One night, aware that the hour of her death was at hand, she
put on the attire of a bride, and anointed herself with perfume, and, sending
for the wife of the Kalantar, she communicated to her the secret of her
impending martyrdom, and confided to her her last wishes. Then, closeting
herself in her chambers, she awaited, in prayer and meditation, the hour which
was to witness her reunion with her Beloved. She was pacing the floor of her
room, chanting a litany expressive of both grief and triumph, when the farráshes
of ‘Azíz Khán-i-Sardár arrived, in the dead of night, to conduct her to the
Ílkhání garden, which lay beyond the city gates, and which was to be the site
of her martyrdom. When she arrived the Sardár was in the midst of a drunken
debauch with his lieutenants, and was roaring with laughter; he ordered offhand
that she be strangled at once and thrown into a pit. With that same silken
kerchief which she had intuitively reserved for that purpose, and delivered in
her last moments to the son of Kalantar who accompanied her, the death of this
immortal heroine was accomplished. Her body was lowered into a well, which was
then filled with earth and stones, in the manner she herself had desired.
Thus ended the life of this great Bábí heroine, the first
woman suffrage martyr, who, at her death, turning to the one in whose custody
she had been placed, had boldly declared: “You can kill me as soon as you like,
but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.” Her career was as dazzling as
it was brief, as tragic as it was eventful. Unlike her fellow-disciples, whose
exploits remained, for the most part unknown, and unsung by their
contemporaries in foreign lands, the fame of this immortal woman was noised
abroad, and traveling with remarkable swiftness as far as the capitals of
Western Europe, aroused the enthusiastic admiration and evoked the ardent
praise of men and women of divers nationalities, callings and cultures. Little
wonder that ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá should have joined her name to those
of Sarah, of Ásíyih, of
the Virgin Mary and of Fáṭimih,
who, in the course of successive Dispensations, have towered, by reason of
their intrinsic merits and unique position, above the rank and file of their
sex. “In eloquence,” ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá Himself
has written, “she was the calamity of the age, and
in ratiocination the trouble of the world.” He,
moreover, has described her as “a brand afire
with the love of God” and “a lamp
aglow with the bounty of God.”
- Shoghi Effendi (Chapter 5, ‘God Passes By’)