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On 12 August 1868
Ottoman troops surrounded Bahá'u'lláh’s house in Edirne, known at that time as Adrianople, on orders from the despotic Sulṭán 'Abdu'l-'Azíz, and told Him He was banished again. To where, they would not say.
It was almost two weeks later, after Bahá'u'lláh and His companions had begun their journey, that they learned their destination: the prison-fortress of 'Akká, an ancient city in Ottoman Palestine that had once withstood the siege of Napoleon, known also as Acre.
On 31 August 1868
Bahá'u'lláh's arrival at the penal colony was greeted by a public reading of the imperial farmán, essentially condemning the prisoners to perpetual solitary confinement, and with the hopes that they would soon die.
“Know thou,” Bahá’u’lláh, wishing to emphasize the criticalness of the first nine years of His banishment to that prison-city, has written, “that upon Our arrival at this Spot, We chose to designate it as the ‘Most Great Prison.’ Though previously subjected in another land (Ṭihrán) to chains and fetters, We yet refused to call it by that name. Say: Ponder thereon, O ye endued with understanding!”
(Shoghi Effendi, "God Passes By", chapter XI)
This fourth exile to the Holy Land fulfilled prophecies in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Faiths, and did not end until His ascension in 1892. The transformation of the area -- and eventually the whole world -- in fulfillment of Christ's prayer "on earth as it is in heaven" had begun.
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