“Bahá’u’lláh’s confirmatory testimony to the inconceivable greatness and preeminent character of His own Revelation."

• “He around Whom the Point of the Bayán (Báb) hath revolved is come” is Bahá’u’lláh’s confirmatory testimony to the inconceivable greatness and preeminent character of His own Revelation. 
• “If all who are in heaven and on earth,” He moreover affirms, “be invested in this day with the powers and attributes destined for the Letters of the Bayán, whose station is ten thousand times more glorious than that of the Letters of the Qur’ánic Dispensation, and if they one and all should, swift as the twinkling of an eye, hesitate to recognize My Revelation, they shall be accounted, in the sight of God, of those that have gone astray, and regarded as ‘Letters of Negation.’” 
• “Powerful is He, the King of Divine might,” He, alluding to Himself in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, asserts, “to extinguish with one letter of His wondrous words, the breath of life in the whole of the Bayán and the people thereof, and with one letter bestow upon them a new and everlasting life, and cause them to arise and speed out of the sepulchers of their vain and selfish desires.” 
• “This,” He furthermore declares,
• “is the king of days,” 
• the “Day of God Himself,” 
• the “Day which shall never be followed by night,” 
• the “Springtime which autumn will never overtake,” 
• “the eye to past ages and centuries,” 
• for which “the soul of every Prophet of God, of every Divine Messenger, hath thirsted,” 
• for which “all the divers kindreds of the earth have yearned,” 
• through which “God hath proved the hearts of the entire company of His Messengers and Prophets, and beyond them those that stand guard over His sacred and inviolable Sanctuary, the inmates of the Celestial Pavilion and dwellers of the Tabernacle of Glory.” 
• “In this most mighty Revelation,” He moreover, states, “all the Dispensations of the past have attained their highest, their final consummation.” 
• And again: “None among the Manifestations of old, except to a prescribed degree, hath ever completely apprehended the nature of this Revelation.” 
• Referring to His own station He declares: “But for Him no Divine Messenger would have been invested with the Robe of Prophethood, nor would any of the sacred Scriptures have been revealed.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References from the Báb about Bahá’u’lláh

The Báb had no less significantly extolled Him [Bahá’u’lláh] 

• as the “Essence of Being,” 
• as the “Remnant of God,” 
• as the “Omnipotent Master,” 
• as the “Crimson, all-encompassing Light,” 
• as “Lord of the visible and invisible,” 
• as the “sole Object of all previous Revelations, including The Revelation of the Qá’im Himself.” 
• He had formally designated Him 
• as “He Whom God shall make manifest,” had alluded to Him 
• as the “Abhá Horizon” wherein He Himself lived and dwelt, 
• had specifically recorded His title, and eulogized His “Order” in His best-known work, the Persian Bayán, 
• had disclosed His name through His allusion to the “Son of ‘Alí, a true and undoubted Leader of men,” 
• had, repeatedly, orally and in writing, fixed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the time of His Revelation, and warned His followers lest “the Bayán and all that hath been revealed therein” should “shut them out as by a veil” from Him. 
• He had, moreover, declared that 
• He was the “first servant to believe in Him,” 
• that He bore Him allegiance “before all things were created,” 
• that “no allusion” of His “could allude unto Him,” 
• that “the year-old germ that holdeth within itself the potentialities of the Revelation that is to come is endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of the whole of the Bayán.” 
• He had, moreover, clearly asserted that He had “covenanted with all created things” concerning Him Whom God shall make manifest ere the covenant concerning His own mission had been established. 
• He had readily acknowledged that 
• He was but “a letter” of that “Most Mighty Book,” 
• “a dew-drop” from that “Limitless Ocean,” 
• that His Revelation was “only a leaf amongst the leaves of His Paradise,” 
• that “all that hath been exalted in the Bayán” was but “a ring” upon His own hand, and He Himself “a ring upon the hand of Him Whom God shall make manifest,” Who, “turneth it as He pleaseth, for whatsoever He pleaseth, and through whatsoever He pleaseth.” 
• He had unmistakably declared that He had “sacrificed” Himself “wholly” for Him, that He had “consented to be cursed” for His sake, and to have “yearned for naught but martyrdom” in the path of His love. 
• Finally, He had unequivocally prophesied: 
• “Today the Bayán is in the stage of seed; at the beginning of the manifestation of Him Whom God shall make manifest its ultimate perfection will become apparent.” 
• “Ere nine will have elapsed from the inception of this Cause the realities of the created things will not be made manifest. All that thou hast as yet seen is but the stage from the moist-germ until We clothed it with flesh. Be patient until thou beholdest a new creation. Say: Blessed, therefore, be God, the Most Excellent of Makers!”

