historians.

The Emperor of the French, the most powerful ruler of his day on the
European continent, Napoleon III; Pope Pius IX, the supreme head of the
highest church in Christendom, and wielder of the scepter of both temporal
and spiritual authority; the omnipotent Czar of the vast Russian Empire,
Alexander II; the renowned Queen Victoria, whose sovereignty extended over
the greatest political combination the world has witnessed; William I, the
conqueror of Napoleon III, King of Prussia and the newly acclaimed monarch
of a unified Germany; Francis Joseph, the autocratic king-emperor of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the heir of the far-famed Holy Roman Empire;
the tyrannical 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, the embodiment of the concentrated power
vested in the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the notorious Nasiri'd-Din
_Sh_ah, the despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of
_Sh_i'ih Islam--in a word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and
of sovereignty in His day became, one by one, the object of Baha'u'llah's
special attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the
weight of the force communicated by His appeals and warnings.

It should be borne in mind, however, that Baha'u'llah has not restricted
the delivery of His Message to a few individual sovereigns, however potent
the scepters they severally wielded, and however vast the dominions which
they ruled. All the kings of the earth have been collectively addressed by
His Pen, appealed to, and warned, at a time when the star of His
Revelation was mounting its zenith, and whilst He lay a prisoner in the
hands, and in the vicinity of the court, of His royal enemy. In a
memorable Tablet, designated as the Suriy-i-Muluk (Surih of Kings) in
which the Sultan himself and his ministers, and the kings of Christendom,
and the French and Persian Ambassadors accredited to the Sublime Porte,
and the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders in Constantinople, and its wise men
and its inhabitants, and the people of Persia, and the philosophers of the
world have been specifically addressed and admonished, He thus directs His
words to the entire company of the monarchs of East and West:

TABLETS TO THE KINGS

"O kings of the earth! Give ear unto the Voice of God, calling from this
sublime, this fruit-laden Tree, that hath sprung out of the Crimson Hill,
upon the holy Plain, intoning the words: 'There is none other God but He,
the Mighty, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise