Well nigh half a century had passed since the inception of the Faith.
Cradled in adversity, deprived in its infancy of its Herald and Leader, it
had been raised from the dust, in which a hostile despot had thrown it, by
its second and greatest Luminary Who, despite successive banishments, had,
in less than half a century, succeeded in rehabilitating its fortunes, in
proclaiming its Message, in enacting its laws and ordinances, in
formulating its principles and in ordaining its institutions, and it had
just begun to enjoy the sunshine of a prosperity never previously
experienced, when suddenly it was robbed of its Author by the Hand of
Destiny, its followers were plunged into sorrow and consternation, its
repudiators found their declining hopes revive, and its adversaries,
political as well as ecclesiastical, began to take heart again.
Already nine months before His ascension Baha'u'llah, as attested by
'Abdu'l-Baha, had voiced His desire to depart from this world. From that
time onward it became increasingly evident, from the tone of His remarks
to those who attained His presence, that the close of His earthly life was
approaching, though He refrained from mentioning it openly to any one. On
the night preceding the eleventh of _Sh_avval 1309 A.H. (May 8, 1892) He
contracted a slight fever which, though it mounted the following day, soon
after subsided. He continued to grant interviews to certain of the friends
and pilgrims, but it soon became evident that He was not well. His fever
returned in a more acute form than before, His general condition grew
steadily worse, complications ensued which at last culminated in His
ascension, at the hour of dawn, on the 2nd of _Dh_i'l-Qadih 1309 A.H. (May
29, 1892), eight hours after sunset, in the 75th year of His age. His
spirit, at long last released from the toils of a life crowded with
tribulations, had winged its flight to His "other dominions," dominions
"whereon the eyes of the people of names have never fallen," and to which
the "Luminous Maid," "clad in white," had bidden Him hasten, as described
by Himself in the Lawh-i-Ru'ya (Tablet of the Vision), revealed nineteen
years previously, on the anniversary of the birth of His Forerunner.
Six days before He passed away He summoned to His presence, as He lay in
bed leaning against one of His sons, the entire company of believers,
including several pilgrims, who had assembled in the Mansion, for what
proved to be their last audience with Him. "I am well pleased with you
all," He gently and affectionately addressed the weeping crowd that
gathered about Him. "Ye have rendered many services, and been very
assiduous in your labors. Ye have come here every morning and every
evening. May God assist you to remain united. May He aid you to exalt the
Cause of the Lord of being." To the women, including members of His own
family, gathered at His bedside, He addressed similar words of
encouragement, definitely assuring them that in a document entrusted by
Him to the Most Great Branch He had commended them all to His care.
The news of His ascension was instantly communicated to Sultan
'Abdu'l-Hamid in a telegram which began with the words "the Sun of Baha
has set" and in which the monarch was advised of the intention of
interring the sacred remains within the precincts of the Mansion, an
arrangement to which he readily assented. Baha'u'llah was accordingly laid
to rest in the northernmost room of the house which served as a
dwelling-place for His son-in-law, the most northerly of the three houses
lying to the west of, and adjacent to, the Mansion. His interment took
place shortly after sunset, on the very day of His ascension.
The inconsolable Nabil, who had had the privilege of a private audience
with Baha'u'llah during the days of His illness; whom 'Abdu'l-Baha had
chosen to select those passages which constitute the text of the Tablet of
Visitation now recited in the Most Holy Tomb; and who, in his
uncontrollable grief, drowned himself in the sea shortly after the passing
of his Beloved, thus describes the agony of those days: "Methinks, the
spiritual commotion set up in the world of dust had caused all the worlds
of God to tremble.... My inner and outer tongue are powerless to portray
the condition we were in.... In the midst of the prevailing confusion a
multitude of the inhabitants of Akka and of the neighboring villages, that
had thronged the fields surrounding the Mansion, could be seen weeping,
beating upon their heads, and crying aloud their grief."
For a full week a vast number of mourners, rich and poor alike, tarried to
grieve with the bereaved family, partaking day and night of the food that
was lavishly dispensed by its members. Notables, among whom were numbered
_Sh_i'ahs, Sunnis, Christians, Jews and Druzes, as well as poets, 'ulamas
and government officials, all joined in lamenting the loss, and in
magnifying the virtues and greatness of Baha'u'llah, many of them paying
to Him their written tributes, in verse and in prose, in both Arabic and
Turkish. From cities as far afield as Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut and Cairo
similar tributes were received. These glowing testimonials were, without
exception, submitted to 'Abdu'l-Baha, Who now represented the Cause of the
departed Leader, and Whose praises were often mingled in these eulogies
with the homage paid to His Father.
