od."
"Blessed the man," He, moreover, as confirmed by Baha'u'llah, had
declared, "that hath visited Akka, and blessed he that hath visited the
visitor of Akka." Furthermore, "He that raiseth therein the call to
prayer, his voice will be lifted up unto Paradise." And again: "The poor
of Akka are the kings of Paradise and the princes thereof. A month in Akka
is better than a thousand years elsewhere." Moreover, in a remarkable
tradition, which is contained in _Sh_ay_kh_ Ibnu'l-'Arabi's work, entitled
"Futuhat-i-Makkiyyih," and which is recognized as an authentic utterance
of Muhammad, and is quoted by Mirza Abu'l-Fadl in his "Fara'id," this
significant prediction has been made: "All of them (the companions of the
Qa'im) shall be slain except One Who shall reach the plain of Akka, the
Banquet-Hall of God."

Baha'u'llah Himself, as attested by Nabil in his narrative, had, as far
back as the first years of His banishment to Adrianople, alluded to that
same city in His Lawh-i-Sayyah, designating it as the "Vale of Nabil," the
word Nabil being equal in numerical value to that of Akka. "Upon Our
arrival," that Tablet had predicted, "We were welcomed with banners of
light, whereupon the Voice of the Spirit cried out saying: 'Soon will all
that dwell on earth be enlisted under these banners.'"

The banishment, lasting no less than twenty-four years, to which two
Oriental despots had, in their implacable enmity and shortsightedness,
combined to condemn Baha'u'llah, will go down in history as a period which
witnessed a miraculous and truly revolutionizing change in the
circumstances attending the life and activities of the Exile Himself, will
be chiefly remembered for the widespread recrudescence of persecution,
intermittent but singularly cruel, throughout His native country and the
simultaneous increase in the number of His followers, and, lastly, for an
enormous extension in the range and volume of His writings.

His arrival at the penal colony of Akka, far from proving the end of His
afflictions, was but the beginning of a major crisis, characterized by
bitter suffering, severe restrictions, and intense turmoil, which, in its
gravity, surpassed even the agonies of the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran, and to
which no other event, in the history of the entire century can compare,
except the internal convulsion that rocked the Faith in Adrianople. "Know
thou," Baha'u'llah, wishing to emphasize the criticalness of the first
nine years of