To the tide of calamity which, during the concluding years
of the Báb’s ministry, was sweeping with such ominous fury the provinces of
Persia, whether in the East, in the South, or in the West, the heart and center
of the realm itself could not remain impervious. Four months before the Báb’s
martyrdom Tihrán in its turn was to participate, to a lesser degree and under
less dramatic circumstances, in the carnage that was besmirching the face of the
country. A tragedy was being enacted in that city which was to prove but a
prelude to the orgy of massacre which, after the Báb’s execution, convulsed its
inhabitants and sowed consternation as far as the outlying provinces. It
originated in the orders and was perpetrated under the very eyes of the irate
and murderous Amír-Niẓám, supported by Mahmud Khán-i-Kalantar, and aided by a
certain Husayn, one of the ‘ulamás of Kashán. The heroes of that tragedy were
the Seven Martyrs of Ṭihrán, who represented the more important classes among
their countrymen, and who deliberately refused to purchase life by that mere
lip-denial which, under the name of taqíyyih, Shí‘ah Islám had for centuries
recognized as a wholly justifiable and indeed commendable subterfuge in the
hour of peril. Neither the repeated and vigorous intercessions of highly placed
members of the professions to which these martyrs belonged, nor the
considerable sums which, in the case of one of them—the noble and serene Hájí
Mírzá Siyyid ‘Alí, the Báb’s maternal uncle—affluent merchants of Shíráz and
Tihrán were eager to offer as ransom, nor the impassioned pleas of state
officials on behalf of another—the pious and highly esteemed dervish, Mírzá
Qurbán-‘Alí—nor even the personal intervention of the Amír-Nizám, who
endeavored to induce both of these brave men to recant, could succeed in
persuading any of the seven to forego the coveted laurels of martyrdom. The
defiant answers which they flung at their persecutors; the ecstatic joy which
seized them as they drew near the scene of their death; the jubilant shouts
they raised as they faced their executioner; the poignancy of the verses which,
in their last moments, some of them recited; the appeals and challenges they
addressed to the multitude of onlookers who gazed with stupefaction upon them;
the eagerness with which the last three victims strove to precede one another
in sealing their faith with their blood; and lastly, the atrocities which a
bloodthirsty foe degraded itself by inflicting upon their dead bodies which lay
unburied for three days and three nights in the Sabzih-Maydán, during which
time thousands of so-called devout Shí‘ahs kicked their corpses, spat upon
their faces, pelted, cursed, derided, and heaped refuse upon them—these were
the chief features of the tragedy of the Seven Martyrs of Tihrán, a tragedy
which stands out as one of the grimmest scenes witnessed in the course of the
early unfoldment of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Little wonder that the Báb, bowed
down by the weight of His accumulated sorrows in the Fortress of Chihríq,
should have acclaimed and glorified them, in the pages of a lengthy eulogy
which immortalized their fidelity to His Cause, as those same “Seven Goats”
who, according to Islamic tradition, should, on the Day of Judgment, “walk in
front” of the promised Qá’im, and whose death was to precede the impending
martyrdom of their true Shepherd.
- Shoghi Effendi (Chapter 3, God Passes By)