How--we may well ask ourselves--has the world, the object of such Divine
solicitude, repaid Him Who sacrificed His all for its sake? What manner of
welcome did it accord Him, and what response did His call evoke? A clamor,
unparalleled in the history of _Sh_i'ih Islam, greeted, in the land of its
birth, the infant light of the Faith, in the midst of a people notorious
for its crass ignorance, its fierce fanaticism, its barbaric cruelty, its
ingrained prejudices, and the unlimited sway held over the masses by a
firmly entrenched ecclesiastical hierarchy. A persecution, kindling a
courage which, as attested by no less eminent an authority than the late
Lord Curzon of Kedleston, has been unsurpassed by that which the fires of
Smithfield evoked, mowed down, with tragic swiftness, no less than twenty
thousand of its heroic adherents, who refused to barter their newly born
faith for the fleeting honors and security of a mortal life.
To the bodily agonies inflicted upon these sufferers, the charges, so
unmerited, of Nihilism, occultism, anarchism, eclecticism, immorality,
sectarianism, heresy, political partisanship--each conclusively disproved
by the tenets of the Faith itself and by the conduct of its followers--were
added, swelling thereby the number of those who, unwittingly or
maliciously, were injuring its cause.
Unmitigated indifference on the part of men of eminence and rank;
unrelenting hatred shown by the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Faith
from which it had sprung; the scornful derision of the people among whom
it was born; the utter contempt which most of those kings and rulers who
had been addressed by its Author manifested towards it; the condemnations
pronounced, the threats hurled, and the banishments decreed by those under
whose sway it arose and first spread; the distortion to which its
principles and laws were subjected by the envious and the malicious, in
lands and among peoples far beyond the country of its origin--all these are
but the evidences of the treatment meted out by a generation sunk in
self-content, careless of its God, and oblivious of the omens, prophecies,
warnings and admonitions revealed by His Messengers.
The blows so heavily dealt the followers of so precious, so glorious, so
potent a Faith failed, however, to assuage the animosity that inflamed its
persecutors. Nor did the deliberate and mischievous misrepresentations of
its fundamental teachings, its aims and purposes, its hopes and
aspirations, its institutions and activities, suffice to stay the hand of
the oppressor and the calumniator, who sought by every means in their
power to abolish its name and extirpate its system. The hand which had
struck down so vast a number of its blameless and humble lovers and
servants was now raised to deal its Founders the heaviest and cruelest
blows.
The Bab--"the Point," as affirmed by Baha'u'llah, "round Whom the realities
of the Prophets and Messengers revolve"--was the One first swept into the
maelstrom which engulfed His supporters. Sudden arrest and confinement in
the very first year of His short and spectacular career; public affront
deliberately inflicted in the presence of the ecclesiastical dignitaries
of _Sh_iraz; strict and prolonged incarceration in the bleak fastnesses of
the mountains of A_dh_irbayjan; a contemptuous disregard and a cowardly
jealousy evinced respectively by the Chief Magistrate of the realm and the
foremost minister of his government; the carefully staged and farcical
interrogatory sustained in the presence of the heir to the Throne and the
distinguished divines of Tabriz; the shameful infliction of the bastinado
in the prayer house, and at the hands of the _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam of that
city; and finally suspension in the barrack-square of Tabriz and the
discharge of a volley of above seven hundred bullets at His youthful
breast under the eyes of a callous multitude of about ten thousand people,
culminating in the ignominious exposure of His mangled remains on the edge
of the moat without the city gate--these were the progressive stages in the
tumultuous and tragic ministry of One Whose age inaugurated the
consummation of all ages, and Whose Revelation fulfilled the promise of
all Revelations.