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh and His Revelation from Siyyid Kázim-i-Rashtí, Shaykh Ahmad’s disciple and successor

Siyyid Kázim-i-Rashtí, Shaykh Ahmad’s disciple and successor, had likewise written: “The Qá’im must needs be put to death. After He has been slain the world will have attained the age of eighteen.” In his Sharh-i-Qasídiy-i-Lámíyyih he had even alluded to the name “Bahá.” Furthermore, to his disciples, as his days drew to a close, he had significantly declared: “Verily, I say, after the Qá’im the Qayyúm will be made manifest. For when the star of the former has set the sun of the beauty of Husayn will rise and illuminate the whole world. Then will be unfolded in all its glory the ‘Mystery’ and the ‘Secret’ spoken of by Shaykh Ahmad.… To have attained unto that Day of Days is to have attained unto the crowning glory of past generations, and one goodly deed performed in that age is equal to the pious worship of countless centuries.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation from Shaykh Ahmad-i-Ahsá’í, the herald of the Bábí Dispensation

About Him [Bahá’u’lláh] Shaykh Ahmad-i-Ahsá’í, the herald of the Bábí Dispensation, who had foreshadowed the “strange happenings” that would transpire “between the years sixty and sixty-seven,” and had categorically affirmed the inevitability of His Revelation had, as previously mentioned, written the following: “The Mystery of this Cause must needs be made manifest, and the Secret of this Message must needs be divulged. I can say no more, I can appoint no time. His Cause will be made known after Ḥín (68)” (i.e., after a while). 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh’s Dispensation from Muhammad, the Apostle of God, Imám ‘Ali, and Imám Husayn

The plenitude of His glory the Apostle of God had, moreover, as attested by Bahá’u’lláh Himself, compared to the “full moon on its fourteenth night.” His station the Imám ‘Alí, the Commander of the Faithful, had, according to the same testimony, identified with “Him Who conversed with Moses from the Burning Bush on Sinai.” To the transcendent character of His mission the Imám Ḥusayn had, again according to Bahá’u’lláh, borne witness as a “Revelation whose Revealer will be He Who revealed” the Apostle of God Himself. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh and His Day in the Qur'an

To Him Muhammad, the Apostle of God, had alluded in His Book as 

• the “Great Announcement,” 
• and declared His Day to be the Day whereon “God” will “come down” “overshadowed with clouds,” 
• the Day whereon “thy Lord shall come and the angels rank on rank,” and “The Spirit shall arise and the angels shall be ranged in order.” 
• His advent He, in that Book, in a súrih said to have been termed by Him “the heart of the Qur’án,” had foreshadowed as that of the “third” Messenger, sent down to “strengthen” the two who preceded Him. 
• To His Day He, in the pages of that same Book, had paid a glowing tribute, glorifying it as 
• the “Great Day,” 
• the “Last Day,” 
• the “Day of God,” 
• the “Day of Judgment,” 
• the “Day of Reckoning,” 
• the “Day of Mutual Deceit,” 
• the “Day of Severing,” 
• the “Day of Sighing,” 
• the “Day of Meeting,”
• the Day “when the Decree shall be accomplished,” 
• the Day whereon the second “Trumpet blast” will be sounded, 
• the “Day when mankind shall stand before the Lord of the world,” and “all shall come to Him in humble guise,” 
• the Day when “thou shalt see the mountains, which thou thinkest so firm, pass away with the passing of a cloud,” 
• the Day “wherein account shall be taken,” 
• “the approaching Day, when men’s hearts shall rise up, choking them, into their throats,” 
• the Day when “all that are in the heavens and all that are on the earth shall be terror-stricken, save him whom God pleaseth to deliver,” 
• the Day whereon “every suckling woman shall forsake her sucking babe, and every woman that hath a burden in her womb shall cast her burden,” 
• the Day “when the earth shall shine with the light of her Lord, and the Book shall be set, and the Prophets shall be brought up, and the witnesses; and judgment shall be given between them with equity; and none shall be wronged.”