And yet these effusive manifestations of sorrow and expressions of praise
and of admiration, which the ascension of Baha'u'llah had spontaneously
evoked among the unbelievers in the Holy Land and the adjoining countries,
were but a drop when compared with the ocean of grief and the innumerable
evidences of unbounded devotion which, at the hour of the setting of the
Sun of Truth, poured forth from the hearts of the countless thousands who
had espoused His Cause, and were determined to carry aloft its banner in
Persia, India, Russia, 'Iraq, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt and Syria.
With the ascension of Baha'u'llah draws to a close a period which, in many
ways, is unparalleled in the world's religious history. The first century
of the Baha'i Era had by now run half its course. An epoch, unsurpassed in
its sublimity, its fecundity and duration by any previous Dispensation,
and characterized, except for a short interval of three years, by half a
century of continuous and progressive Revelation, had terminated. The
Message proclaimed by the Bab had yielded its golden fruit. The most
momentous, though not the most spectacular phase of the Heroic Age had
ended. The Sun of Truth, the world's greatest Luminary, had risen in the
Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran, had broken through the clouds which enveloped it
in Ba_gh_dad, had suffered a momentary eclipse whilst mounting to its
zenith in Adrianople and had set finally in Akka, never to reappear ere
the lapse of a full millenium. God's newborn Faith, the cynosure of all
past Dispensations, had been fully and unreservedly proclaimed. The
prophecies announcing its advent had been remarkably fulfilled. Its
fundamental laws and cardinal principles, the warp and woof of the fabric
of its future World Order, had been clearly enunciated. Its organic
relation to, and its attitude towards, the religious systems which
preceded it had been unmistakably defined. The primary institutions,
within which an embryonic World Order was destined to mature, had been
unassailably established. The Covenant designed to safeguard the unity and
integrity of its world-embracing system had been irrevocably bequeathed to
posterity. The promise of the unification of the whole human race, of the
inauguration of the Most Great Peace, of the unfoldment of a world
civilization, had been incontestably given. The dire warnings,
foreshadowing catastrophes destined to befall kings, ecclesiastics,
governments and peoples, as a prelude to so glorious a consummation, had
been repeatedly uttered. The significant summons to the Chief Magistrates
of the New World, forerunner of the Mission with which the North American
continent was to be later invested, had been issued. The initial contact
with a nation, a descendant of whose royal house was to espouse its Cause
ere the expiry of the first Baha'i century, had been established. The
original impulse which, in the course of successive decades, has
conferred, and will continue to confer, in the years to come, inestimable
benefits of both spiritual and institutional significance upon God's holy
mountain, overlooking the Most Great Prison, had been imparted. And
finally, the first banners of a spiritual conquest which, ere the
termination of that century, was to embrace no less than sixty countries
in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres had been triumphantly planted.
In the vastness and diversity of its Holy Writ; in the number of its
martyrs; in the valor of its champions; in the example set by its
followers; in the condign punishment suffered by its adversaries; in the
pervasiveness of its influence; in the incomparable heroism of its Herald;
in the dazzling greatness of its Author; in the mysterious operation of
its irresistible spirit; the Faith of Baha'u'llah, now standing at the
threshold of the sixth decade of its existence, had amply demonstrated its
capacity to forge ahead, indivisible and incorruptible, along the course
traced for it by its Founder, and to display, before the gaze of
successive generations, the signs and tokens of that celestial potency
with which He Himself had so richly endowed it.
To the fate that has overtaken those kings, ministers and ecclesiastics,
in the East as well as in the West, who have, at various stages of
Baha'u'llah's ministry, either deliberately persecuted His Cause, or have
neglected to heed the warnings He had uttered, or have failed in their
manifest duty to respond to His summons or to accord Him and His message
the treatment they deserved, particular attention, I feel, should at this
juncture be directed. Baha'u'llah Himself, referring to those who had
actively arisen to destroy or harm His Faith, had declared that "God hath
not blinked, nor will He ever blink His eyes at the tyranny of the
oppressor. More particularly in this Revelation hath He visited each and
every tyrant with His vengeance." Vast and awful is, indeed, the spectacle
which meets our eyes, as we survey the field over which the retributory
winds of God have, since the inception of the ministry of Baha'u'llah,
furiously swept, dethroning monarchs, extinguishing dynasties, uprooting
ecclesiastical hierarchies, precipitating wars and revolutions, driving
from office princes and ministers, dispossessing the usurper, casting down
the tyrant, and chastising the wicked and the rebellious.
Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, who with Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah was the author of the
calamities heaped upon Baha'u'llah, and was himself responsible for three
decrees of banishment against the Prophet; who had been stigmatized, in
the Kitab-i-Aqdas, as occupying the "throne of tyranny," and whose fall
had been prophesied in the Lawh-i-Fu'ad, was deposed in consequence of a
palace revolution, was condemned by a fatva (sentence) of the Mufti in his
own capital, was four days later assassinated (1876), and was succeeded by
a nephew who was declared to be an imbecile. The war of 1877-78
emancipated eleven million people from the Turkish yoke; Adrianople was
occupied by the Russian forces; the empire itself was dissolved as a
result of the war of 1914-18; the Sultanate was abolished; a republic was
proclaimed; and a rulership that had endured above six centuries was
ended.
The vain and despotic Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, denounced by Baha'u'llah as the
"Prince of Oppressors"; of whom He had written that he would soon be made
"an object-lesson for the world"; whose reign was stained by the execution
of the Bab and the imprisonment of Baha'u'llah; who had persistently
instigated his subsequent banishments to Constantinople, Adrianople and
Akka; who, in collusion with a vicious sacerdotal order, had vowed to
strangle the Faith in its cradle, was dramatically assassinated, in the
shrine of _Sh_ah 'Abdu'l-'Azim, on the very eve of his jubilee, which, as
ushering in a new era, was to have been celebrated with the most elaborate
magnificence, and was to go down in history as the greatest day in the
annals of the Persian nation. The fortunes of his house thereafter
steadily declined, and finally through the scandalous misconduct of the
dissipated and irresponsible Ahmad _Sh_ah, led to the eclipse and
disappearance of the Qajar dynasty.
Napoleon III, the foremost monarch of his day in the West, excessively
ambitious, inordinately proud, tricky and superficial, who is reported to
have contemptuously flung down the Tablet sent to him by Baha'u'llah, who
was tested by Him and found wanting, and whose downfall was explicitly
predicted in a subsequent Tablet, was ignominiously defeated in the Battle
of Sedan (1870), marking the greatest military capitulation recorded in
modern history; lost his kingdom and spent the remaining years of his life
in exile. His hopes were utterly blasted, his only son, the Prince
Imperial, was killed in the Zulu War, his much vaunted empire collapsed, a
civil war ensued more ferocious than the Franco-German war itself, and
William I, the Prussian king, was hailed emperor of a unified Germany in
the Palace of Versailles.
William I, the pride-intoxicated newly-acclaimed conqueror of Napoleon
III, admonished in the Kitab-i-Aqdas and bidden to ponder the fate that
had overtaken "one whose power transcended" his own, warned in that same
Book, that the "lamentations of Berlin" would be raised and that the banks
of the Rhine would be "covered with gore," sustained two attempts on his
life, and was succeeded by a son who died of a mortal disease, three
months after his accession to the throne, bequeathing the throne to the
arrogant, the headstrong and short-sighted William II. The pride of the
new monarch precipitated his downfall. Revolution, swiftly and suddenly,
broke out in his capital, communism reared its head in a number of cities;
the princes of the German states abdicated, and he himself, fleeing
ignominiously to Holland, was compelled to relinquish his right to the
throne. The constitution of Weimar sealed the fate of the empire, whose
birth had been so loudly proclaimed by his grandfather, and the terms of
an oppressively severe treaty provoked "the lamentations" which, half a
century before, had been ominously prophesied.
The arbitrary and unyielding Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria and king
of Hungary, who had been reproved in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, for having
neglected his manifest duty to inquire about Baha'u'llah during his
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was so engulfed by misfortunes and tragedies
that his reign came to be regarded as one unsurpassed by any other reign
in the calamities it inflicted upon the nation. His brother, Maximilian,
was put to death in Mexico; the Crown Prince Rudolph perished in
ignominious circumstances; the Empress was assassinated; Archduke Francis
Ferdinand and his wife were murdered in Serajevo; the "ramshackle empire"
itself disintegrated, was carved up, and a shrunken republic was set up on
the ruins of a vanished Holy Roman Empire--a republic which, after a brief
and precarious existence, was blotted out from the political map of
Europe.
