Edinburgh Baha’i Centre - that mysterious window pane

You can read more about the new Edinburgh Baha’i Centre here.

There’s a page on the Centre’s website about the building’s history. This includes some information about the mysterious window pane:

The Milne family resided in the building from about 1850-1870. John Milne was on the Board of Examination for Schools, and there are notices of birth in the Scotsman for three sons. It is most likely one of these children who engraved his own name and date in old, curly handwriting upon a window of the upper floor (see photo below):

J M James Milne
2nd May
1863

Extraordinary as this may seem, we therefore have etched on the upper floor window arguably the most pivotal date in Baha’i History, being when Baha’u'llah left the Garden of Ridvan into exile and began on a journey of public proclamation.

Presumably only a teenager would have scratched his name on a window in such a way, from which given the dates of the three births it may be concluded that James was born in 1852, a couple of months before Baha’u'llah was sent down into the Siyah-Chal, where the Faith was born.

You can find a clearer picture of the window pane on that page than the one I put up in the previous post about the Baha’i Centre.

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