title: Max Schmeling

text: With the coming of 1933, however, Schmeling's image in America began to take a decided turn. In 1932, the Nazi Party became the most powerful political force in Germany, and its ideologies, voiced by party leader Adolf Hitler, overflowed with anti-Semitic tendencies. Major American cities such as New York had large Jewish populations, who worried over what the party could mean for people of their religion in the future. Schmeling, because he was German, was viewed as an extension of Hitler's plans for world domination. When he was slated to fight heavy-hitting contender Max Baer on 8 June 1933, he immediately became the 'bad guy' in the eyes of fans. Baer, who did not practice the Jewish religion but had a Jewish father, came into the ring wearing the Star of David on his shorts. Promoter Jack Dempsey played up this angle and suddenly the fight was viewed as Baer defending his faith against the prejudice of the Nazis, represented reluctantly by Schmeling. Thrown off of his game in part by the bad publicity but also because of Baer's wild, brawling style and frequent fouls (including backhand punches and rabbit punches), Schmeling was thrashed after ten rounds before nearly 60,000 onlookers at Yankee Stadium. When the German took a battering against the ropes in the tenth, the referee leapt in to stop the fight. The fight, combined with a follow-up loss to contender Steve Hamas early the next year, left many wondering if Schmeling was still a world top-class fighter.


title: Max Schmeling

text: Returning to his native Germany, Schmeling won three of his next four fights, with one draw, including knockout wins over first Walter Neusel, then another avenging his previous loss to Steve Hamas. However, many among the American press and fans remained unmoved on the idea of rooting for Schmeling in light of the Nazi Party's behavior. Articles continued to be published declaring the German "washed up", a "has been", or a "Nazi puppet". When he was matched with undefeated boxing sensation Joe Louis in 1936 for the German's first fight on American soil in more than two years, he was clearly the betting underdog, considered a name opponent for Louis to roll over on his route to the title. Nevertheless, he was the number two contender for the title behind Louis. Prior to the match, Schmeling carefully studied films of Louis's prior fights, dissecting apparent flaws in the Detroit fighter's technique. Among the weaknesses he noticed was the fact that Louis lowered his left hand after throwing a left jab. In the ring, Schmeling exploited this subtle flaw to his own advantage, countering nearly every Louis jab with his best punch, the right cross. The fight proved to be a competitive, hard-hitting affair for the first three rounds, but, in the fourth, a counter right from the German dropped Louis for the first time in his career. Though Louis rose, he was badly dazed for the remainder of the fight. For a further eight rounds, Schmeling battered Louis, often standing toe-to-toe with the vaunted puncher and landing that same right hand to the jaw repeatedly. In the twelfth, he sent the American tumbling to the floor once more, and this time Louis could not recover. He was counted out on the floor, and Schmeling had scored the most talked-about sports upset of the year.


title: Max Schmeling

text: Now the unexpected number one contender for the heavyweight crown held by Jim Braddock, Schmeling looked forward to his chance to become the first fighter to regain the world heavyweight title by winning the fight with Braddock that had been scheduled for that September. The fight was postponed, however, when Braddock injured his hand in training. Rumors existed that the fight's organizers were stalling, afraid of the negative publicity that would be generated over a perceived Nazi getting a shot at the world's title. When it was confirmed that Braddock's managers were in talks with the Louis camp, the New York Commission officially released an order for Braddock to fight Schmeling for the title. Any other fight, with Louis or otherwise, would not be recognized by New York as being for the championship. The Madison Square Garden Corporation, the largest promotional company in the sport at the time, even attempted to get a legal injunction against a Braddock-Louis fight (Louis was not on their roster). Nonetheless, in February 1937, Schmeling received the news that the champion had indeed signed to defend his championship against Louis. A furious Schmeling protested, but to no avail, and he was forced to watch from ringside as Louis knocked Braddock out and gained the championship. Sorely disappointed and convinced that he would never receive his chance at redemption, Schmeling fought just once more in America, an eighth-round knockout of future contender Harry Thomas, before returning to Germany. In his native land, Schmeling was regarded as a hero and promoted by the Nazi propaganda machine as a perfect example of German supremacy over the rest of the world by virtue of his defeat of the current champion, Louis. The government ordered parades and rallies in his honor. He became a friend to Hitler and other powerful figures in the government and also a popular subject of newspaper articles and films. He continued to press for a chance at a rematch with Louis and in the meantime padded his record against overmatched fighters Ben Foord and Steve Dudas.


title: Max Schmeling

text: In 1938, champion Joe Louis announced that he would face Schmeling for the title. The rematch became an instant international sensation. Many clamored impatiently for its happening, but others, afraid of international tensions and the possibility of Hitler taking over the championship, protested. The controversy and ballyhoo led to the event becoming the most anticipated boxing match since the rematch between Dempsey and Gene Tunney, or possibly earlier. Louis, with his poor, lower-class roots, was adopted by American fans as the symbol of America as a land of opportunity. In contrast, Americans perceived Schmeling and his ties to Hitler as an obvious threat to those opportunities and ideals. When the German walked to the ring at Yankee Stadium on 22 June 1938, he did so under a hail of garbage thrown from the stands. Louis came out blazing in the first round and Schmeling tried to counter-punch as he had in the first bout, but to no avail. Driven into the ropes and battered with a fusillade of short, crisp blows from every angle, Schmeling turned his back to his opponent and clutched onto the ropes, letting out a scream that even years later, many spectators could recall vividly. Schmeling later said that he screamed because he had been hit with a blow to the kidneys. Schmeling's knees buckled under the punishment, and referee Arthur Donovan pushed Louis away, beginning a count on Schmeling. Schmeling reluctantly stepped away from the ropes, and Donovan allowed him to continue. A few punches later, Schmeling was knocked down again. From then on, he was helpless. He rose but fell moments later, and Donovan stopped the fight.


title: Max Schmeling

text: Many years later, in 1975, Schmeling said, "Looking back, I'm almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal."


title: Max Schmeling

text: When he returned to Germany after his defeat by Joe Louis, Schmeling was now shunned by the Nazis. He won both the German and European heavyweight championships on the same night, with a first-round knockout of Adolf Heuser. During the Nazi purge of Jews from Berlin, he personally saved the lives of two Jewish children by hiding them in his apartment. It was not the first time that Schmeling defied the Nazi regime's hatred for Jews. As the story goes, Hitler let it be known through the Reich Ministry of Sports that he was very displeased at Schmeling's relationship with Joe Jacobs, his Jewish fight promoter, and wanted it terminated, but Schmeling refused to bow even to Hitler. During the war, Schmeling was drafted, where he served with the "Luftwaffe" and was trained as a paratrooper. He participated in the Battle of Crete in May 1941, where he was wounded in his right knee by mortar fire shrapnel during the first day of the battle. After recovering, he was dismissed from active service after being deemed medically unfit for duty because of his injury. Nevertheless, in July 1944 a rumor that he had been killed in action made world news. He later visited American P.O.W. camps in Germany and occasionally tried to help conditions for the prisoners. By early 1945, he was spending his time giving exhibition bouts against former British Free Corps member Eric Pleasants in German officers' messes.


title: Max Schmeling

text: After the war, Schmeling settled in Hamburg where in 1947, strapped for money, he embarked upon a moderately successful comeback in boxing, winning three of his five bouts with two point-defeats before re-entering retirement for good in October 1948.


title: Max Schmeling

text: Schmeling became a successful mink, chicken, and tobacco farmer in the early 1950s. Towards the end of the decade, after multiple meetings with The Coca-Cola Company's offices in Germany, Schmeling became the face of 'Cocacolonization' and Coca-Cola's reentry into Germany. Before long, he owned his own bottling plant and held an executive's position within the company. Schmeling helped bring vending machines into use in Germany.


title: Max Schmeling

text: He became friends with Joe Louis and, although they were never close, he assisted his former rival financially in his later years, eventually financing his funeral in 1981.


title: Max Schmeling

text: His wife of 54 years, the Czech-born actress Anny Ondra, died in 1987. In 1992, he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. His autobiography, "Max Schmeling: An Autobiography", was published in 1994. He lived his remaining years as a wealthy man and avid boxing fan, dying on 2 February 2005, at the age of 99.


title: Max Schmeling

text: Schmeling lived in Stettin, Germany (now known as Szczecin, Poland); a band from this city, the Analogs, recorded the song "Max Schmeling" on their album "Hlaskover rock" (2000).


title: Max Schmeling

text: In a season 9 or 10 episode of "Law and Order", Schmeling's name is mentioned when the detectives are looking for a certain gun. The man who is supposed to own it is a fighter from the 1930s who went the distance with Schmeling in 1937.


title: Max Schmeling

text: The American-German film "Joe and Max" (2002) tells the true story of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling and their enduring friendship.


title: Max Schmeling

text: In the book "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", Joe Kavalier is beaten up by someone who may or may not have been Max Schmeling. The author hints that it probably wasn't, as Schmeling should have been fighting in Poland at the time.


title: Max Schmeling

text: In "Rocky IV", the climactic fight between American Rocky Balboa and Russian Ivan Drago was inspired by the bout between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, just updated to reflect Cold War relationships.


title: Max Schmeling

text: In a novel by Curzio Malaparte, "Kaputt" (1944), Schmeling figures prominently in the chapter "Cricket in Poland" depicting a gathering in February 1942 hosted by Governor-General Dr. Hans Frank in the Belvedere palace in Warsaw.


title: Max Schmeling

text: Schmeling's role as a paratrooper in World War II is mentioned in the Günter Grass novel "The Tin Drum" (1959).


title: Max Schmeling

text: Schmeling is the central figure in the stage play, "The Measure of a Man", written by Brian C. Petti.


title: Max Schmeling

text: For the film "Max Schmeling – Eine deutsche Legende" (2010) another former boxing champion, who moreover had known him, played Max Schmeling: Henry Maske.


title: Max Schmeling

text: The novel, "The Berlin Boxing Club" (2011) by Robert Sharenow, set in 1930s Berlin, features Schmeling heavily as the character who introduces a young Jewish boy to boxing, and later plays a larger role.


title: Max Schmeling

text: The "Voyagers!" episode "All Fall Down" depicts his second fight with Joe Louis. The series' time travelling protagonists Phineas Bogg and Jeffrey Jones convinced Louis not to back out of the fight and witnessed his victory over Schmeling in Yankee Stadium on 22 June 1938.


title: Max Schmeling

text: In season 1, episode 9 of "Babylon Berlin", the character of Bruno makes a reference to Max Schmeling in referring to a pair of old boxing gloves: "You've found my gloves. Come with me, little Schmeling."


title: Max Schmeling

text: Schmeling is mentioned in the song Ambling Alp by indie-band Yeasayer, "Oh Max Schmeling was a formidable foe, Ambling Alp was too at least that's what I'm told"


title: Max Schmeling

text: Schmeling is also referenced in the video game "" by the German character Richtofen when he is hit by a zombie in the "Alpha Omega" DLC Zombies mode map ("OW! What are you, the undead Max Schmeling?!").


title: Max Schmeling

text: In Season 6, Episode 7 of Better Call Saul, Schmeling is compared to the character of Howard Hamlin when the title character opens the front door saying, "I'll get it. Just in case Max Schmeling comes in swinging."


title: Max Schmeling

text: Max Schmeling was referenced in the climatic scene of Season 6 episode 7 of Better Call Saul, when Saul answers the door saying “just in case Max Schmeling comes in swinging.”