"I swear by God!" the Bab Himself in His Tablet to Muhammad _Sh_ah has
written, "Shouldst thou know the things which in the space of these four
years have befallen Me at the hands of thy people and thine army, thou
wouldst hold thy breath from fear of God.... Alas, alas, for the things
which have touched Me!... I swear by the Most Great Lord! Wert thou to be
told in what place I dwell, the first person to have mercy on Me would be
thyself. In the heart of a mountain is a fortress [Maku] ... the inmates
of which are confined to two guards and four dogs. Picture, then, My
plight.... In this mountain I have remained alone, and have come to such a
pass that none of those gone before Me have suffered what I have suffered,
nor any transgressor endured what I have endured!"
"How veiled are ye, O My creatures," He, speaking with the voice of God,
has revealed in the Bayan, "...who, without any right, have consigned Him
unto a mountain [Maku], not one of whose inhabitants is worthy of
mention.... With Him, which is with Me, there is no one except him who is
one of the Letters of the Living of My Book. In His presence, which is My
Presence, there is not at night even a lighted lamp! And yet, in places
[of worship] which in varying degrees reach out unto Him, unnumbered lamps
are shining! All that is on earth hath been created for Him, and all
partake with delight of His benefits, and yet they are so veiled from Him
as to refuse Him even a lamp!"
What of Baha'u'llah, the germ of Whose Revelation, as attested by the Bab,
is endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of the Babi
Dispensation? Was He not--He for Whom the Bab had suffered and died in such
tragic and miraculous circumstances--made, for nearly half a century and
under the domination of the two most powerful potentates of the East, the
object of a systematic and concerted conspiracy which, in its effects and
duration, is scarcely paralleled in the annals of previous religions?
"The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors," He Himself in His anguish has
cried out, "have bowed Me down, and turned My hair white. Shouldst thou
present thyself before My throne, thou wouldst fail to recognize the
Ancient Beauty, for the freshness of His countenance is altered and its
brightness hath faded, by reason of the oppression of the infidels. I
swear by God! His heart, His soul, and His vitals are melted!" "Wert thou
to hear with Mine ear," He also declares, "thou wouldst hear how 'Ali [the
Bab] bewaileth Me in the presence of the Glorious Companion, and how
Muhammad weepeth over Me in the all-highest Horizon, and how the Spirit
[Jesus] beateth Himself upon the head in the heaven of My decree, by
reason of what hath befallen this Wronged One at the hands of every
impious sinner." "Before Me," He elsewhere has written, "riseth up the
Serpent of wrath with jaws stretched to engulf Me, and behind Me stalketh
the lion of anger intent on tearing Me in pieces, and above Me, O My
Well-Beloved, are the clouds of Thy decree, raining upon Me the showers of
tribulations, whilst beneath Me are fixed the spears of misfortune, ready
to wound My limbs and My body." "Couldst thou be told," He further
affirms, "what hath befallen the Ancient Beauty, thou wouldst flee into
the wilderness, and weep with a great weeping. In thy grief, thou wouldst
smite thyself on the head, and cry out as one stung by the sting of the
adder.... By the righteousness of God! Every morning I arose from My bed I
discovered the hosts of countless afflictions massed behind My door, and
every night when I lay down, lo! My heart was torn with agony at what it
had suffered from the fiendish cruelty of its foes. With every piece of
bread the Ancient Beauty breaketh is coupled the assault of a fresh
affliction, and with every drop He drinketh is mixed the bitterness of the
most woeful of trials. He is preceded in every step He taketh by an army
of unforeseen calamities, while in His rear follow legions of agonizing
sorrows."
Was it not He Who, at the early age of twenty-seven, spontaneously arose
to champion, in the capacity of a mere follower, the nascent Cause of the
Bab? Was He not the One Who by assuming the actual leadership of a
proscribed and harrassed sect exposed Himself, and His kindred, and His
possessions, and His rank, and His reputation to the grave perils, the
bloody assaults, the general spoliation and furious defamations of both
government and people? Was it not He--the Bearer of a Revelation, Whose day
"every Prophet hath announced," for which "the soul of every Divine
Messenger hath thirsted," and in which "God hath proved the hearts of the
entire company of His Messengers and Prophets"--was not the Bearer of such
a Revelation, at the instigation of _Sh_i'ih ecclesiastics and by order of
the _Sh_ah himself forced, for no less than four months, to breathe, in
utter darkness, whilst in the company of the vilest criminals and
freighted down with galling chains, the pestilential air of the
vermin-infested subterranean dungeon of Tihran--a place which, as He
Himself subsequently declared, was mysteriously converted into the very
scene of the annunciation made to Him by God of His Prophethood?
