new Dispensation had been revealed by its Author in a prison-fortress in the mountains of Ádhirbayján, while the Dispensation itself was now to be inaugurated in a plain on the border of Mázindarán, at a conference of His assembled followers.
There, as He Himself has recorded, under the impact of this dream, He experienced the onrushing force of His newly revealed Mission, that “flowed” even as “a mighty torrent” from His “head” to His “breast,” whereupon “every limb” of His body “would be set afire.” There, in a vision, the “Most Great Spirit,” as He Himself has again testified, appeared to Him, in the guise of a “Maiden” “calling” with “a most wondrous, a most sweet voice” above His Head, whilst “suspended in the air” before Him and, “pointing with her finger” unto His head, imparted “tidings which rejoiced” His “soul.” There appeared above the horizon of that dungeon in the city of Ṭihrán, the rim of the Orb of His Faith, whose dawning light had, nine years previously, broken upon the city of Shíráz—an Orb which, after suffering an eclipse of ten years, was destined to burst forth, with its resplendent rays, upon the city of Baghdád, to mount its zenith in Adrianople, and to set eventually in the prison-fortress of Akká.
Above all, there was the Castle of Chillon; and one of the first Sundays after our arrival we descended the stone staircased steps of our gardened terrace, dripping with ivy and myrtle, and picked our steps over the muddy road to the old prison-fortress, where, in the ancient chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, we heard an excellent sermon from the pasteur of our parish.
Mad with wine and excitement, a common impulse seized the entire populace, to destroy the Bastille, that old stronghold of despotism, that symbol of royal tyranny. This prison-fortress, with its eight great round towers, and moat eighty-three feet wide, had stood since 1371, and represented more tragic human experiences than any structure in France.
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