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh (born Ḥusayn-ʻAlí; 12 November 1817 – 29 May 1892) was the founder of the Baháʼí Faith. He was born to an aristocratic family in Persia, and was exiled due to his adherence to the messianic Bábí Faith. In 1863, in Iraq, he first announced his claim to a revelation from God, and spent the rest of his life in further imprisonment in the Ottoman Empire. His teachings revolved around the principles of unity and religious renewal, ranging from moral and spiritual progress to world governance.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh was raised with no formal education but was well read and devoutly religious. His family was considerably wealthy, and at the age of 22 he turned down a position in the government, instead managing family properties and donating considerable time and money to charities. At the age of 27 he accepted the claim of the Báb and became among the most outspoken supporters of the new religious movement that advocated, among other things, abrogation of Islamic law, which attracted heavy opposition. At the age of 33, during a governmental attempt to exterminate the movement, Baháʼu'lláh narrowly escaped death, his properties were confiscated, and he was banished from Iran. Just before leaving, while imprisoned in the Síyáh-Chál dungeon, Baháʼu'lláh claimed to receive revelations from God marking the beginning of his divine mission. After settling in Iraq, Baháʼu'lláh again attracted the ire of Iranian authorities, and they requested that the Ottoman government move him farther away. He spent months in Istanbul where the authorities became hostile to his religious claims and put him in house arrest in Edirne for four years, followed by two years of harsh confinement in the prison-city of ‘Akká. His restrictions were gradually eased until his final years were spent in relative freedom in the area surrounding ‘Akká.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh's wrote at least 1,500 letters, some of them book-length, that have been translated into at least 802 languages. Some notable examples include "The Hidden Words", the "Book of Certitude", and the "Kitáb-i-Aqdas". Some teachings are mystical and address the nature of God and the progress of the soul, while others address the needs of society, religious obligations of his followers, or the structure of Bahá’í institutions that would propagate the religion. He viewed humans as fundamentally spiritual beings, and called upon individuals to develop divine virtues and further the material and spiritual advancement of society.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh died in 1892 near ‘Akká. His burial place is a destination for pilgrimage by his followers, known as Bahá’ís, who now reside in 236 countries and territories and number between 5 and 8 million. Baháʼís regard Baháʼu'lláh as a messenger or manifestation of God in succession to Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh (, ) is a title meaning "Glory of God". He was born Ḥusayn-ʻAlí, and as the son of a nobleman in the province of Núr he was known as Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí (Persian: میرزا حسین‌علی نوری). In 1848, at the Conference of Badasht, he took the title Baháʼ (بهاء), Arabic for "glory" or "splendour".


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Many symbols and phrases of the Baháʼí Faith derive their significance from the word Baháʼ. For example, a nine-pointed star or nine-sided temples are references to the numerical value of Baháʼ according to a system of numerology (b=2, h=5, á=1, ʼ=1), the word Baháʼí indicates a follower of Baháʼ, and his son ʻAbdu'l-Bahá (Servant of Baháʼ) chose his title to demonstrate servitude toward Baháʼu'lláh.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: In the 1930s, Baháʼís adopted a standardized system of transliterating Arabic that renders Arabic faithfully into Roman script. The vowels without diacritical marks are short, and the vowels with diacritical marks are long. His name is pronounced in four sylables: Ba, as in bat; há, as in hard; the apostrophe-like mark after "Bahá" is for the Arabic letter hamza which represents the glottal stop; u'l as in old (the apostrophe represents a contraction and is not pronounced); and láh as in law.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Common transliterations of the name, with or without diacritical marks, include Baha'u'llah, Bahaullah, and Baháʼ Alláh.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh was born in Tehran, Iran on 12 November 1817. Baháʼí authors trace his ancestry to Abraham through both his wives Keturah and Sarah, to the prophet Zoroaster, to King David's father Jesse, and to Yazdigird III, the last king of the Sassanian Empire. His mother was Khadíjih Khánum, his father Mírzá ʻAbbás-i-Núrí, known as Mírzá Buzurg, served as vizier to Imám-Virdi Mírzá, the twelfth son of Fath-ʻAli Shah Qajar.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh married Ásíyih Khánum, the daughter of a nobleman, in Tehran in 1835 when he was 18 and she was 15. In his early twenties Baháʼu'lláh declined the life of privilege offered by his aristocratic lineage, instead devoting his time and resources to a range of charitable works which earned him renown as "the Father of the Poor".


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: In May 1844, a 24-year-old merchant from Shiraz, Siyyid Mírzá ʻAlí-Muḥammad, stirred Persia with his claim to not only be the promised redeemer of Islam (the Qa’im or Mahdi [Mihdi]), but a new prophet of God similar to Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. He assumed the title "the Báb" (Arabic for "the gate"), indicating his position as a spiritual "gate to divine knowledge", and to a still greater God-sent educator whose imminent appearance he was preparing the way for.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Soon after declaring his spiritual mission to Mullá Husayn, the Báb sent him to Tehran to deliver a special tablet to one whom God would guide him to. After learning about Baháʼu'lláh through an acquaintance, Mullá Husayn felt compelled to arrange for Baháʼu'lláh to receive the tablet—this news brought great joy to the Báb when Mullá Husayn wrote him about it. Bahá’u’lláh received the tablet when he was 27, he immediately acknowledged the truth of the Báb’s message and arose to share it with others. In his native province of Núr Bahá’u’lláh’s notability as a prominent local provided numerous opportunities to teach the Bábí Faith, and his trips attracted many to the new religion, including Muslim clerics. His Tehran home became a center for activities, and he generously gave financial support for the religion. In the summer of 1848, Bahá’u’lláh attended and hosted a gathering at Badasht in the province of Khorasan, where 84 Bábí disciples met for 22 days. At that conference historic discussions took place between those who wanted to maintain Islamic law (the religious heritage of most early Bábís) and those who believed the Báb had inaugurated a new religious dispensation. Baháʼu'lláh influenced agreement around the latter point of view. It was at Badasht that Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí assumed the name "Bahá’" and also gave new spiritual names to all other attendees; thereafter the Báb addressed tablets to them by those names. When Táhirih, the most prominent female disciple of the Báb, was arrested after the conference, Baháʼu'lláh intervened to protect her. Subsequently he himself was temporarily confined and punished with bastinado.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: The Bábí Faith quickly spread across Persia, attracting large numbers of adherents. This provoked widespread opposition from both Islamic clerics fearful of losing congregants and associated benefits, and from civil authorities afraid of the growing influence of the Bábí community, resulting in thousands of Bábís being killed in relentless campaigns of persecution. In July 1850 the Báb himself was executed by firing squad in Tabriz at the age of 30.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: In his teachings the Báb identifies himself as the first of two Manifestations of God whom the Creator was sending to usher in the enduring peace that is to signify humanity’s attainment of maturity—when all people will live in unity as one human family. Baháʼís hold that the Báb's teachings lay the groundwork "for the eventual establishment of a society characterized by the unity of nations, fellowship of religions, equal rights of all people, and a compassionate, consultative, tolerant, democratic, moral world order". Woven throughout the Báb's teachings are references to "Him whom God shall make manifest", the great Promised One for whom he was preparing the way. In numerous prophesies the Báb stated that next divine educator would appear shortly after his own expected martyrdom. In one of his major works, the Báb stated: ""Well is it with him who fixeth his gaze upon the Order of Baháʼu'lláh, and rendereth thanks unto his Lord.""


