An epic poem in alliterative verse reminiscent of Old English poetic form, Noble Rider concerns the nineteenth-century luminary named Bahaullah, the prophet founder of the Bahai faith. It is the first volume in a projected trilogy and addresses the life from birth in Tehran in 1817 to the public announcement of his mission in Baghdad in 1863. The son of a minister ascendant in the Qajar monarchy, Bahaullah was renowned from an early age for his brilliance, compassion, and breath-taking courage and integrity in speaking truth to power in the Shiah church-state system. Even while still in his twenties, he became known as the Father of the Poor. When a young merchant in Shiraz known as the Bab (the Gate) began to proclaim the advent of a great one who would usher in the coming of age of the human race, Bahaullah forfeited name and wealth in enthusiastically championing the promising cause. Iran was electrified and divided by the challenging call to renewal and modernization. Many were magnetized by its themes of human unfoldment, others fiercely resistant. Holocaust ensued. The Bab and twenty thousand of his followers were slaughtered. Alone among the leading figures to survive, Bahaullah was imprisoned and tortured and then exiled to Iraq but not before receiving through mystic means, and from the Bab himself, clear indications of his station as the promised one.