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

Christian references to Bahá’u’lláh’s Day

To His Day Jesus Christ Himself had referred as “the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory.” To the hour of His advent St. Paul had alluded as the hour of the “last trump,” the “trump of God,” whilst St. Peter had spoken of it as the “Day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” His Day he, furthermore, had described as “the times of refreshing,” “the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy Prophets since the world began.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh from Saint John

To Him the Author of the Apocalypse had alluded as the “Glory of God,” as “Alpha and Omega,” “the Beginning and the End,” “the First and the Last.” Identifying His Revelation with the “third woe,” he, moreover, had extolled His Law as “a new heaven and a new earth,” as the “Tabernacle of God,” as the “Holy City,” as the “New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh from Jesus

To Him [Bahá’u’lláh] Jesus Christ had referred as the “Prince of this world,” as the “Comforter” Who will “reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment,” as the “Spirit of Truth” Who “will guide you into all truth,” Who “shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak,” as the “Lord of the Vineyard,” and as the “Son of Man” Who “shall come in the glory of His Father” “in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” with “all the holy angels” about Him, and “all nations” gathered before His throne. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh in Hindus’ Bhagavad-Gita

To Him [Bahá’u’lláh] the Bhagavad-Gita of the Hindus had referred as the “Most Great Spirit,” the “Tenth Avatar,” the “Immaculate Manifestation of Krishna.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

Buddha’s reference to Bahá’u’lláh

He [Bahá’u’lláh] alone is meant by the prophecy attributed to Gautama Buddha Himself, that “a Buddha named Maitreye, the Buddha of universal fellowship” should, in the fullness of time, arise and reveal “His boundless glory.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh’s Dispensation from Zoroaster

To His [Bahá’u’lláh’s] Dispensation the sacred books of the followers of Zoroaster had referred as that in which the sun must needs be brought to a standstill for no less than one whole month. To Him Zoroaster must have alluded when, according to tradition, He foretold that a period of three thousand years of conflict and contention must needs precede the advent of the World-Savior Sháh-Bahrám, Who would triumph over Ahriman and usher in an era of blessedness and peace. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh by various Jewish prophets

•  Of Him [Bahá’u’lláh] David had sung in his Psalms, acclaiming Him as the “Lord of Hosts” and the “King of Glory.” 
• To Him Haggai had referred as the “Desire of all nations,” and 
• Zachariah as the “Branch” Who “shall grow up out of His place,” and “shall build the Temple of the Lord.” 
• Zachariah had extolled Him as the “Lord” Who “shall be king over all the earth,” 
• while to His day Joel and Zephaniah had both referred as the “day of Jehovah,” the latter describing it as “a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.” 
• His Day Ezekiel and Daniel had, moreover, both acclaimed as the “day of the Lord,” and 
• Malachi described as “the great and dreadful day of the Lord” when “the Sun of Righteousness” will “arise, with healing in His wings,” whilst 
• Daniel had pronounced His advent as signalizing the end of the “abomination that maketh desolate.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

References to Bahá’u’lláh from Isaiah, “the greatest of Jewish prophets”

To Him Isaiah [Bahá’u’lláh], the greatest of the Jewish prophets, had alluded as 

• the “Glory of the Lord,” 
• the “Everlasting Father,” 
• the “Prince of Peace,” 
• the “Wonderful,” 
• the “Counsellor,” 
• the “Rod come forth out of the stem of Jesse” and 
• the “Branch grown out of His roots,” 
• Who “shall be established upon the throne of David,” 
• Who “will come with strong hand,” 
• Who “shall judge among the nations,” 
• Who “shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips slay the wicked,” and 
• Who “shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