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Events leading up to and after the execution of the Báb were tumultuous for Bábís. As Muslim leaders incited fanatic mobs to violence against them, many Bábís—while refusing to take offensive steps against attackers—did take actions to defend themselves, but commonly ended-up being slaughtered. On 15 August 1852, two Bábí youth—in deep despair over the killings of the Báb and his leading disciples—made an ill-conceived attempt to assassinate the Iranian king whom they blamed for these tragedies. As Nasiri'd-Din Shah passed along a public road the two blocked the monarch to fire birdshot at him. The king escaped serious injury, but the incident led to an outburst of persecution against Bábís far exceeding past events.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Though investigations found the offending pair acted alone, a "reign of terror" was unleashed, killing at least 10,000 Bábís that same year as government ministers vied with one another to collectively punish known or suspected Bábís, including Bahá’u’lláh. Well known for his support of the Bábí cause, Baháʼu'lláh was arrested and incarcerated in the subterranean Síyáh-Chál of Tehran, where he was bound in heavy chains that left life-long scars. Baháʼu'lláh was confined to that dungeon for four months, as the mother of the Shah and authorities seeking to curry favor with the king sought ways to justify executing him.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: During imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál Bahá’u’lláh relates he had several mystical experiences in which he received his mission as a manifestation of God, the Promised One heralded by the Báb. Bahá’ís view this dawning of Bahá’u'lláh’s spiritual mission as the beginning of fulfillment of the Báb’s prophecies regarding "Him whom God shall make manifest". The "inseparable" nature and unity of the twin revelations of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh are why Bahá’ís consider both faiths as forming one complete religious entity, and the reason the 1844 declaration of the Báb is considered the starting date of the Bahá’í Faith.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: When it was proven beyond any doubt that Baháʼu'lláh was absolutely innocent of involvement with the attempt against the Shah’s life, the king finally agreed to free him but decreed Baháʼu'lláh would be forever banished from Persia. Dispossessed of his extensive properties and wealth, in the exceptionally severe winter of January 1853 Baháʼu'lláh with family members undertook a three-month journey to Baghdad, thus beginning what became exile for the rest of his life in territories of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Upon settling in Baghdad, Baháʼu'lláh began dispatching communications and teachers to encourage and revive flagging spirits of persecuted followers of the Báb in Persia. Over time, a number of Bábís moved to Baghdad to be close to Bahá’u’lláh. One of these was Mirza Yahya, a half-brother 13 years younger than Bahá’u’lláh, who followed him into the Bábí Faith and even accompanied him on some early journeys on its behalf. After their father's death, Yahya’s education and care were largely overseen by Bahá’u’lláh. During Baha’u’llah’s imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál Yahya went into hiding, but after Bahá’u’lláh’s exile to Iraq Yahya left Iran in disguise and made his way to Baghdad.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: For a time Yahya served as Bahá’u’lláh’s secretary in Baghdad, but envy for the growing admiration Bábís showed Bahá’u’lláh led Yahya to seek leadership of the Bábí religion. Attempting to elevate himself among Bábís, Yahya and a few supporters referenced a letter the Báb had written a few years earlier when Yahya was still a teenager, naming Yahya to nominal leadership pending the appearance of "Him whom God shall make manifest". Yahya claimed the letter meant he was actually appointed the successor or vicegerent of the Báb. Knowledgeable Bábís promptly rejected Yahya’s bold claim, because the referenced letter indicated no such status, and due to the fact that other writings of the Báb specifically "eliminated the institution of successorship, or vicegerency" from his religion. The Báb also decreed no one’s words would be binding upon believers until the advent of the Promised One. Others questioned Yahya’s motives, considering he had never done anything to protect the Bábí Faith or the lives of Bábís over which he was now claiming a high position. To bolster his effort, Yahya simultaneously sought to discredit Bahá’u’lláh by spreading false rumors and accusations about him, which stirred up feelings among Bábís in the Baghdad community.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Declining to dispute with Yahya or do anything to "endanger the unity and survival of the already demoralized Bábí community", Bahá’u’lláh entrusted his family to the care of his brother Mirza Musa and without notice left Baghdad on 10 April 1854 for mountains in the north near Sulaymaniyyih in Kurdistan. He later wrote that he withdrew to avoid becoming a source of disagreement within the Bábí community.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Initially living as a hermit in those mountains, Bahá’u’lláh dressed as a dervish and used the name Darvish Muhammad-i-Irani. In Sulaymaniyyih the head of a noted theological seminary happened to meet Bahá’u’lláh and invited him to visit. There a student noticed Bahá’u’lláh’s exquisite penmanship, which raised the curiosity of leading instructors. As he responded to their queries on complex religious themes, Bahá’u’lláh quickly gained admiration for his learning and wisdom. Shaykh ʻUthmán, Shaykh ʻAbdu'r-Rahmán, and Shaykh Ismáʼíl, leaders of the Naqshbandíyyih, Qádiríyyih, and Khálidíyyih Orders respectively, began to seek his advice. It was to the second of these that Bahá’u’lláh’s book the "Four Valleys" was written.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: During Bahá’u’lláh’s absence from the Baghdad Bábí community, Mirza Yahya’s true nature became increasingly clear. The public respect and morale of Bábís soon disintegrated as Yahya failed to give spiritual guidance or to demonstrate in daily living the lofty standards taught by the Báb. His actions to discredit Bahá’u’lláh, and any who admired him, grew. At the same time Yahya used the Bábí Faith to benefit himself materially and to try to augment his delusory standing, employing means towards those ends which shamefully contradicted statements by the Báb. He also engaged in criminal activities, including persuading several followers to murder other Bábís whom Yahya viewed as potential adversaries, or as supporters of such imagined rivals. Yahya even took steps to initiate another attempt to assassinate the Shah of Persia. Yahya’s utter failings as a religious leader led most Bábís to reject his claims.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: When rumors of a ‘saint’ living in Sulaymaniyyih reached Bábí friends in Baghdad they suspected it was Bahá’u’lláh and asked one of his relatives to locate and beg him to return to help the community. Acceding to their urgent requests, to which Yahya even added an appeal, Bahá’u’lláh returned to Baghdad on 19 March 1856.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Over the next 7 years, Bahá’u’lláh undertook to transform the Bábí community. Through personal example, as well as encouragement and constant interaction with Bábís, Bahá’u’lláh "restored the community to the moral and spiritual level it had attained during the Báb’s lifetime". Growing numbers were drawn to join the reinvigorated Bábí movement. As Bahá’u’lláh’s renown as a spiritual guide and Bábí leader grew, Mirza Yahya remained withdrawn. The spread of Bahá’u’lláh’s reputation in Baghdad and surrounding areas, along with increased dissemination of his writings, attracted "[p]rinces, scholars, mystics, and government officials" to meet him, many "prominent in Persian public life." This development unnerved antithetical elements among Iran’s Islamic clergy, and again raised the "intense fear and suspicion" of the Iranian monarch and his advisors.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: The Persian government asked the Ottoman government to extradite Baháʼu'lláh back to Persia, but the latter refused. The Persians then pressed the Ottomans to remove Baháʼu'lláh from Baghdad which was near Iran’s border. The result was an invitation in April 1863 from Sultan ʻAbdu'l-ʻAzíz himself inviting Baháʼu'lláh to reside in the Ottoman capital Constantinople (now Istanbul).


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: On 22 April 1863, Baháʼu'lláh left his house in Baghdad for the banks of the Tigris river and crossed to enter the verdant Najibiyyih garden-park on the other side, which a Baghdad admirer had offered for his use. There Baháʼu'lláh stayed for twelve days with family members and a few close followers chosen to accompany him. Upon arrival in the garden Bahá’u’lláh declared to his companions that he was "Him whom God shall make manifest", the one promised by the Báb, and announced that his mission as God’s latest manifestation in this world had commenced.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’u’lláh left the Riḍván garden on 3 May 1863 and proceeded with his family to Constantinople as guests of the Ottoman government, accompanied by a mounted government escort arranged for their protection by 'Ali Pasha, the Sultan’s prime minister. Other travelers included at least two dozen companions who requested Bahá’u’lláh’s permission to accompany him. Though not included in the Sultan’s invitation, Mirza Yahya joined the group en route. After fifteen weeks Bahá’u’lláh arrived in the Ottoman capital on 16 August 1863. He was welcomed by various government ministers of the Sultan, and by prominent personalities who paid their respects. The Persian ambassador also sent emissaries to greet him the day after his arrival.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: At the time, it was customary for prominent government guests such as Bahá’u’lláh to "call on the prime minister and other high-ranking officials", during which the guests would seek favors, broker deals, and secure various forms of official support for themselves. When Bahá’u’lláh did not return any visits, Kamal Pasha, a former Ottoman prime minister, even reminded him of the custom. Bahá’u’lláh’s response was that he knew of the practice "but had no demands to make of anyone nor did he require favors from them; therefore there was no reason" for him to call upon anyone.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’u’lláh’s independence and detachment from the situation was used by the Persian ambassador to maliciously misrepresent Bahá’u’lláh before the Ottoman court, and to press for his banishment from the capital. As a consequence, less than four months after arriving in Constantinople, the prime minister suggested the Sultan banish Baháʼu'lláh and his companions to Adrianople (now Edirne), which the ruler promptly approved.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: On 12 December 1863, Baháʼu'lláh arrived in Adrianople with his family and other companions. His presence there, which lasted four and a half years, became a significant period for the further unfoldment of his mission among Bábís, and for the general proclamation of his cause. Over the next two years, writings which flowed from Bahá’u’lláh were broadly shared with Bábís in Iran. Bahá’u’lláh dispatched several trusted followers to Iran, and most of the Bábís came to recognize him as the leader of their faith.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Emboldened by lack of persecution against Bábís, Mirza Yahya "decided to emerge from his self-imposed seclusion" to again pursue leadership ambitions which his envy of Bahá’u’lláh had kept burning. Convinced that Bahá’u’lláh’s death was necessary for his own advancement, Yahya’s first effort towards that end involved personally poisoning Bahá’u’lláh when he invited him for tea. His doing so caused a severe month-long illness that left Bahá’u’lláh with a tremor in his hand for the rest of his life. Though Bahá’u’lláh advised those who knew not to speak of what had happened, awareness of the incident grew, giving rise to strong agitation among Bábís. However, it was Yahya’s subsequent attempt on Bahá’u’lláh’s life that brought about "an unprecedented commotion in the community". It involved Ustad Muhammad-‘Aliy-i-Salmani, a traditional barber who served as Bahá’u’lláh’s bath attendant. Salmani reported that Yahya suddenly began to show kindness to him, then one day insinuated it would be "a great service" to their religion if he assassinated Bahá’u’lláh while attending to him in the bath. Salmani was so outraged he said his immediate thought was to kill Yahya—he hesitated only because he knew doing that would displease Bahá’u’lláh. Agitated, he informed Bahá’u’lláh’s faithful brother Mirza Musa of the incident, who advised him to ignore it, saying Yahya had thought of this for years. Still upset, Salmani told ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’u’lláh’s eldest son, about the matter, who told him not to speak of it to others. Salmani finally informed Bahá’u’lláh, who likewise said he should not mention it to anyone. Until this incident, because Yahya was a half-brother whom Bahá’u’lláh always treated with kindness and care, most in the Bábí community also showed Yahya respect, even if they did not accept his claims to a special religious status. However, when Salmani was unable to keep silent and openly related to others what Yahya had asked of him, Yahya’s actions and intentions—so contrary to the Báb’s teachings—incited great turmoil amidst the Bábís.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Having given his younger sibling ample guidance and opportunities to live as a Bábí should, and having repeatedly forgiven him for things he had done in the past, Bahá’u’lláh decided the time had come to formally declare to Mirza Yahya that he was God’s latest manifestation, the Promised One of the Báb, "Him whom God shall make manifest"—because doing so would require him to obey Bahá’u’lláh if Yahya were to remain faithful to the Báb. Bahá’u’lláh made that declaration to Yahya in early March 1866 through a tablet penned in Bahá’u’lláh’s own handwriting, and read aloud to Yahya by Bahá’u’lláh’s amanuensis. Besides unequivocally proclaiming his spiritual station, Bahá’u’lláh called upon Yahya "to recognize and support him as the Báb had explicitly instructed him to do." Mirza Yahya’s response was to counter that he, not Bahá’u’lláh, was the promised manifestation mentioned by the Báb. This step by Yahya promptly resulted in almost all Bábís in Adrianople, who were already devoted to Bahá’u’lláh, deciding to have nothing further to do with Yahya or his few supporters. As news of this development reached Bábís in Persia and Iraq, and surviving Bábí members of the Báb’s family, their response in support of Bahá’u’lláh was the same. Mirza Yahya’s effort to claim a divine station thus effectively cleaved him from most Bábís, for it was against the Báb’s covenant with his followers which decreed that whensoever "Him whom God shall make manifest" announced himself all Bábís were required to accept him. From this time onwards those who understood the Báb’s teachings about the Promised One began to call themselves "Bahá’ís" (meaning "the people of Bahá’", followers of Bahá’u’lláh).