"We were consigned," He wrote in His "Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,"
"for four months to a place foul beyond comparison. As to the dungeon in
which this Wronged One and others similarly wronged were confined, a dark
and narrow pit were preferable.... The dungeon was wrapped in thick
darkness, and Our fellow prisoners numbered nearly a hundred and fifty
souls: thieves, assassins, and highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other
outlet than the passage by which We entered. No pen can depict that place,
nor any tongue describe its loathsome smell. Most of these men had neither
clothes nor bedding to lie on. God alone knoweth what befell Us in that
most foul-smelling and gloomy place!" "'Abdu'l-Baha," writes Dr. J.E.
Esslemont, "tells how one day He was allowed to enter the prison-yard to
see His beloved Father when He came out for His daily exercise.
Baha'u'llah was terribly altered, so ill He could hardly walk. His hair
and beard unkempt, His neck galled and swollen from the pressure of a
heavy steel collar, His body bent by the weight of His chains." "For three
days and three nights," Nabil has recorded in his chronicle, "no manner of
food or drink was given to Baha'u'llah. Rest and sleep were both
impossible to Him. The place was infested with vermin, and the stench of
that gloomy abode was enough to crush the very spirits of those who were
condemned to suffer its horrors." "Such was the intensity of His suffering
that the marks of that cruelty remained imprinted upon His body all the
days of His life."
And what of the other tribulations which, before and immediately after
this dreadful episode, touched Him? What of His confinement in the home of
one of the kad-_kh_udas of Tihran? What of the savage violence with which
He was stoned by the angry people in the neighborhood of the village of
Niyala? What of His incarceration by the emissaries of the army of the
_Sh_ah in Mazindaran, and His receiving the bastinado by order, and in the
presence, of the assembled siyyids and mujtahids into whose hands He had
been delivered by the civil authorities of Amul? What of the howls of
derision and abuse with which a crowd of ruffians subsequently pursued
Him? What of the monstrous accusation brought against Him by the Imperial
household, the Court and the people, when the attempt was made on the life
of Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah? What of the infamous outrages, the abuse and
ridicule heaped on Him when He was arrested by responsible officers of the
government, and conducted from Niyavaran "on foot and in chains, with
bared head and bare feet," and exposed to the fierce rays of the midsummer
sun, to the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran? What of the avidity with which corrupt
officials sacked His house and carried away all His possessions and
disposed of His fortune? What of the cruel edict that tore Him from the
small band of the Bab's bewildered, hounded, and shepherdless followers,
separated Him from His kinsmen and friends, and banished Him, in the depth
of winter, despoiled and defamed, to 'Iraq?
Severe as were these tribulations which succeeded one another with
bewildering rapidity as a result of the premeditated attacks and the
systematic machinations of the court, the clergy, the government and the
people, they were but the prelude to a harrowing and extensive captivity
which that edict had formally initiated. Extending over a period of more
than forty years, and carrying Him successively to 'Iraq, Sulaymaniyyih,
Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the penal colony of Akka, this
long banishment was at last ended by His death, at the age of over three
score years and ten, terminating a captivity which, in its range, its
duration and the diversity and severity of its afflictions, is unexampled
in the history of previous Dispensations.
No need to expatiate on the particular episodes which cast a lurid light
on the moving annals of those years. No need to dwell on the character and
actions of the peoples, rulers and divines who have participated in, and
contributed to heighten the poignancy of the scenes of this, the greatest
drama in the world's spiritual history.