Bahá’u’lláh’s ancestral background

He [Bahá’u’lláh] derived His descent, on the one hand, from Abraham (the Father of the Faithful) through his wife Katurah, and on the other from Zoroaster, as well as from Yazdigird, the last king of the Sásáníyán dynasty. He was moreover a descendant of Jesse, and belonged, through His father, Mírzá ‘Abbás, better known as Mírzá Buzurg—a nobleman closely associated with the ministerial circles of the Court of Fatḥ-‘Alí Sháh—to one of the most ancient and renowned families of Mázindarán. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

Titles of Bahá’u’lláh

He was formally designated Bahá’u’lláh, an appellation specifically recorded in the Persian Bayán, signifying at once the glory, the light and the splendor of God, and was styled

• the “Lord of Lords,”
• the “Most Great Name,”
• the “Ancient Beauty,”
• the “Pen of the Most High,”
• the “Hidden Name,”
• the “Preserved Treasure,”
• “He Whom God will make manifest,”
• the “Most Great Light,”
• the “All-Highest Horizon,”
• the “Most Great Ocean,”
• the “Supreme Heaven,”
• the “Pre-Existent Root,”
• the “Self-Subsistent,”
• the “Day-Star of the Universe,”
• the “Great Announcement,”
• the “Speaker on Sinai,”
• the “Sifter of Men,”
• the “Wronged One of the World,”
• the “Desire of the Nations,”
• the “Lord of the Covenant,”
• the “Tree beyond which there is no passing.”

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

Bahá’u’lláh’s name at birth

In the name He bore He combined those of the Imám Ḥusayn, the most illustrious of the successors of the Apostle of God—the brightest “star” shining in the “crown” mentioned in the Revelation of St. John—and of the Imám ‘Alí, the Commander of the Faithful, the second of the two “witnesses” extolled in that same Book. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

Bahá’u’lláh’s relation to Jews, Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists

To Israel He was neither more nor less than the incarnation of the “Everlasting Father”; the “Lord of Hosts” come down “with ten thousands of saints”; to Christendom Christ returned “in the glory of the Father,” to Shí‘ah Islám the return of the Imám Ḥusayn; to Sunní Islám the descent of the “Spirit of God” (Jesus Christ); to the Zoroastrians the promised Sháh-Bahrám; to the Hindus the reincarnation of Krishna; to the Buddhists the fifth Buddha. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

Who Bahá’u’lláh is

He Who in such dramatic circumstances was made to sustain the overpowering weight of so glorious a Mission was none other than the One Whom posterity will acclaim, and Whom innumerable followers already recognize, as

• the Judge,
• the Lawgiver and Redeemer of all mankind, as
• the Organizer of the entire planet, as
• the Unifier of the children of men, as
• the Inaugurator of the long-awaited millennium, as
• the Originator of a new “Universal Cycle,” as
• the Establisher of the Most Great Peace, as
• the Fountain of the Most Great Justice, as
• the Proclaimer of the coming of age of the entire human race, as
• the Creator of a new World Order, and as
• the Inspirer and Founder of a world civilization.

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation “flowing out, in that extremely perilous hour… and is now under our very eyes, shaping the course of human society”

What, we may well inquire at this juncture, were the nature and implications of that Revelation which, manifesting itself so soon after the Declaration of the Báb, abolished, at one stroke, the Dispensation which that Faith had so newly proclaimed, and upheld, with such vehemence and force, the Divine authority of its Author? What, we may well pause to consider, were the claims of Him Who, Himself a disciple of the Báb, had, at such an early stage, regarded Himself as empowered to abrogate the Law identified with His beloved Master? What, we may further reflect, could be the relationship between the religious Systems established before Him and His own Revelation—a Revelation which, flowing out, in that extremely perilous hour, from His travailing soul, pierced the gloom that had settled upon that pestilential pit, and, bursting through its walls, and propagating itself as far as the ends of the earth, infused into the entire body of mankind its boundless potentialities, and is now under our very eyes, shaping the course of human society? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