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Having lost all respect or influence among Bábís who had become Bahá’ís, Mirza Yahya again sought to discredit Baháʼu’lláh with Ottoman authorities, accusing him of agitating against the Turkish government. Yahya’s actions provoked a government investigation, which cleared Baháʼu’lláh—but fearing religious issues might stir up future disorder, the Ottomans decided to imprison both Baháʼu'lláh and Mirza Yahya in far-flung outposts of their empire. In July 1868 a royal decree condemned Bahá’u’lláh and his family to perpetual imprisonment in the pestilential penal colony of ʻAkká; banished with them were most Bahá’ís in Adrianople, and a handful of Azalis. Mirza Yahya’s intrigue also resulted in his own captivity—because Turkish authorities suspected he was involved in some conspiracy, he was sent to prison in Famagusta, Cyprus with his family, some Azalis, and four Bahá’ís.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Leaving Adrianople on 12 August 1868, Bahá’u’lláh and his companions arrived in ‘Akká on 31 August where they were incarcerated in the city's prison citadel. Inhabitants of ‘Akká were told the new prisoners were enemies of the state, of God, and his religion, and association with them was strictly forbidden. The first years in ‘Akká were under very harsh conditions with many Bahá’ís becoming sick (three eventually died). June 1870 witnessed the tragic death of Baháʼu'lláh’s 22-year-old son Mirzá Mihdí who fell through an unguarded skylight as he paced on the roof of the prison one evening while engrossed in prayer and meditation. After a while, relations between Bahá’í prisoners, officials, and the local community improved, so conditions of their imprisonment were eased. When visiting 'Akká in April 1871, Dr. Thomas Chaplin (director of a British-run hospital in Jerusalem) met with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, on behalf of Baháʼu'lláh, in a home the family was living in after being moved out of the citadel. Afterward, the physician sent a letter regarding Baháʼu'lláh to the editor which was printed in "The Times" on 5 October 1871. Eventually, after the Sultan's death, Baháʼu'lláh was allowed to leave the city to visit nearby places, and to then reside in areas outside ‘Akká. From 1877–1879 Baháʼu'lláh lived in Mazra'ih, a house a few miles north of the prison city.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Though formally still a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire, the final years of Baháʼu'lláh's life (1879–1892) were spent in the Mansion of Bahjí, just outside ‘Akká. Baháʼu'lláh devoted his time to writing numerous volumes detailing his teachings, including his vision for a united world, the need for ethical actions, and many prayers.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: In 1890, Cambridge orientalist Edward Granville Browne was able to interview Baháʼu'lláh in Bahji. After this meeting he wrote his famous pen-portrait of Baháʼu'lláh: In the corner where the divan met the wall sat a wondrous and venerable figure... The face of him on whom I gazed I can never forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes seemed to read one's very soul; power and authority sat on that ample brow... No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself before one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might envy and emperors sigh for in vain! A mild dignified voice bade me be seated, and then continued:— ""Praise be to God that thou hast attained!... Thou hast come to see a prisoner and an exile... We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; yet they deem us a stirrer up of strife and sedition worthy of bondage and banishment... That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled—what harm is there in this?... Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the 'Most great Peace' shall come... Is not this that which Christ foretold?... Yet do We see your kings and rulers lavishing their treasures more freely on means for the destruction of the human race than on that which would conduce to the happiness of mankind... These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family... Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind"."


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: After a short illness, Baháʼu'lláh died on 29 May 1892 in Bahji. He was buried adjacent to the mansion in an existing building which now serves as his shrine. It is a place of pilgrimage for Bahá’ís from all over the world, and is the Qiblih they face for daily obligatory prayers. In 2008 the shrine of Bahá’u’lláh, along with other Baháʼí holy places in ‘Akká and Haifa, were added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: The Baháʼí concept of God is monotheistic. God is a single uncreated imperishable entity that is the absolute and ultimate source of all existence. Baháʼu'lláh unequivocally teaches ""the existence and oneness of a personal God," "unknowable, inaccessible," "the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty"". Bahá’u’lláh asserted that the Creator cannot be grasped by Its creation—for anything made can never comprehend its maker. Nevertheless, Baháʼu'lláh said that the Creator bestowed upon humans capacity to recognize the Maker's existence, and the ability to develop spiritually through awareness of God’s infinite superlative attributes and by striving to emulate those qualities as best as one can in life—virtues such as love, mercy, kindness, generosity, justice, "et al".


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’u’lláh explains human knowledge of God's existence and awareness of the Creator’s attributes have been—and will forever be—only possible to the extent that these are shared by special Beings he and the Báb describe as Manifestations of God. Rather than simply being great thinkers with a better perspective on life than others, manifestations are spiritual entities especially created by God with capacities infinitely superior to ordinary humans. Existing in spiritual realms prior to birth in this physical life, each manifestation is sent by God to a particular period and place as an instrument of divine intervention to help the human race gradually develop its inherent capacities to realize God’s plan for humanity.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’ís believe manifestations reflect the light of God's Will and Purpose in this world. Bahá’í writings liken manifestations to perfect mirrors reflecting one sun—though every mirror is distinct yet the reflection cast by each is of the same sun, varying only due to differences relating to time and position. Bahá’u’lláh says the guidance of manifestations necessarily differ due to the particular situations and requirements of those they deal with:""The Prophets of God should be regarded as physicians whose task is to foster the well-being of the world and its peoples… Little wonder, then, if the treatment prescribed by the physician in this day should not be found to be identical with that which he prescribed before. How could it be otherwise when the ills affecting the sufferer necessitate at every stage of his sickness a special remedy? In like manner, every time the Prophets of God have illumined the world with the resplendent radiance of the Day Star of Divine knowledge, they have invariably summoned its peoples to embrace the light of God through such means as best befitted the exigencies of the age in which they appeared"."""Bahá’ís perceive each major world religion as part of one God-ordained holistic educational process which has spiritually and socially enabled human civilization itself to progress—as people have learned to embrace ever-widening circles of unity which have successively involved ever more diverse families, tribes, city-states, and then nations. Inevitably, the human race must, and will, embrace its final circle of unity, that of the planet itself.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’u’lláh links this ""process of progressive Revelation"" to God’s eternal covenant—the promise that every divine teacher makes with his followers regarding the next manifestation whom the Creator will send to guide them. Prophecies pertaining to this great covenant are found in scriptures of all religions, with every manifestation prophesying about the next one, and even others, to come. As for their responsibility in this covenant, the followers of each religion have the duty to carefully investigate, with an open mind, whether a person claiming to be the promised new messenger of their faith does, or does not, spiritually fulfill relevant prophecies.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: In announcing his claim to be the promised manifestation heralded by the Báb, Baháʼu'lláh also declared his station as the Promised One prophesied in every major religion of the past—the divine teacher God vowed to send to usher in humanity's Golden Age. Bahá’u’lláh’s claim to being several 'messiahs' converging in one person is understood by Bahá’ís as being a spiritual symbolic fulfillment rather than a literal fulfilment of messianic and eschatological prophecies of past faiths. This understanding is based upon Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings regarding the "oneness" of God's manifestations, and the essential "oneness" of religion. Thus, Bahá’ís see Bahá’u’lláh as fulfilling prophecies for Jews as the incarnation of the "Everlasting Father", the "Lord of Hosts", and the "Prince of Peace"; for Christendom he is the "Spirit of Truth", the "Comforter" spoken of by Jesus, as well as Christ returned "in the glory of the Father"; for Shí'ah Islam he is the return of the Imam Husayn; for Sunni Islam the descent of the "Spirit of God" (Jesus); for Zoroastrians the promised Shah-Bahram; for Hindus the reincarnation of Krishna; and for Buddhists he is Maitreya, the fifth Buddha.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh calls upon every Bahá’í to live a righteous, healthy, productive life, characterized by good manners and moral virtues such as truthfulness, integrity, trustworthiness, patience, courtesy, hospitality, fidelity, purity, chastity, moderation, forbearance, justice and fairness. He encourages believers to associate with those of all faiths in a friendly and loving manner, condemns and forbids all forms of religious violence, including jihad. Baháʼu'lláh describes in detail the role of true religion as a deterrent to crime, as a force for the maintenance of social order, and as a catalyst for ongoing personal spiritual development, daily communion with God, and needed self-transformation. Baháʼu'lláh forbids asceticism, mendicancy, monasticism, and penance, while affirming the importance of working in some trade or profession to benefit oneself and others. Bahá’ís are urged to be exemplary, honest, loyal and conscientious citizens wherever they may reside, and to eschew pride, strife, slander and backbiting in all circumstances. Baháʼu'lláh’s core message to his followers is to make every effort to serve humanity, and to collaborate with like-minded individuals in all efforts to advance the process of unifying the world in ways pleasing to God.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá'u’lláh repeatedly states his message is for all peoples, and that the purpose of his teachings is to build a new world in which humanity advances as a whole. He clearly proclaims the principle of the oneness of mankind, urging heads of state to join together in resolving existing disputes to achieve peace and to safeguard it through collective security. To promote the development of a united world community, Baha’u’llah emphasizes the importance of eliminating religious and racial prejudices and avoiding extreme nationalism. Further, he stipulates the rights of all minorities must be safeguarded and their development nurtured. A condition described as absolutely necessary for the realization of global peace is complete equality between women and men worldwide. Bahá’u’lláh states that in God’s sight the sexes are equal; neither is superior to the other. To realize such equality, Baháʼí teachings envisage the implementation of far-reaching societal changes everywhere—including mandates to end discriminatory practices against females and greater emphasis on education for girls to ensure women fulfill their God-given potential in all fields of human endeavor. An analogy in Bahá’í writings emphasizes the necessity of full equality for females: ""The world of humanity is possessed of two wings—the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength the bird will not fly. Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realized; humanity cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment.""


