CHAPTER 4: 'ABDU'L-BAHA: THE SERVANT OF BAHA.
When the ocean of My presence hath ebbed and the Book of My Revelation is ended, turn your faces towards Him Whom God hath purposed, Who hath branched from this Ancient Root .-- BAHA'U'LLAH, Kitab-i-Aqdas.
Birth and Childhood Abbas Effendi, Who afterwards assumed the title of 'Abdu'l-Baha (i.e.
Servant of Baha), was the eldest son of Baha'u'llah.

He was born in Tihran before midnight on the eve of the 23rd of May, 1844,( 20) the very same night in which the Bab declared His mission.
He was nine years of age when His father, to Whom even then He was devotedly attached, was thrown into the dungeon in Tihran.

A mob sacked their house, and the family were stripped of their possessions and left in destitution.

'Abdu'l-Baha tells how one day He was allowed to enter the prison yard to see His beloved father when He came out for His daily exercise.

Baha'u'llah was terribly altered, so ill He could hardly walk, His hair and beard unkempt, His neck galled and swollen from the pressure of a heavy steel collar, His body bent by the weight of His chains, and the sight made a never- to-be-forgotten impression on the mind of the sensitive boy.
During the first year of their residence in Ba_gh_dad, ten years before the open Declaration by Baha'u'llah of His Mission, the keen insight of 'Abdu'l-Baha, Who was then but nine years of age, already led Him to the momentous discovery that His father was indeed the Promised One Whose Manifestation all the Babis were awaiting.