Nicolaevitch Alexander II, the all-powerful Czar of Russia, who, in a
Tablet addressed to him by name had been thrice warned by Baha'u'llah, had
been bidden to "summon the nations unto God," and had been cautioned not
to allow his sovereignty to prevent him from recognizing "the Supreme
Sovereign," suffered several attempts on his life, and at last died at the
hand of an assassin. A harsh policy of repression, initiated by himself
and followed by his successor, Alexander III, paved the way for a
revolution which, in the reign of Nicholas II, swept away on a bloody tide
the empire of the Czars, brought in its wake war, disease and famine, and
established a militant proletariat which massacred the nobility,
persecuted the clergy, drove away the intellectuals, disendowed the state
religion, executed the Czar with his consort and his family, and
extinguished the dynasty of the Romanoffs.
Pope Pius IX, the undisputed head of the most powerful Church in
Christendom, who had been commanded, in an Epistle addressed to him by
Baha'u'llah, to leave his "palaces unto such as desire them," to "sell all
the embellished ornaments" in his possession, to "expend them in the path
of God," and hasten towards "the Kingdom," was compelled to surrender, in
distressing circumstances, to the besieging forces of King Victor
Emmanuel, and to submit himself to be depossessed of the Papal States and
of Rome itself. The loss of "the Eternal City," over which the Papal flag
had flown for one thousand years, and the humiliation of the religious
orders under his jurisdiction, added mental anguish to his physical
infirmities and embittered the last years of his life. The formal
recognition of the Kingdom of Italy subsequently exacted from one of his
successors in the Vatican, confirmed the virtual extinction of the Pope's
temporal sovereignty.
But the rapid dissolution of the Ottoman, the Napoleonic, the German, the
Austrian and the Russian empires, the demise of the Qajar dynasty and the
virtual extinction of the temporal sovereignty of the Roman Pontiff do not
exhaust the story of the catastrophes that befell the monarchies of the
world through the neglect of Baha'u'llah's warnings conveyed in the
opening passages of His Suriy-i-Muluk. The conversion of the Portuguese
and Spanish monarchies, as well as the Chinese empire, into republics; the
strange fate that has, more recently, been pursuing the sovereigns of
Holland, of Norway, of Greece, of Yugoslavia and of Albania now living in
exile; the virtual abdication of the authority exercised by the kings of
Denmark, of Belgium, of Bulgaria, of Rumania and of Italy; the
apprehension with which their fellow sovereigns must be viewing the
convulsions that have seized so many thrones; the shame and acts of
violence which, in some instances, have darkened the annals of the reigns
of certain monarchs in both the East and the West, and still more recently
the sudden downfall of the Founder of the newly established dynasty in
Persia--these are yet further instances of the infliction of the "Divine
Chastisement" foreshadowed by Baha'u'llah in that immortal Surih, and show
forth the divine reality of the arraignment pronounced by Him against the
rulers of the earth in His Most Holy Book.
No less arresting has been the extinction of the all-pervasive influence
exerted by the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders, both Sunni and _Sh_i'ah, in
the two countries in which the mightiest institutions of Islam had been
reared, and which have been directly associated with the tribulations
heaped upon the Bab and Baha'u'llah.
The Caliph, the self-styled vicar of the Prophet of Islam, known also as
the "Commander of the Faithful," the protector of the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina, whose spiritual jurisdiction extended over more than two
hundred million Muhammadans, was by the abolition of the Sultanate in
Turkey, divested of his temporal authority, hitherto regarded as
inseparable from his high office. The Caliph himself, after having
occupied for a brief period, an anomalous and precarious position, fled to
Europe; the Caliphate, the most august and powerful institution of Islam,
was, without consultation with any community in the Sunni world, summarily
abolished; the unity of the most powerful branch of the Islamic Faith was
thereby shattered; a formal, a complete and permanent separation of the
Turkish state from the Sunni faith was proclaimed; the _Sh_ari'ah
canonical Law was annulled; ecclesiastical institutions were disendowed; a
civil code was promulgated; religious orders were suppressed; the Sunni
hierarchy was dissolved; the Arabic tongue, the language of the Prophet of
Islam, fell into disuse, and its script was superseded by the Latin
alphabet; the Qur'an itself was translated into Turkish; Constantinople,
the "Dome of Islam," sank to the level of a provincial city, and its
peerless jewel, the Mosque of St. Sophia, was converted into a museum--a
series of degradations recalling the fate which, in the first century of
the Christian Era, befell the Jewish people, the city of Jerusalem, the
Temple of Solomon, the Holy of Holies, and an ecclesiastical hierarchy,
whose members were the avowed persecutors of the religion of Jesus Christ.