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Baháʼu'lláh created an explicit Covenant with Bahá’ís in his will and testament which was written entirely in his own hand and is known as the "Book of My Covenant". It was unsealed and read before witnesses and members of his family on the ninth day after his death in 1892. To provide a single focal point of continued guidance, who could clarify and interpret his writings as needed, in his will Baháʼu'lláh entrusted leadership of the Bahá’í Faith to his eldest son ʻAbdu'l-Bahá by naming him his successor, the sole authorized interpreter of his writings, the perfect exemplar of his teachings, and the Centre of his Covenant with all Baháʼís. The unambiguous appointment of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was readily accepted by most Baháʼís as a natural development, since for decades prior to Baháʼu'lláh’s death ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was known for the extremely capable and devoted ways in which he carried out responsibilities entrusted to him by Baháʼu'lláh, and for the unrestrained praise his father showered upon him for his services.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: The Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh explicitly conveyed "authority for the establishment of an institutional system designed to guide, protect, and enlarge the emerging Bahá’í community." Bahá’ís believe Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant is the distinguishing feature of his Faith that preserves its unity and protects it from breaking into sects, as happened in older world religions after the deaths of their founders. To this day the Bahá’í Faith remains undivided.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Affairs of Bahá’í communities are administered, in most countries, using Bahá’í principles of consultation and collective decision-making. As there is no clergy in the Bahá’í Faith, no individual Bahá’í has the authority to tell another how to think or what to do. Bahá’u’lláh strongly encouraged personal initiative among Bahá’ís in sharing his teachings, but forbade proselytizing. Working in groups and community engagement are also considered important aspects of Bahá’í life. When requested or needed, individual and group efforts, and Bahá’í community activities in general are coordinated, guided, and supported by nine-member councils (elected annually by secret ballot) operating at local, regional, and national levels. Additional encouragement and spiritual guidance is provided by appointed individuals who do not have executive powers. Bahá’í projects are wholly supported by funds voluntarily given by Bahá’ís, as the Bahá’í Faith does not accept contributions from those who are not declared members. Bahá’í council members, as well as anyone appointed by them to assist with various community's activities (such as for moral education classes for children and junior youth), serve voluntarily. The Bahá’í administrative order is headed by the Universal House of Justice, the institution ordained and given authority for this purpose by Bahá’u’lláh in his Book of Laws; this world governing council is elected by Bahá’ís from around the world every five years at an international gathering held at the Baháʼí World Centre.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’ís consider all Bahá’u’lláh’s writings as divinely revealed, including those composed before he announced his prophetic mission. When revelation was said to come to Bahá’u’lláh, he occasionally wrote it down himself but typically spoke the words aloud to an amanuensis. At times he spoke so quickly that it presented challenges for those recording his words. The majority of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings take the form of short letters, or tablets, addressed to an individual or several persons. Among his larger works are the "Hidden Words", the "Seven Valleys", the "Book of Certitude" ("Kitáb-i-Íqán"), the "Kitáb-i-Aqdas" ("Most Holy Book"), and the "Epistle to the Son of the Wolf". The originals of Baháʼu'lláh's writings are in Persian and Arabic. His body of work is equivalent to more than 100 volumes—some 15,000 items have been identified and authenticated; if compiled they would be greater than 70 times the size of the Qur’an and more than 15 times the size of all books of the Bible’s Old and New Testaments combined.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Topics in his works are extensive and cover material, social, moral, and spiritual principles relevant to human life, both for individuals and groups. Categories include commentary on scriptures, prophecies, and beliefs of former religions; abrogation of past laws, and enunciation of laws and ordinances for this new dispensation; mystical writings; claimed proofs and explanations about God; statements relating to God’s creation of human souls as noble entities capable of knowing the Creator exists and able to reflect all Its virtues; claimed proofs of life after death and descriptions of how souls progress for eternity in endless divine realms; exaltation of work performed in a spirit of service to the status of worship; explications on just governance and on creating unity and world order; expositions on knowledge, philosophy, alchemy, medicine and healthy living; spiritual principles underlying social teachings; calls for universal education; and living virtuously and in harmony with God’s Will. Bahá’u’lláh also explores theodicy, and reasons for difficulties in this life; and he wrote numerous prayers and meditations.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’u’lláh wrote a series of letters addressed individually and collectively to monarchs, political rulers, and clerical leaders, in which he claimed to be the Promised One of the Torah, the Gospels, and the Qur’an. He asked them to accept his revelation, renounce their material possessions, rule with justice, protect the rights of the downtrodden, reduce their armaments, reconcile their differences, and collectively strive for the betterment of the world and the unification of its peoples. He warned that the world of that period was ending and that a global civilization was being born. Bahá’u’lláh further asserted that inexorable historical forces were in motion and that rulers should use the powers entrusted to them by God to serve humanity and bring about justice, peace, and unity.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: In these letters Bahá’u’lláh also prescribed ways to develop a sense of community for the planet’s peoples through collaborative endeavors such as creating an international auxiliary language, universal compulsory public education, and a common global currency and system of measurement; even as he urged rulers to dramatically curtail military spending, create an international tribunal to adjudicate disputes between nations, use taxes for social benefits, and adhere to principles of democracy in their internal affairs. To religious leaders, Bahá’u’lláh counseled them to seriously examine his cause without prejudice, forswear secular leadership, renounce dogma, embrace ecumenical outreach, and eliminate meaningless rituals; while advising monks to avoid cloistering, to mingle with people and engage in beneficial community services, and to marry.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: The first of these missives was written in 1863 in Constantinople to Sultan ʻAbdu’l-ʻAzíz, upon receipt of his order banishing Bahá’u’lláh to Adrianople; others were written in Adrianople, and in ‘Akká. In all, the following were addressed: Czar Alexander II of Russia; Francis Joseph I of Austria-Hungary; Napoleon III of France; Nasiri’d-Din Shah of Persia; Pope Pius IX; and Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland; Ottoman Sultan ʻAbdu’l-ʻAzíz; Wilhelm I of Prussia; the rulers and presidents of the republics of America; elected representatives of peoples in every land; and leaders of religion. While little meaningful response was received from those written to, afterwards Bahá’u’lláh’s letters did attract considerable attention (and even notable converts to his cause) for "the startling fulfillment of the individual prophecies they contained" warning Napoleon, the Pope, Kaiser Wilhelm, the Czar, Emperor Francis Joseph, the Shah, the Sultan, and the latter's prime minister and foreign minister, of their downfalls, loss of territories, or other divine chastisement for failure to heed his advice or for wrongs they had committed.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’u'lláh describes each manifestation as having a twofold nature, one relating to God, the other to this material world. Moreover, each has a ""double station""—the first relates to his ""innermost reality"" in which he speaks with ""the voice of God"", while the second station is his human side. He says all manifestations, as ""channels of God’s all-pervasive grace"", are unfailingly guided by the Creator to use ""the inspiration of Their words"" to affect human hearts and souls, so that open-minded individuals will grasp the truths being given.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: The "voice" in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings varies depending upon the themes or topics covered, the specific backgrounds of their intended recipients, or particular questions which individuals asked of him. In many writings Bahá’u’lláh speaks as a caring counselor or friend sharing with another; in others it is someone conveying what the manifestation asked him to pass on; in some it is as if God is speaking in the first person; and in still others it is a lowly one speaking with profound humility before God—in absolute servitude and self-effacement.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: In Bahá’u’lláh’s writings, "voice" may change from one form to another within a single text, or take the form of a conversation—as seen in the dialogue between Bahá’u’lláh and God guiding him as His manifestation in the Fire Tablet, or in the Tablet of Carmel in which Mt. Carmel and Bahá’u’lláh as God’s manifestation converse. In whatever style or voice a manifestation expresses himself, the aim is always to share spiritual truths. Shoghi Effendi, who was later appointed as the interpreter of Baháʼu'lláh’s writings, gives the following statement of Bahá’í belief on this matter: The human temple that has been made the vehicle of so overpowering a Revelation must, if we be faithful to the tenets of our Faith, ever remain entirely distinguished from that ""innermost Spirit of Spirits"" and ""eternal Essence of Essences""—that invisible yet rational God Who, however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in the concrete and limited frame of a mortal being. Indeed, the God Who could so incarnate His own reality would, in the light of the teachings of Baháʼu'lláh, cease immediately to be God. ...


