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Therefore, Baha'u'llah was forced to roam from prison to prison for forty years: until His death in Palestine in 1892. During His long imprisonment Baha'u'llah personally addressed tablets and epistles to the most important rulers and heads of state of the age. He sent letters to Queen Victoria of England, to Czar Alexander II of Russia, to Kaiser William I of Germany, to Franz Joseph, powerful Emperor of Austria and, through his wife Elizabeth, to the Empire of Hungary, to Pope Pius IX (who, besides being the charismatic head of Christianity, ruled the Vatican states) and in the end even twice, to the Great Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Furthermore, He conveyed copious messages to the two great rulers of the East: Sultan Abdul Aziz, undisputed head of the enormous Ottoman Empire and the very powerful Shah of Persia Nasir-i-Din, King of Kings, descendant of the Sasanid dynasty. In these letters Baha'u'llah proclaimed His principles and invited the potentates of the world to arrange a " a great assembly " so as to establish the basis of new rules bound to the new historic course toward world unity. These letters were sent in vain. The main rulers of the Earth continued negligently, on the road to conquests, content only with their personal power, with expanding their territories and with increasing their war arsenals. (13:2) Baha'u'llah, constantly in exile, as a prisoner in the big fortress of Akka, in Palestine, was deprived of His properties. His family was decimated. Twenty thousand of His disciples were persecuted and killed in the most atrocious ways. He Himself was tortured and beaten. He ended His life as a prisoner, in May 1892. Only today His works, His life, His principles are becoming known. (13:3) A fascinating individual! Wonderful writings in style and content, denote an extraordinary personality, as exceptional as are His writings and His interpretation of History. His vision of the world as a common nation of people and as one family is certainly a forerunner of our time. Often progress, in order to assert itself, finds nourishment in sufferings, victims and blood. (13:4) Unlike Greek philosophy and Christian theology, Baha'u'llah asserts that the history of our planet evolved through ever widening and complex social aggregations. In the beginning only couples existed. These couples, aggregating with others to better cope with problems related to survival, became tribes. Then, stimulated by commercial trade, they again developed into villages. The need to defend themselves from enemies, from predators, from hostile nature and from the increasing population created the premises to turn villages into cities. Cities, through military conquests and new social structures, became city states (initially dependent, then independent). Subsequently they grew into territories, regions and nations. Diagram number1 (not shown) briefly shows the evolution of human society as a whole
(13:5)
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