Bahá’u’lláh’s amanuensis, Mírzá Áqá Ján, recalls witnessing the tremendous sadness that Bahá’u’lláh evinced before His sudden retirement

Mírzá Áqá Ján himself has testified: “That Blessed Beauty evinced such sadness that the limbs of my body trembled.” He has, likewise, related, as reported by Nabíl in his narrative, that, shortly before Bahá’u’lláh’s retirement, he had on one occasion seen Him, between dawn and sunrise, suddenly come out from His house, His night-cap still on His head, showing such signs of perturbation that he was powerless to gaze into His face, and while walking, angrily remark:

“These creatures are the same creatures who for three thousand years have worshipped idols, and bowed down before the Golden Calf. Now, too, they are fit for nothing better. What relation can there be between this people and Him Who is the Countenance of Glory? What ties can bind them to the One Who is the supreme embodiment of all that is lovable?” “

I stood,” declared Mírzá Áqá Ján, “rooted to the spot, lifeless, dried up as a dead tree, ready to fall under the impact of the stunning power of His words.

Finally, He said: ‘Bid them recite: “Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!” Tell them to repeat it five hundred times, nay, a thousand times, by day and by night, sleeping and waking, that haply the Countenance of Glory may be unveiled to their eyes, and tiers of light descend upon them.’

He Himself, I was subsequently informed, recited this same verse, His face betraying the utmost sadness.… Several times during those days, He was heard to remark: ‘We have, for a while, tarried amongst this people, and failed to discern the slightest response on their part.’ Oftentimes He alluded to His disappearance from our midst, yet none of us understood His meaning.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

The extent of “Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows” during the early years in Baghdad – a summary by the Guardian

The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows was now running over. All His exhortations, all His efforts to remedy a rapidly deteriorating situation, had remained fruitless. The velocity of His manifold woes was hourly and visibly increasing. Upon the sadness that filled His soul and the gravity of the situation confronting Him, His writings, revealed during that somber period, throw abundant light.

• In some of His prayers He poignantly confesses that “tribulation upon tribulation” had gathered about Him,
• that “adversaries with one consent” had fallen upon Him,
• that “wretchedness” had grievously touched Him, and
• that “woes at their blackest” had befallen Him.
• God Himself He calls upon as a Witness to His “sighs and lamentations,” His “powerlessness, poverty and destitution,” to the “injuries” He sustained, and the “abasement” He suffered.
• “So grievous hath been My weeping,” He, in one of these prayers, avows, “that I have been prevented from making mention of Thee and singing Thy praises.”
• “So loud hath been the voice of My lamentation,” He, in another passage, avers, “that every mother mourning for her child would be amazed, and would still her weeping and her grief.”
• “The wrongs which I suffer,” He, in His Lawh-i-Maryam, laments, “have blotted out the wrongs suffered by My First Name (the Báb) from the Tablet of creation.” “O Maryam!” He continues, “From the Land of Tá (Tihrán), after countless afflictions, We reached ‘Iráq, at the bidding of the Tyrant of Persia, where, after the fetters of Our foes, We were afflicted with the perfidy of Our friends. God knoweth what befell Me thereafter!”
• And again: “I have borne what no man, be he of the past or of the future, hath borne or will bear.”

“evidences of the directing Hand of the departed Founder…Who, from the invisible Realm, was unloosing a flood of well-deserved calamities upon a rebellious religion and nation”

 The Cause of which Bahá’u’lláh was still the visible leader had, despite the calculations of a short-sighted enemy, undeniably triumphed. No unbiased mind, penetrating the surface of conditions surrounding the Prisoner of ‘Akká, could any longer mistake or deny it. Though the tension which had been relaxed was, for a time, heightened after Bahá’u’lláh’s ascension and the perils of a still unsettled situation were revived, it was becoming increasingly evident that the insidious forces of decay, which for many a long year were eating into the vitals of a diseased nation, were now moving towards a climax. A series of internal convulsions, each more devastating than the previous one, had already been unchained, destined to bring in their wake one of the most catastrophic occurrences of modern times.

• The murder of that arrogant despot [Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz] in the year 1876;
• the Russo-Turkish conflict that soon followed in its wake;
• the wars of liberation which succeeded it;
• the rise of the Young Turk movement;
• the Turkish Revolution of 1909 that precipitated the downfall of ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd;
• the Balkan wars with their calamitous consequences;
• the liberation of Palestine enshrining within its bosom the cities of ‘Akká and Haifa, the world center of an emancipated Faith;
• the further dismemberment decreed by the Treaty of Versailles;
• the abolition of the Sultanate and the downfall of the House of Uthmán;
• the extinction of the Caliphate;
• the disestablishment of the State Religion;
• the annulment of the Sharí’ah Law and the promulgation of a universal Civil Code;
• the suppression of various orders, beliefs, traditions and ceremonials believed to be inextricably interwoven with the fabric of the Muslim Faith—

these followed with an ease and swiftness that no man had dared envisage. In these devastating blows, administered by friend and foe alike, by Christian nations and professing Muslims, every follower of the persecuted Faith of Bahá’u’lláh recognized evidences of the directing Hand of the departed Founder of his religion, Who, from the invisible Realm, was unloosing a flood of well-deserved calamities upon a rebellious religion and nation. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Unfoldment of World Civilization’)