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.
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
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
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
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I
Paradise Brought Near
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235
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
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. Then He warned them of the terrors of the ‘Last Day,’ and
said strange things about the coming of ‘The Hour’: ‘Whosoever
can find a refuge, let him hide … On that day humble herders of
camels will sprawl about in palaces; people will be set to work
building houses of extraordinary height … The Hour will come
upon us so quickly that two men having unfolded some goods,
shall not have time to conclude their bargain or fold up the goods
again … ‘And they reviled Him, saying, ‘Know this, O Muḥam-
mad, we shall never cease to stop Thee from preaching till either
Thou or we shall perish.’
To kill Him, member of a ruling clan, would have meant a civil
war; so they put to death His followers, the weak and poor, or
tortured them. Among them was Balál, the African slave, who lay
many days in the Meccan sun, stretched out with a rock on his
breast; they told him to forsake Muḥammad or die, and leaned
down to hear him whisper: ‘There is only one God—one.’ He
lived, and was the first muezzin. Of him Bahá’u’lláh has written:
‘Consider how Balál, the Ethiopian, unlettered though he was,
ascended into the heaven of faith and certitude.’ And Muḥammad
sorrowed over the wrong that was done His disciples, and He cried
out: ‘I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the Daybreak, that He may
deliver Me from the mischief of those things which He hath
created … I fly for refuge unto the Lord of men, the King of
men, the God of men …’[1]
And He sent His followers into Ethiopia, to the pious Christian
king. The Negus questioned them, and bade them speak, and they
answered: ‘O King, we adored idols, we lived in unchastity, we ate
dead bodies, we spoke abominations … when God raised up
among us a Man … and He called us to the unity of God, to fly
vices and to shun evil.’ And the Negus traced a line on the ground
with his stick, and he said: ‘Truly, between your faith and ours
there is not more than this little stroke.’
Then the Meccans gathered to plot against Muḥammad: ‘Would
you say He is a sorcerer?’ ‘No, He hath not the emphatic tone, the
jerky language.’ ‘A madman then?’ ‘He hath not the bearing.’ ‘A
poet inspired by a jinn?’ ‘He doth not speak in classic verse.’
‘A magician?’ ‘He doth not perform wonders.’ And since great con-
verts had now been made, they bargained with the Prophet, offering
gold and honours in exchange for silence, saying, ‘We shall make
Thee our chieftain and our king.’ He answered them, ‘I am only a
man like you. It is revealed to Me that your God is one God: go
straight then to Him, and implore His pardon … Do ye indeed
disbelieve in Him? … Do ye assign Him peers? The Lord of the
worlds is He!’ So they shut Muḥammad and His people out of
Mecca into the mountains, and forbade that any buy or sell with
him. And after three years were passed and Muḥammad and His
disciples had hungered and suffered, the ban was lifted. Then the
black days came, when the Prophet lost the two whom He loved
dearest, His chief defender and His wife. ‘When I was poor she
enriched Me. When all the world abandoned Me, she comforted
Me.’ They had lived together over a score of years, and contrary to
the way of His times He had married no other. And yet He taught
and none listened, and He put His agony into the words of the
Prophet Noah: ‘My cry only maketh them flee me the more.’
He spoke with the tribes, who came into Mecca for trade and to
circle around the Ka‘bih. And once He went to the beautiful
mountain town of Ṭa’if, where the fruit trees grow, and the people
stoned Him, shouting, ‘If God had wanted to send a Prophet,
could He not have chosen a better one than Thee?’ But later in