Some sixty years afterwards He thus described the moment in which this conviction suddenly overwhelmed His whole nature:-- I am the servant of the Blessed Perfection.

In Ba_gh_dad I was a child.

Then and there He announced to me the Word, and I believed in Him.

As soon as He proclaimed to me the Word, I threw myself at His Holy Feet and implored and supplicated Him to accept my blood as a sacrifice in His Pathway.

Sacrifice! How sweet I find that word! There is no greater Bounty for me than this! What greater glory can I conceive than to see thick neck chained for His sake, these feet fettered for His love, this body mutilated or thrown into the depths of the sea for His Cause! If in reality we are His sincere lovers--if in reality I am His sincere servant, then I must sacrifice my life, my all at His Bless Threshold .-- Diary of Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, January 1914.
About this time He began to be called by His friends, "The Mystery of God," a title given to Him by Baha'u'llah, by which He was commonly known during the period of residence in Ba_gh_dad.
When His father went away for two years in the wilderness, Abbas was heartbroken.