Undoubtedly, the presence of Baha’i leaders in the Palestine region before the establishment of the Jewish state was neither accidental nor without reason. Existing evidence and documents reveal some of the hidden dimensions of this matter.
Britain Needed a Guardian of Its Interests in the Region!
Dr. Mohammad Ali Mohahed writes in Reflections that, based on the recommendation of the British ambassador, the Ottoman government exiled Baha’u’llah (the founder of the Baha’i Faith) to Palestine and bore the cost of this exile.[1] What corroborates Mohahed’s report is that Asadollah Momqani, during his stay in Istanbul, had seen reports on this very issue sent to Tehran by the Iranian embassy among the embassy’s archives. Therefore, Seyyed Hassan Taqizadeh asked Momqani to provide additional information from the Iranian embassy reports to complete the material mentioned in Dr. Mohahed’s article. Momqani responded with the following:
During the time of the conflict between Baha’u’llah and Subh-i-Azal, the Iranian ambassador was apparently Agha Sheikh Mohsen Khan. He had written a report describing his meeting with Sultan Abdulhamid, who told him that since Mirza Hussein Ali (Baha’u’llah) was more important than Subh-i-Azal, he had ordered that instead of giving fifty lira to each of them, sixty lira be given to Mirza Hussein Ali and forty lira to Subh-i-Azal. This led to a serious conflict between the two.
Another report states that the British ambassador came to me and said that these two individuals residing in Edirne were neighboring Russia and might incite unrest in Iran. It would be better if you met Sultan Hamid to send them to Palestine, which is under our influence. I then met Sultan Hamid and explained the matter, and the British ambassador helped ensure that Mirza Hussein Ali was exiled to Acre, and Subh-i-Azal to Cyprus.
After the deposition of Sultan Hamid, a committee of historians chaired by Ahmad Rafiq was formed, and political documents kept in certain archives were made available to them. Ahmad Rafiq showed me papers, including a letter from Mirza Hussein Ali to Sultan Hamid, stating that “You exiled me to Edirne to satisfy the Iranian government, while every day in the streets and neighborhoods, the descendants of Shah Selim mock you. You kept us here for their sake.”
—Asadollah Momqani
Sources
[1] It should be noted that after his exile to the Palestine region (Acre), ‘Abdu’l-Baha practiced taqiyya and presented himself as a Muslim scholar to gain the trust of the local population. Initially, Baha’u’llah, and subsequently ‘Abdu’l-Baha, introduced themselves as social reformers within a Muslim framework. By the time ‘Abdu’l-Baha arrived in Acre in 1286 AH, he had adopted taqiyya to such an extent that he even became the Imam of the al-Jazzar Mosque, and the people trusted him as a Muslim scholar.