A similar convulsion shook the foundations of the entire sacerdotal order
in Persia, though its formal divorce from the Persian state is as yet
unproclaimed. A "church-state," that had been firmly rooted in the life of
the nation and had extended its ramifications to every sphere of life in
that country, was virtually disrupted. A sacerdotal order, the rock wall
of _Sh_i'ah Islam in that land, was paralyzed and discredited; its
mujtahids, the favorite ministers of the hidden Imam, were reduced to an
insignificant number; all its beturbaned officers, except for a handful,
were ruthlessly forced to exchange their traditional head-dress and robes
for the European clothes they themselves anathematized; the pomp and
pageantry that marked their ceremonials vanished; their fatvas (sentences)
were nullified; their endowments were handed over to a civil
administration; their mosques and seminaries were deserted; the right of
sanctuary accorded to their shrines ceased to be recognized; their
religious plays were banned; their takyihs were closed and even their
pilgrimages to Najaf and Karbila were discouraged and curtailed. The
disuse of the veil; the recognition of the equality of sexes; the
establishment of civil tribunals; the abolition of concubinage; the
disparagement of the use of the Arabic tongue, the language of Islam and
of the Qur'an, and the efforts exerted to divorce it from Persian--all
these further proclaim the degradation, and foreshadow the final
extinction, of that infamous crew, whose leaders had dared style
themselves "servants of the Lord of Saintship" (Imam 'Ali), who had so
often received the homage of the pious kings of the Safavi dynasty, and
whose anathemas, ever since the birth of the Faith of the Bab, had been
chiefly responsible for the torrents of blood which had been shed, and
whose acts have blackened the annals of both their religion and nation.
A crisis, not indeed as severe as that which shook the Islamic sacerdotal
orders--the inveterate adversaries of the Faith--has, moreover, afflicted
the ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom, whose influence, ever
since Baha'u'llah's summons was issued and His warning was sounded, has
visibly deteriorated, whose prestige has been gravely damaged, whose
authority has steadily declined, and whose power, rights and prerogatives
have been increasingly circumscribed. The virtual extinction of the
temporal sovereignty of the Roman Pontiff, to which reference has already
been made; the wave of anti-clericalism that brought in its wake the
separation of the Catholic Church from the French Republic; the organized
assault launched by a triumphant Communist state upon the Greek Orthodox
Church in Russia, and the consequent disestablishment, disendowment and
persecution of the state religion; the dismemberment of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy which owed its allegiance to the Church of Rome
and powerfully supported its institutions; the ordeal to which that same
Church has been subjected in Spain and in Mexico; the wave of
secularization which, at present, is engulfing the Catholic, the Anglican
and the Presbyterian Missions in non-Christian lands; the forces of an
aggressive paganism which are assailing the ancient citadels of the
Catholic, the Greek Orthodox and the Lutheran Churches in Western, in
Central and Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and in the Baltic and
Scandinavian states--these stand out as the most conspicuous manifestations
of the decline in the fortunes of the ecclesiastical leaders of
Christendom, leaders who, heedless of the voice of Baha'u'llah, have
interposed themselves between the Christ returned in the glory of the
Father and their respective congregations.
Nor can we fail to note the progressive deterioration in the authority,
wielded by the ecclesiastical leaders of the Jewish and Zoroastrian
Faiths, ever since the voice of Baha'u'llah was raised, announcing, in no
uncertain terms, that the "Most Great Law is come," that the Ancient
Beauty "ruleth upon the throne of David," and that "whatsoever hath been
announced in the Books (Zoroastrian Holy Writ) hath been revealed and made
clear." The evidences of increasing revolt against clerical authority; the
disrespect and indifference shown to time-honored observances, rituals and
ceremonials; the repeated inroads made by the forces of an aggressive and
often hostile nationalism into the spheres of clerical jurisdiction; and
the general apathy with which, particularly in the case of the professed
adherents of the Zoroastrian Faith, these encroachments are regarded--all
provide, beyond the shadow of a doubt, further justification of the
warnings and predictions uttered by Baha'u'llah in His historic addresses
to the world's ecclesiastical leaders.
