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embodiment of all that is lovable?" "I stood," declared Mirza Aqa Jan, "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." Finally, discerning, as He Himself testifies in the Kitab-i-Iqan, "the signs of impending events," He decided that before they happened He would retire. "The one object of Our retirement," He, in that same Book affirms, "was to avoid becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of disturbance unto Our companions, the means of injury to any soul, or the cause of sorrow to any heart." "Our withdrawal," He, moreover, in that same passage emphatically asserts, "contemplated no return, and Our separation hoped for no reunion." Suddenly, and without informing any one even among the members of His own family, on the 12th of Rajab 1270 A.H. (April 10, 1854), He departed, accompanied by an attendant, a Muhammadan named Abu'l-Qasim-i-Hamadani, to whom He gave a sum of money, instructing him to act as a merchant and use it for his own purposes. Shortly after, that servant was attacked by thieves and killed, and Baha'u'llah was left entirely alone in His wanderings through the wastes of Kurdistan, a region whose sturdy and warlike people were known for their age-long hostility to the Persians, whom they regarded as seceders from the Faith of Islam, and from whom they differed in their outlook, race and language. Attired in the garb of a traveler, coarsely clad, taking with Him nothing but his ka_sh_kul (alms-bowl) and a change of clothes, and assuming the name of Darvi_sh_ Muhammad, Baha'u'llah retired to the wilderness, and lived for a time on a mountain named Sar-Galu, so far
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