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: That Baháʼu'lláh should, notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of His Revelation, be regarded as essentially one of these Manifestations of God, never to be identified with that invisible Reality, the Essence of Divinity itself, is one of the major beliefs of our Faith—a belief which should never be obscured and the integrity of which no one of its followers should allow to be compromised.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: There are ongoing efforts to ensure that Bahá’u’lláh’s original writings are collected, authenticated, catalogued, and preserved at the Baháʼí World Centre. Through an ongoing global program of translation Bahá’u’lláh’s writings currently are available in more than 800 languages.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: There are two known photographs of Baháʼu'lláh, both taken in Adrianople, copies of which are at the Baháʼí World Centre. One picture is shown to Bahá’ís during visits to the International Archives building as part of an organized Bahá’í pilgrimage; it may also be displayed on certain other highly significant special occasions. The other image was reproduced by William Miller in his 1974 polemic against the Baháʼí Faith.


title: Baháʼu'lláh

text: Bahá’ís avoid displaying photographs or imagery of Baháʼu'lláh in public or in their homes, and prefer that others also avoid displaying them in books and websites. The same practice applies to the images or dramatic representation of anyone regarded as a Manifestation of God. The official Baháʼí position on the photographs was written by Shoghi Effendi in 1939:


title: King of Mask Singer

text: The King of Mask Singer () is a South Korean singing competition program presented by Kim Sung-joo, with introductions by voice actor . It airs on MBC on Sunday, starting from April 5, 2015 as a part of MBC's "Sunday Night" programming block.


title: King of Mask Singer

text: Each competition lasts for two episodes, with the singers competing one-on-one in three elimination rounds. They are given elaborate masks which are made by designer and gloves to wear in order to conceal their identity, thus removing factors such as popularity, career and age that could lead to prejudiced voting. In the first round, both contestants sing the same song, while in the second and third round they each sing a solo song. The winners of each pair are selected by the audience and panel of celebrities through instant live votes. The identities of the singers are not revealed until they have been eliminated. The winner of the third round challenges the previous competition's Mask King, and is either eliminated or becomes the new Mask King. Ha Hyun-woo of Guckkasten ("Music Captain of Our Local") has nine consecutive wins, which is the highest number of wins achieved by any contestant (and highest number of males) and Son Seung-yeon ("The East Invincibility") has eight consecutive wins, which is the highest number of consecutive wins ever achieved by a female contestant.


title: King of Mask Singer

text: Due to great interest and demand, the show released a special album consisting of a selection of studio recordings by the competitors.


title: King of Mask Singer

text: List of idol contestants performed in this show, include the ex-idols and exclude the sub-groups (initial sort by group)


title: King of Mask Singer

text: In the ratings below, the highest rating for the show will be in , and the lowest rating for the show will be in each year.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Elaine Stritch (February 2, 1925 – July 17, 2014) was an American actress, best known for her work on Broadway and later, television. She made her professional stage debut in 1944 and appeared in numerous stage plays, musicals, feature films and television series. Stritch was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1995. She is often considered by critics as one of Broadway’s greatest female performers.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch made her Broadway debut in the 1946 comedy "Loco" and went on to receive four Tony Award nominations: for the William Inge play "Bus Stop" (1956); the Noël Coward musical "Sail Away" (1962); the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company" (1970), which included her performance of the song "The Ladies Who Lunch"; and for the revival of the Edward Albee play "A Delicate Balance" (1996). Her one-woman show "Elaine Stritch at Liberty" won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch relocated to London in the 1970s and starred in several West End productions, including Tennessee Williams' "Small Craft Warnings" (1973) and Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Lady" (1974). She also starred with Donald Sinden in the ITV sitcom "Two's Company" (1975–79), which earned her a 1979 BAFTA TV Award nomination. She won an Emmy Award in 1993 for her guest role on "Law & Order" and another for the 2004 television documentary of her one-woman show "Elaine Stritch at Liberty". From 2007 to 2012, she had a recurring role as Colleen Donaghy on the NBC sitcom "30 Rock", a role that won her much praise and popularity, as well as a third Emmy in 2007.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch was born on February 2, 1925, in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest daughter of Mildred (née Jobe; 1893–1987), a homemaker, and George Joseph Stritch (1892–1987), an executive with B.F. Goodrich. She had two older sisters, Georgene and Sally. Her Catholic family was well-off. Her father was of Irish descent, while her mother had Welsh ancestry. Cardinal Samuel Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago from 1940 to 1958, was one of her cousins. She trained at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City under Erwin Piscator, alongside Marlon Brando and Bea Arthur.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch made her stage debut in 1944. However, her Broadway debut was in "Loco" in 1946, directed by Jed Harris, followed soon after by "Made in Heaven" (as a replacement) and then "Angel in the Wings" (1947), a revue in which she performed comedy sketches and the song "Civilization".


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch understudied Ethel Merman for "Call Me Madam", and, at the same time, appeared in the 1952 revival of "Pal Joey", singing "Zip". Stritch later starred in the national tour of "Call Me Madam", and appeared in a supporting role in the original Broadway production of William Inge's play "Bus Stop". In 1958 she originated the leading role of Maggie Harris in the musical "Goldilocks".


title: Elaine Stritch

text: She starred in Noël Coward's "Sail Away" on Broadway in 1961. Stritch started in the show in a "relatively minor role and was only promoted over the title and given virtually all the best songs when it was reckoned that the leading lady...although excellent, was rather too operatic for a musical comedy". During out-of-town tryouts in Boston, Coward was "unsure about the dramatic talents" of one of the leads, opera singer Jean Fenn.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Joe Layton suggested "What would happen if...we just eliminated [Fenn's] role and gave everything to Stritch? The show was very old-fashioned, and the thing that was working was Elaine Stritch. Every time she went on stage [she] was a sensation." The reconstructed 'Sail Away' opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on October 3, 1961", with Stritch giving what Howard Taubman of The New York Times said "must be the performance of her career."


title: Elaine Stritch

text: In 1966, she played Ruth Sherwood in the musical "Wonderful Town" at New York's City Center, and appeared in an Off Broadway revival of "Private Lives" in 1968.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch became known as a singer with a brassy, powerful voice. She was the original performer cast in the role of Joanne in Stephen Sondheim's "Company" (1970) on Broadway. After over a decade of successful runs in shows in New York, Stritch moved in 1972 to London, where she starred in the West End production of "Company". On tour and in stock, Stritch appeared in such musicals as "No, No, Nanette", "The King and I", "I Married an Angel", and in "Mame" as both Vera Charles (opposite Janet Blair) and Mame Dennis.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Strich's earliest television appearances were in "The Growing Paynes" (1949) and the "Goodyear Television Playhouse" (1953–55). She also appeared on episodes of "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1954. She was the first and original Trixie Norton in a "Honeymooners" sketch with Jackie Gleason, Art Carney and Pert Kelton. The character was originally a burlesque dancer, but the role was rewritten and recast after just one episode with the more wholesome looking Joyce Randolph playing the character as a housewife.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch's other television credits included a number of dramatic programs in the 1950s and 1960s, including "Studio One". In the 1960 television season, Stritch appeared in the role of writer Ruth Sherwood in the CBS sitcom "My Sister Eileen", opposite Shirley Bonne as her younger sister, Eileen Sherwood, an aspiring actress. The sisters, natives of Ohio, live in a brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village. The one-season series aired opposite "Hawaiian Eye" on ABC and "Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall" on NBC.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: In 1975, Stritch starred in the British LWT comedy series "Two's Company" opposite Donald Sinden. She played Dorothy McNab, an American writer living in London who was known for her lurid and sensationalist thriller novels. Sinden played Robert, her English butler, who disapproved of practically everything Dorothy did and the series derived its comedy from the inevitable culture clash between Robert's very British stiff-upper-lip attitude and Dorothy's devil-may-care New York view of life. "Two's Company" was exceptionally well received in Britain and ran for four series until 1979. In 1979, both Stritch and Sinden were nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for "Two's Company", in the category "Best Light Entertainment Performance", losing out to Ronnie Barker.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: In 1980, Stritch starred in another series for LWT, "Nobody's Perfect" (the British version of "Maude"—not to be confused with the 1980 American series of the same name, which aired in the UK as "Hart of the Yard") playing Bill Hooper alongside Richard Griffiths as her husband Sam. Unsatisfied with the Anglicised scripts, Stritch herself adapted the original American scripts for all but one of the fourteen episodes (Griffiths handled the remaining one).


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Other British television appearances by Strich included Roald Dahl's "Tales of the Unexpected". Although she appeared several times in different roles, perhaps her most memorable appearance was in the story "William and Mary", in which she played the wife of a man who has cheated death by having his brain preserved. She appeared on BBC 1's children's series, "Jackanory", reading, among other stories, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: After returning to the United States, she appeared on "The Edge of Night" as vinegary nanny Mrs. DeGroot, then was cast as a regular on the short-lived "The Ellen Burstyn Show" in 1986. She appeared as the stern schoolteacher Mrs. McGee on three episodes of "The Cosby Show" (1989–90). She had a recurring role in "Law & Order" (1992, 1997) as Lanie Stieglitz. Other roles included Judge Grace Lema on "Oz" (1998); and Martha Albright (mother of Jane Curtin's character) on two episodes of "3rd Rock From the Sun" (1997, 2001), alongside her Broadway co-star George Grizzard, who played George Albright. On April 26, 2007, she began guest appearances on the NBC sitcom "30 Rock" as Colleen, the fearsome mother of Alec Baldwin's lead character, Jack Donaghy.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch was reportedly considered for the role of Dorothy Zbornak on "The Golden Girls" but, as she related in her show "Elaine Stritch at Liberty", she "blew her audition". The role was cast with Beatrice Arthur. She was seen on "One Life to Live" (1993), replacing fellow stage legend Eileen Heckart as Wilma Bern. In 1996, she appeared on an episode of "Late Show with David Letterman" as a woman who believes host David Letterman is her pool boy.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch appeared in more films in her later years than the early part of her career. In an interview in 1988, it was noted that "Making movies is challenging to Stritch since she considers herself a novice." She said: "I'm fascinated with it. And I want to do more of them." She was asked why she waited so long to make movies since she apparently enjoys it so much. "You do a movie for, like, three months and then you're finished. You do a part in a play and it's like going into a roomful of audiences for a year."