Such in sum are the awful evidences of God's retributive justice that have
afflicted kings as well as ecclesiastics, in both the East and the West,
as a direct consequence of either their active opposition to the Faith of
Baha'u'llah, or of their lamentable failure to respond to His call, to
inquire into His Message, to avert the sufferings He endured, or to heed
the marvelous signs and prodigies which, during a hundred years, have
accompanied the birth and rise of His Revelation.
"From two ranks amongst men," is His terse and prophetic utterance, "power
hath been seized: kings and ecclesiastics." "If ye pay no heed," He thus
warned the kings of the earth, "unto the counsels which ... We have
revealed in this Tablet, Divine chastisement will assail you from every
direction... On that day ye shall ... recognize your own impotence." And
again: "Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye, nevertheless, have
failed to stay the hand of the aggressor." And, furthermore, this
arraignment: "...We ... will be patient, as We have been patient in that
which hath befallen Us at your hands, O concourse of kings!"
Condemning specifically the world's ecclesiastical leaders, He has
written: "The source and origin of tyranny have been the divines... God,
verily, is clear of them, and We, too, are clear of them." "When We
observed carefully," He openly affirms, "We discovered that Our enemies
are, for the most part, the divines." "O concourse of divines!" He thus
addresses them, "Ye shall not henceforth behold yourselves possessed of
any power, inasmuch as We have seized it from you..." "Had ye believed in
God when He revealed Himself," He explains, "the people would not have
turned aside from Him, nor would the things ye witness today have befallen
Us." "They," referring more specifically to Muslim ecclesiastics, He
asserts, "rose up against Us with such cruelty as hath sapped the strength
of Islam..." "The divines of Persia," He affirms, "committed that which no
people amongst the peoples of the world hath committed." And again:
"...The divines of Persia ... have perpetrated what the Jews have not
perpetrated during the Revelation of Him Who is the Spirit (Jesus)." And
finally, these portentous prophecies: "Because of you the people were
abased, and the banner of Islam was hauled down, and its mighty throne
subverted." "Erelong will all that ye possess perish, and your glory be
turned into the most wretched abasement, and ye shall behold the
punishment for what ye have wrought..." "Erelong," the Bab Himself, even
more openly prophesies, "We will, in very truth, torment such as waged war
against Husayn (Imam Husayn) ... with the most afflictive torment..."
"Erelong will God wreak His vengeance upon them, at the time of Our
return, and He hath, in very truth, prepared for them, in the world to
come, a severe torment."
Nor should, in a review of this nature, reference be omitted to those
princes, ministers and ecclesiastics who have individually been
responsible for the afflictive trials which Baha'u'llah and His followers
have suffered. Fu'ad Pa_sh_a, the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs,
denounced by Him as the "instigator" of His banishment to the Most Great
Prison, who had so assiduously striven with his colleague 'Ali Pa_sh_a, to
excite the fears and suspicions of a despot already predisposed against
the Faith and its Leader, was, about a year after he had succeeded in
executing his design, struck down, while on a trip to Paris, by the
avenging rod of God, and died at Nice (1869). 'Ali Pa_sh_a, the
Sadr-i-'Azam (Prime Minister), denounced in such forceful language in the
Lawh-i-Ra'is, whose downfall the Lawh-i-Fu'ad had unmistakably predicted,
was, a few years after Baha'u'llah's banishment to Akka, dismissed from
office, was shorn of all power, and sank into complete oblivion. The
tyrannical Prince Mas'ud Mirza, the Zillu's-Sultan, Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah's
eldest son and ruler over more than two-fifths of his kingdom, stigmatized
by Baha'u'llah as "the Infernal Tree," fell into disgrace, was deprived of
all his governorships, except that of Isfahan, and lost all chances of
future eminence or promotion. The rapacious Prince Jalalu'd-Dawlih,
branded by the Supreme Pen as "the tyrant of Yazd," was, about a year
after the iniquities he had perpetrated, deprived of his post, recalled to
Tihran, and forced to return a part of the property he had stolen from his
victims.
