Bahá'u'lláh on many occasions had warned His companions of
their fate and of the calamities which would befall them in future. Now He
predicted dire afflictions in the Lawh-i-Hawdaj (Tablet of the Howdah) revealed
in Arabic in the port of Samsun on His way to Constantinople. At the request of
His amanuensis, Mirza Aqa Jan, He revealed this Tablet as He sighted the Black
Sea from His howdah. As far as we know this was the first Tablet revealed by
Bahá'u'lláh after He left Baghdad. In it He referred to the forthcoming voyage
by sea and stated that it had been foreshadowed in the Tablet of the Holy
Mariner. Thus he linked the Tablet of Hawdaj with the Holy Mariner and
mentioned that the study of these two Tablets would enable the believers to
understand the mysteries of the Cause of God and become strong in faith. The
dire predictions already foreshadowed in the Tablet of the Holy Mariner would
come to pass, He affirmed, and He further warned His companions of the
'grievous and tormenting mischief' which would assail them from
every direction, and would act as a divine touchstone through which the faith
of every one would be severely tested and truth separated from falsehood.
Probably few among His companions realized that this
'grievous and tormenting mischief' would emanate from Bahá'u'lláh's own
half-brother Mirza Yahya, precipitating a crisis of enormous proportions within
the community, or that he would become the embodiment of man's rebelliousness,
the centre of all the forces of darkness, who would arise to battle with the
light of God's Supreme Manifestation.
- Adib Taherzadeh (‘The Revelation of Baha'u'llah vol. 2’)