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Early in her career, she appeared in "Three Violent People" (1956) starring Charlton Heston, as the hotel proprietor pal of Anne Baxter, and then co-starred opposite Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones in the David O. Selznick remake of "A Farewell to Arms" (1957) as Hudson's nurse. In "The Perfect Furlough", she co-starred opposite Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. She had a showy role as the lesbian proprietor of a bar in the cult film "Who Killed Teddy Bear?" (1965), which starred Sal Mineo. She played a "tough-as-nails" nurse in the remake of "The Spiral Staircase" (1975) and was praised for her performance in "Providence" (1977).


title: Elaine Stritch

text: When she returned to the United States in the mid-1980s from London, Woody Allen cast her as the former movie star mother in his drama "September" (1987). "People" magazine called her performance "acclaimed" and wrote "Though the movie has received mixed reviews, Stritch's roaring presence, like Godzilla in a stalled elevator, can't be ignored." Allen later cast her in his comedy "Small Time Crooks" (2000) in which she played a "snobby socialite". Rex Reed wrote of her performance: "Elaine Stritch can still stop you in your tracks with a meaningless, drop-dead one-liner (which is all she gets here)."


title: Elaine Stritch

text: She joined the ensemble of "" (1988) as an apartment manager who helps widowed Jack Gilford get over his wife's death. Among her co-stars were former "Goldilocks" co-star Don Ameche and Gwen Verdon. She appeared in "Out to Sea" (1997) as Dyan Cannon's wise-cracking mother and "danced up a storm" with the other characters. She played Winona Ryder's loving grandmother in the film "Autumn in New York" (2000).


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch had a rare co-starring role in the comedy "Screwed" (2000), playing Miss Crock, who becomes the intended victim of a kidnapping by her disgruntled butler (Norm Macdonald). She appeared in the comedy "Monster in Law" (2005) starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda, playing Fonda's mother-in-law.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: In 1982, Stritch appeared on an edition of the long-running BBC Radio comedy series "Just a Minute" alongside Kenneth Williams, Clement Freud and Barry Cryer. The show was described by long-time chairman Nicholas Parsons as being among the most memorable because of the way Stritch stretched the show's rules. She described Kenneth Williams as capable of making "one word into a three-act play".


title: Elaine Stritch

text: After her husband, John Bay, died from brain cancer in 1982, Stritch returned to America, and after a further lull in her career and struggles with alcoholism, Stritch began performing again. She appeared in a one-night only concert of "Company" in 1993 and as Parthy in a Broadway revival of the musical "Show Boat" in 1994.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: In 1996 she played Claire in a revival of Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance", with "Variety" writing: "Equally marvelous is Stritch, with a meatier role than her recent foray as Parthy in "'Show Boat".' To watch her succumb to the vast amounts of alcohol Claire ingests, folding and refolding her legs, slipping – no, oozing – onto the floor, her face crumpling like a paper bag, is to witness a different but equally winning kind of thespian expertise. It's a master class up there."


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Her one-woman show "Elaine Stritch at Liberty", a summation of her life and career, premiered at New York's Public Theater, running from November 7 to December 30, 2001. It then ran on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theatre from February 21 to May 27, 2002, and then, also in 2002, at London's Old Vic Theatre.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch appeared in the Broadway revival of the Sondheim-Wheeler musical "A Little Night Music" from July 2010 to January 2011, succeeding Angela Lansbury in the role of Madame Armfeldt, the wheelchair-bound mother who remembers her life as a courtesan in the song "Liaisons". The AP reviewer of the musical (with the two new leads) wrote "Devotees of Stritch, who earned her Sondheim stripes singing, memorably, 'The Ladies Who Lunch' in "Company" 40 years ago, will revel in how the actress, who earned a huge ovation before her very first line at a recent preview, brings her famously salty, acerbic style to the role of Madame Armfeldt."


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch performed a cabaret act in New York City at the Cafe Carlyle in the Carlyle Hotel, where she was a resident from 2005 until she left New York in 2013. Her first show at the Carlyle was titled "At Home at the Carlyle". "The New York Times" reviewer wrote:


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Between musical numbers, Stritch told stories from the world of stage and screen, tales from her everyday life and personal glimpses of her private tragedies and triumphs. She performed at the Cafe Carlyle in early 2010 and in fall 2011 in "At Home at the Carlyle: Elaine Stritch Singin' Sondheim...One Song at a Time".


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Strich was married to the actor John Bay from 1973 until his death in 1982. He was part of the family that owns the Bay's English Muffins company, and Stritch sent English muffins as gifts to friends. Said John Kenley: "Every Christmas, she still sends me English muffins." When she was based in London, Stritch and her husband lived at the Savoy Hotel.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: In March 2013, Stritch announced she was leaving New York and relocating to Birmingham, Michigan, close to where she grew up.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch was candid about her alcoholism. She took her first drink at 14 and began using it as a crutch before performances to vanquish her stage fright and insecurities. Her drinking worsened after Bay's death, and she sought help after experiencing problems with the effects of alcoholism, including the onset of diabetes. "Elaine Stritch at Liberty" discusses the topic at length.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch died in her sleep at the age of 89 at her home in Birmingham, Michigan, on July 17, 2014. She suffered from diabetes and had stomach cancer. At the time of her death, only three months after having had surgery for the disease, cancer was not cited as an immediate cause of her death. Her body was buried at Memorial Park Cemetery, Cook County, Illinois.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: The Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event was awarded to the producers of Elaine Stritch at Liberty. However, Stritch enthusiastically accepted the award at the 56th Tony Awards, later complaining that her acceptance speech was cut off by the strains of the orchestra, which left her feeling angry.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special for The HBO special of Elaine Stritch at Liberty, was awarded to its producers.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: Stritch's voice and vocal delivery are spoofed in the "Forbidden Broadway" songs "The Ladies Who Screech" and "Stritch", parodies of "The Ladies Who Lunch" and "Zip", songs she performed in the musicals "Company" and "Pal Joey".


title: Elaine Stritch

text: In 2009, a parody by Bats Langley entitled "How the Stritch Stole Christmas" (loosely based on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas") appeared on YouTube.


title: Elaine Stritch

text: On "The Big Gay Sketch Show" in 2007, she was spoofed (portrayed by Nicol Paone) as a Wal-Mart greeter who is still a theater gal at heart. In a later episode, Stritch is spoofed as an airport security guard, who's still "on" and isn't able to tone down her over-the-top antics. In yet another episode, "Stritch" is promoting her self-titled perfume "Stritchy" in dramatic fashion when she is confronted by the real-life Elaine Stritch, who makes a cameo appearance.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Josephine Sarah "Sadie" Earp (née Marcus; 1861 – December 19, 1944) was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp, a famed Old West lawman and gambler. She met Wyatt in 1881 in the frontier boom town of Tombstone in Arizona Territory, when she was living with Johnny Behan, sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Josephine was born in New York to a Prussian Jewish family. Her father was a baker. They moved to San Francisco, where Josephine attended dance school as a girl. When her father had difficulty finding work, the family moved in with her older sister and brother-in-law in a working-class tenement. Josephine ran away, possibly as early as age 14, and traveled to Arizona, where she said she went "looking for adventure". Much of her life from about 1874 to 1882 (when she lived in the Arizona Territory) is uncertain; she worked hard to keep this period of her life private, even threatening legal action against writers and movie producers. She may have arrived in Prescott, Arizona as early as 1874. The book "I Married Wyatt Earp" (1967), based on a manuscript allegedly written in part by her, describes events she witnessed in Arizona that occurred before 1879, the year she claimed at other times to have first arrived in Tombstone. There is some evidence that she lived from 1874 to 1876 in Prescott and Tip Top, Arizona Territory under the assumed name of Sadie Mansfield, who was a prostitute, before becoming ill and returning to San Francisco. The name Sadie Mansfield was also recorded in Tombstone. Researchers have found that the two names share extremely similar characteristics and circumstances.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Later in life Josephine described her first years in Arizona as "a bad dream". What is known for certain is that she traveled to Tombstone using the name Josephine Marcus in October 1880. She wrote that she met Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan when she was 17 and he was 33. He promised to marry her and she joined him in Tombstone. He reneged but persuaded her to stay. Behan was sympathetic to ranchers and certain outlaw Cowboys, who were at odds with Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp and his brothers, Wyatt and Morgan. Josephine left Behan in 1881, before the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which Wyatt and his brothers killed three Cochise County Cowboys. She went to San Francisco in March 1882 and was joined that fall by Wyatt, with whom she remained as his life companion for 46 years until his death.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Josephine and Wyatt moved throughout their life, from one boomtown to another, until they finally bought a cottage in the Sonoran Desert town of Vidal, California on the Colorado River, where they spent the cooler seasons. In the summer they retreated to Los Angeles, where Wyatt struck up relationships with some of the early cowboy actors, including William S. Hart and Tom Mix. The facts about Josephine Earp and her relationship to Wyatt were relatively unknown until amateur Earp historian Glenn Boyer published the book "I Married Wyatt Earp". Boyer's book was considered a factual memoir, and cited by scholars, studied in classrooms, and used as a source by filmmakers for 32 years. In 1998, reporters and scholars found that Boyer could not document many of the facts he wrote about Josephine's time in Tombstone. Some critics described the book as a fraud and a hoax, and the University of Arizona withdrew the book from its catalog.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Josephine Sarah Marcus was born in 1861 in New York City, the second of three children of immigrants Carl-Hyman Marcuse (later Henry Marcus) and Sophie Lewis. The Lewis family was Jewish, and came from the Posen region in Prussia, current-day Poland, around 1850. Sophie was a widow with a 3-year-old daughter, Rebecca Levy, when she married Marcuse, who was eight years younger than she. Sophie and Carl had three children together: Nathan (born 1857), Josephine, and Henrietta (born 1864).


title: Josephine Earp

text: Josephine's father Henry was a baker. He struggled to make a living in New York City and read about the growing city of San Francisco. Henry moved the family to San Francisco in 1868 when Josephine was 7. They traveled via ship to Panama, went over the Isthmus of Panama, and caught a steamship to San Francisco. They arrived while the city was recovering from the disastrous earthquake of October 21, 1868. Upon their arrival, her father found a highly stratified Jewish community. On the inside were the German Jews and on the outside were the Polish Jews. The German Jews were usually more affluent, were better educated, and spoke German, while the Polish Jews, who spoke Yiddish, were typically peddlers and much more religious. Henry found work as a baker.