The scheming, the ambitious and profligate Mirza Buzurg _Kh_an, the
Persian Consul General in Ba_gh_dad, was eventually dismissed from office,
"overwhelmed with disaster, filled with remorse and plunged into
confusion." The notorious Mujtahid Siyyid Sadiq-i-Tabataba'i, denounced by
Baha'u'llah as "the Liar of Tihran," the author of the monstrous decree
condemning every male member of the Baha'i community in Persia, young or
old, high or low, to be put to death, and all its women to be deported,
was suddenly taken ill, fell a prey to a disease that ravaged his heart,
his brain and his limbs, and precipitated eventually his death. The
high-handed Subhi Pa_sh_a, who had peremptorily summoned Baha'u'llah to
the government house in Akka, lost the position he occupied, and was
recalled under circumstances highly detrimental to his reputation. Nor
were the other governors of the city, who had dealt unjustly with the
exalted Prisoner in their charge and His fellow-exiles, spared a like
fate. "Every pa_sh_a," testifies Nabil in his narrative, "whose conduct in
Akka was commendable enjoyed a long term of office, and was bountifully
favored by God, whereas every hostile Mutisarrif (governor) was speedily
deposed by the Hand of Divine power, even as 'Abdu'r-Rahman Pa_sh_a and
Muhammad-Yusuf Pa_sh_a who, on the morrow of the very night they had
resolved to lay hands on the loved ones of Baha'u'llah, were
telegraphically advised of their dismissal. Such was their fate that they
were never again given a position."
_Sh_ay_kh_ Muhammad-Baqir, surnamed the "Wolf," who, in the strongly
condemnatory Lawh-i-Burhan addressed to him by Baha'u'llah, had been
compared to "the last trace of sunlight upon the mountain-top," witnessed
the steady decline of his prestige, and died in a miserable state of acute
remorse. His accomplice, Mir Muhammad-Husayn, surnamed the "She-Serpent,"
whom Baha'u'llah described as one "infinitely more wicked than the
oppressor of Karbila," was, about that same time, expelled from Isfahan,
wandered from village to village, contracted a disease that engendered so
foul an odor that even his wife and daughter could not bear to approach
him, and died in such ill-favor with the local authorities that no one
dared to attend his funeral, his corpse being ignominiously interred by a
few porters.
Mention should, moreover, be made of the devastating famine which, about a
year after the illustrious Badi had been tortured to death, ravaged Persia
and reduced the population to such extremities that even the rich went
hungry, and hundreds of mothers ghoulishly devoured their own children.
Nor can this subject be dismissed without special reference being made to
the Arch-Breaker of the Covenant of the Bab, Mirza Yahya, who lived long
enough to witness, while eking out a miserable existence in Cyprus, termed
by the Turks "the Island of Satan," every hope he had so maliciously
conceived reduced to naught. A pensioner first of the Turkish and later of
the British Government, he was subjected to the further humiliation of
having his application for British citizenship refused. Eleven of the
eighteen "Witnesses" he had appointed forsook him and turned in repentance
to Baha'u'llah. He himself became involved in a scandal which besmirched
his reputation and that of his eldest son, deprived that son and his
descendants of the successorship with which he had previously invested
him, and appointed, in his stead, the perfidious Mirza
Hadiy-i-Dawlat-Abadi, a notorious Azali, who, on the occasion of the
martyrdom of the aforementioned Mirza A_sh_raf, was seized with such fear
that during four consecutive days he proclaimed from the pulpit-top, and
in a most vituperative language, his complete repudiation of the Babi
Faith, as well as of Mirza Yahya, his benefactor, who had reposed in him
such implicit confidence. It was this same eldest son who, through the
workings of a strange destiny, sought years after, together with his
nephew and niece, the presence of 'Abdu'l-Baha, the appointed Successor of
Baha'u'llah and Center of His Covenant, expressed repentance, prayed for
forgiveness, was graciously accepted by Him, and remained, till the hour
of his death, a loyal follower of the Faith which his father had so
foolishly, so shamelessly and so pitifully striven to extinguish.
THIRD PERIOD: THE MINISTRY OF 'ABDU'L-BAHA 1892-1921