A faithful believer recently informed us that she had been perusing the Amazon.com site and found that there were on the order of a thousand Baha’i books listed by them. I had read an account of Mulla Husayn, published by Kalimat Press, and found that another Kalimat book listed there intrigued me; “Tahirih the Pure” by Martha Root. I looked for it in Amazon.com and found a used one (for considerably more than list price) but decided to buy it anyway. I am glad I did. What a treasure it is!
I have not completed the book as yet, but I am finding all sorts of interesting things about Tihirih and her courageous life, and am also gaining an insight to the personality of Martha Root as well. What a champion she was!This book includes a very informative collection of 26 pages written by Marzieh Gail describing her remembrances of time spent with Martha:
“I was enjoying a lemon ice in the lobby of the big hotel in Belgrade. I looked out the plate glass window and there, hurrying past, I saw a small, female figure in a dark coat and brown straw hat. Beneath the hat I saw the line of an indomitable jaw, and I saw it was Martha Root, intent upon her tasks. Isolated, purposive, concentrated, she might have been all alone on the planet. I sighed, guiltily.
“It’s some job keeping up with Martha,” my dairy states. “Stamps fly, and wires are hot.” “Martha’s method is straight from the shoulder,” I recorded. “She hasn’t been with a person for three minutes before she’s given him a book or picture. This next is an exaggeration. She’ll say to him or her: ’How do you do? Here is a picture of ‘Abdu’l-Baha. I love you.’”Marzieh Gail continues: “a few lines from my diary, jotted down during the more than three weeks when Martha and I and my first husband Howard Carpenter were together, will help to illustrate the incredible, day-to-day services, carried on over a period of virtually twenty years, of this woman whom the Guardian (Shoghi Effendi) calls “that archetype of Baha’i teachers,” the “star servant” and “foremost Hand” of the first Baha’i century. We recall that she came to us exhausted, after achieving results in Prague that she herself wrote were “miraculous.“ A letter of mine says: “Martha’s here--lovelier than ever, and so tired. She’ll give eight lectures in six days…“
Vienna: “At the von Rosthorn’s for tea. Martha gave them some candied fruit. Their guests also heard of the Cause….Martha’s meeting for the Baha’is….Called on the Therne sisteres and daughter Vida--they met the Master here….[I realized later on that in Vienna and Budapest Martha was actually doing follow-up-work for ’Abdu’l-Baha, Who pioneered here, and looking up people who had been in His presence] ….Martha addressed the American’s Women’s club….Martha lunched with Queen Marie of Rumania and Arch-Duchess Anton, later spoke at the Theosophists’. Here she quoted eminent Theosophists who had told her: ’Theosophy is a philosophy; Baha’i is a universal religion.’ Said we both agree on the principle of development, only not the place. Quoted Mrs. Besant’s statement that ‘Abdu’l-Baha was the greatest living man….We had to get Martha through a howling mob to her lecture at the Quakers’. Martha spoke in Hall 38 at the university of Vienna. Von Rosthorn arranged this and served as her chairman….A professor called upon Martha, said it was a question of whether Gandhi or Swiss scientist Forel was the greater. Martha told him that on her tour of Swiss cities, the editors everywhere said they had heard of the Baha’i Faith through Dr. Forel…We left Vienna and came to Gyor. Mr. Steiner told Martha he had finished translating Esslemont into Hungarian. Martha spoke on world peace, in a hall rented for her by a non-Baha’i….”
The above is just a sample of the energy boiling from the pages of this wonderful book.An energy that apparently permeated every waking minute of Martha Root’s life as she
served the Cause. I find it fascinating that Martha was compelled to write about Tahirih,
the radiant beauty with the even more beautiful soul who was the first and only female to
recognize the Bab for who He was, becoming the only female among the Nineteen Letters
of the Living. It was she who transfixed the world when she raised her veil, and changed
the course of events for women’s lives for ever and ever thereafter. And we now know, many many years later, that Martha Root herself joins Tihirih and the other Letters of the Living, along with ‘Abdu’l-Baha, his sister, the Greatest Holy Leaf, Shoghi Effendi, and Mason Remey, named as the Twenty-four Elders foretold centuries ago within the pages of the Holy Bible.
How blessed we are as Baha’is to have within our understanding, should we but reflect upon it, that the three beautiful women included here, as a part of God’s Plan, changed the course of history for all women. When you consider how many years unfolded during the completion of the process of the identification of the Twenty-four Elders before it was evident to mere mortals, how can we be so impatient when we expect certain Holy events to happen quickly in accordance with the human time cycle. It is only in the unfolding in due course, within God’s time-frame, that anything of lasting significance ever happens.
And so it is with the ultimate victory of the Covenant. The only thing we really need to know is that it will ultimately happen. That is a certainty.Hand of the Cause David Maxwell
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