title: Josephine Earp

text: By 1870, San Francisco was riding on the coattails of the still expanding economic boom caused by the mining of silver from the Comstock Lode. San Francisco's population had boomed to 149,473, and housing was in short supply. Apartment buildings were crowded and large homes were converted into rooming houses. Money flowed from Nevada through San Francisco, and for a while the Marcus family prospered. Later that year, Josephine's half-sister Rebecca Levy married Aaron Wiener, an insurance salesman born in Prussia, as her parents were.


title: Josephine Earp

text: As an adult, Josephine claimed her father was German and ran a prosperous mercantile business. Henry Marcus initially made enough money to send Josephine and her sister Hattie to music and dance classes at McCarty's Dancing Academy, a family-owned business on Eddy St. that taught both children and adults. In "I Married Wyatt Earp", author Glen Boyer states that Josephine took dance lessons and had a maid. He wrote (in her voice), "Hattie and I attended the McCarthy Dancing Academy for children on Howard Street (Polk and Pacific). Eugenia and Lottie McCarthy taught us to dance the Highland Fling, the Sailor's Hornpipe, and ballroom dancing."


title: Josephine Earp

text: During 1874, when Josephine was 13, production of gold and silver from the Comstock Lode had fed a feverish stock market, leading to a great deal of speculation. When the Comstock Lode production began to fade, San Francisco suffered. Her father Henry’s earnings as a baker fell. The family was forced to move in with Josephine's older sister Rebecca and her husband Aaron "south of the slot" (south of Market Street) at 138 Perry Street between 3rd and 2nd at Harrison in a tenement on the flatlands. It was a working-class, ethnically mixed neighborhood, where smoke from factory chimneys filled the air. The 1880 census places the family in the 9th Ward, between San Francisco Bay, Channel, Harrison and Seventh streets. In early 1880, Henry was living with his son-in-law Aaron, who was employed as a bookkeeper.


title: Josephine Earp

text: As a girl, Josephine loved going to the theater. "There was far too much excitement in the air to remain a child." She apparently resented treatment by her teachers in the San Francisco schools, describing them as "inconsistent of a tolerant and gay populous acting as merciless and self-righteous as a New England village in bringing up its children." She described the harsh discipline meted out, including the "sting of rattan" and "being slapped for tardiness". Josephine said that she matured early and developed large breasts.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Throughout her later life, Josephine worked hard to manage what the press and public knew about her and Wyatt's life in Arizona. Josephine told Earp's biographers and others that Earp didn't drink, never owned gambling saloons, and that his saloons didn't offer prostitutes, which all have been documented. When Frank Waters was writing "Tombstone Travesty", originally published in 1934, he returned from a research trip to Tombstone to learn that Josephine Earp had visited his mother and sister and threatened court action to prevent him from publishing the book. Waters' work was later found to be critically flawed, "based upon prevarications, character assassinations, and the psychological battleground that was the brilliant, narcissistic mind of its author."


title: Josephine Earp

text: In the course of writing "" (1931), Stuart Lake learned that Josephine had lived with Johnny Behan in Tombstone and other aspects of Josephine's life that she wanted to keep private. Josephine and Wyatt went to great lengths to keep her name out of Lake's book, and she threatened litigation to keep it that way. At one point in their contentious relationship, Josephine described Lake's book as made up of "outright lies". After Wyatt died in 1929, Josephine traveled to Boston, Massachusetts to try to persuade the publisher to stop the release of the book. Although the biography became a bestseller, it was later strongly criticized for fictionalizing Earp's life and was found to be markedly inaccurate.


title: Josephine Earp

text: During the later years of her life, in addition to burnishing the life and legend of husband Wyatt Earp, "she scripted a history of make believe to hide a number of things of which she was not terribly proud."


title: Josephine Earp

text: As late as 1936, Josephine took legal action to suppress certain details of her and Wyatt's life in Tombstone. Josephine worked hard to conceal Wyatt's prior relationship to his common-law wife and former prostitute Mattie Blaylock, with whom Wyatt was living when Josephine first met him in 1880. Earp named a mining claim he filed on February 16, 1880 "Mattie Blaylock." While Blaylock was living with Earp, she suffered from severe headaches and became addicted to laudanum, an opiate-based pain reliever widely available at the time. After Earp left Tombstone and Blaylock, she waited in Colton, California to hear from him, but he never contacted her. She met a gambler from Arizona who asked her to marry him. She asked Wyatt for a divorce, but Wyatt didn't believe in divorce and refused. She ran away with the gambler anyway, who later abandoned her in Arizona. Mattie resumed life as a prostitute and committed "suicide by opium poisoning" on July 3, 1888.


title: Josephine Earp

text: The facts about Josephine's life in the Arizona Territory and in Tombstone have been obscured by her legal and personal efforts to keep that period private. Josephine's own story offers a conflicting account of when she first reached Arizona. Her confusing recollection of events show how easily Josephine mixed fact and fiction.


title: Josephine Earp

text: After Wyatt's death, Josephine collaborated with two of her husband's cousins, Mabel Earp Cason and her sister Vinolia Earp Ackerman, to document her life. The cousins recorded events in her later life, but they found Josephine evasive about the timing and nature of events during her time in the Arizona Territory and Tombstone. She would not even talk about the key events of 1881–82, their key years in Tombstone. The most she would say is that she returned to the Arizona Territory in 1881 and joined Johnny Behan in Tombstone. She said that she had believed Behan was planning to marry her, but he kept putting it off, and she grew disillusioned.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Based on the story she told the Earp cousins, when correlated with other sources, Josephine may have left her parents’ home in San Francisco for Prescott, Arizona, as early as October 1874, when she was 13 or 14 years old, not 1879 as she told everyone later on. Cason says she and her sister "finally abandoned work on the manuscript because she [Josie] would not clear up the Tombstone sequence where it pertained to her and Wyatt."


title: Josephine Earp

text: In addition to Josephine's concealing Wyatt's past relationship with Blaylock, modern researchers think she may also have been concealing her own past as a "sporting lady" or prostitute. When Stuart Lake was researching his book "Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal" he heard stories about Sadie's personal history. He didn't include them in the book, but he did write about them in letters during 1929. Bat Masterson, a friend of Wyatt Earp's who was in Tombstone from February to April 1881, described her to Stuart Lake as "an incredible beauty" and as the "belle of the honkytonks, the prettiest dame in three hundred or so of her kind." Honkytonk bars in that era often had a reputation as places for prostitution and his choice of language ("three hundred or so of her kind") may have referred to Josephine's work as a prostitute.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Other researchers have questioned what she did prior to 1883. A town like Tombstone, full of single men, attracted women who sought adventure with little concern for what others might think. Josephine always sought excitement in her life. In the book "I Married Wyatt Earp" (1967), based on a manuscript which she purportedly wrote, author Glenn Boyer quotes her as saying, "I liked the traveling sort of man... better than the kind that sat back in one town all his life and wrote down little rows of figures all day or hustled dry goods or groceries and that sort of thing... My blood demanded excitement, variety and change."


title: Josephine Earp

text: Men in Tombstone outnumbered women nine to one, and the miners were eager to pay substantial fees to women who would cook their meals, provide rooms, wash their clothes, and provide sexual services. Many madams and prostitutes had more control of their lives and greater independence than "respectable" women, who often ostracized them. Married women of the era were expected to avoid working outside the home, or risk being considered "public women," a euphemism for prostitute. A few women of the era chose to remain single as a means to maintain their independence from men, and Josephine was among them.


title: Josephine Earp

text: The type of work available to unmarried women without means in that era was as waitresses, laundresses, seamstresses, or other dull work which Josephine avoided. Some women in Tombstone operated restaurants, boarding-houses, and apparel and millinery shops, and a few ran some of the dry goods stores. Many wives of the prosperous mining engineers, merchants, and business owners lived in better class cities where they didn't have to contend with being confused for a prostitute.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Josephine's life on the frontier and possibly as a prostitute allowed her greater independence. She likely enjoyed the social life and independence that accompanied her role. As an unmarried woman in frontier Tombstone, vastly outnumbered by men, she was likely regarded by some as a prostitute, regardless of her true status.


title: Josephine Earp

text: In a remarkable set of coincidences, the known life of Josephine Sadie Marcus overlapped the life of an otherwise unknown prostitute named Sadie Mansfield. Josie attended the Powell Street Primary School on Powell St. between Clay and Washington in San Francisco. One block away on the 1000 block of Clay Street in a neighborhood known for prostitution was a brothel, owned by Hattie Wells. In 1879, five prostitutes lived there. Josephine had to walk past the brothel every day on her way to school. To her the women appeared not as "soiled doves" but nicely dressed women living a life of leisure. Wells also owned a brothel in Prescott, Arizona.


title: Josephine Earp

text: In "I Married Wyatt Earp", Josephine wrote that one day, "I left my home one morning, carrying my books just as though I was going to school as usual." She said that at the age of 18, she ran away with two friends, Dora Hirsch, daughter of her music teacher, and a girl named Agnes, who had a role in Pauline Markham troupe's production of "H.M.S. Pinafore" in San Francisco. Author Sherry Monahan questions why an 18-year-old woman would be carrying books to school and find it necessary to "run away."


title: Josephine Earp

text: In the Cason manuscript, which was in part the basis for the book "I Married Wyatt Earp", Josephine says she and her friend Dora joined the Pauline Markham Theater Company in 1879, when it visited San Francisco on its Western tour. Markham already had a national reputation as a burlesque dancer and songstress. She often appeared on stage and in publicity photos wearing a corset and pink tights: shocking attire for the 1870s. Josephine wrote that Dora was hired as a singer, and she was hired as a dancer. Josie said the two of them sailed with the other six members of the Pauline Markham troupe from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, where they stayed for a few days, performing in San Bernardino before leaving for Prescott, Arizona Territory, by stagecoach.


title: Josephine Earp

text: Josephine said the girls arrived with the troupe in Tombstone on December 1, 1879 for a one-week engagement. This was the same date that Wyatt Earp and his brothers arrived. After a week in Tombstone, the Markham troupe finished their engagement and headed north to Prescott. They performed "H.M.S. Pinafore" more than a dozen times from December 24, 1879 through February 20, 1880. Josephine said she left the acting troupe in February 1880, just after the Markham troupe ended its initial run of performances in Prescott.