How each Founder of previous religions found Himself “the chosen recipient of the outpouring grace of the Almighty”

The circumstances in which the Vehicle of this newborn Revelation, following with such swiftness that of the Báb, received the first intimations of His sublime mission recall, and indeed surpass in poignancy the soul-shaking experience of Moses when confronted by the Burning Bush in the wilderness of Sinai; of Zoroaster when awakened to His mission by a succession of seven visions; of Jesus when coming out of the waters of the Jordan He saw the heavens opened and the Holy Ghost descend like a dove and light upon Him; of Muhammad when in the Cave of Hira, outside of the holy city of Mecca, the voice of Gabriel bade Him “cry in the name of Thy Lord”; and of the Báb when in a dream He approached the bleeding head of the Imám Husayn, and, quaffing the blood that dripped from his lacerated throat, awoke to find Himself the chosen recipient of the outpouring grace of the Almighty. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

References about Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb: - From St. John the Divine and Shaykh Ahmad-i-Ahsá’í

St. John the Divine had himself, with reference to these two successive Revelations, clearly prophesied: “The second woe is past; and, behold the third woe cometh quickly.” “This third woe,” ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, commenting upon this verse, has explained, “is the day of the Manifestation of Bahá’u’lláh, the Day of God, and it is near to the day of the appearance of the Báb.” “All the peoples of the world,” He moreover has asserted, “are awaiting two Manifestations, Who must be contemporaneous; all wait for the fulfillment of this promise.” And again: “The essential fact is that all are promised two Manifestations, Who will come one following on the other.” Shaykh Ahmad-i-Ahsá’í, that luminous star of Divine guidance who had so clearly perceived, before the year sixty, the approaching glory of Bahá’u’lláh, and laid stress upon “the twin Revelations which are to follow each other in rapid succession,” had, on his part, made this significant statement regarding the approaching hour of that supreme Revelation, in an epistle addressed in his own hand to Siyyid Kázim: “The mystery of this Cause must needs be made manifest, and the secret of this Message must needs be divulged. I can say no more. I can appoint no time. His Cause will be made known after Hín (68).” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

The” so brief an interval” between the Revelations of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh’: - “a secret that no man can unravel, and a mystery such as no mind can fathom”

During nine years, as foretold by the Báb Himself, swiftly, mysteriously and irresistibly the embryonic Faith conceived by Him had been developing until, at the fixed hour, the burden of the promised Cause of God was cast amidst the gloom and agony of the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán. “Behold,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself, years later, testified, in refutation of the claims of those who had rejected the validity of His mission following so closely upon that of the Báb, “how immediately upon the completion of the ninth year of this wondrous, this most holy and merciful Dispensation, the requisite number of pure, of wholly consecrated and sanctified souls has been most secretly consummated.” “That so brief an interval,” He, moreover has asserted, “should have separated this most mighty and wondrous Revelation from Mine own previous Manifestation is a secret that no man can unravel, and a mystery such as no mind can fathom. Its duration had been foreordained.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

“In this most dark and dreadful hour a New Light was about to break in glory on Persia’s somber horizon.”

At a time when the Cause of the Báb seemed to be hovering on the brink of extinction, when the hopes and ambitions which animated it had, to all human seeming, been frustrated, when the colossal sacrifices of its unnumbered lovers appeared to have been made in vain, the Divine Promise enshrined within it was about to be suddenly redeemed, and its final perfection mysteriously manifested. The Bábí Dispensation was being brought to its close (not prematurely but in its own appointed time), and was yielding its destined fruit and revealing its ultimate purpose—the birth of the Mission of Bahá’u’lláh. In this most dark and dreadful hour a New Light was about to break in glory on Persia’s somber horizon. As a result of what was in fact an evolving, ripening process, the most momentous if not the most spectacular stage in the Heroic Age of the Faith was now about to open. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

The effects of “the enforced captivity and isolation of the Báb”, “the execution of the Báb and the imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh”

Just as the enforced captivity and isolation of the Báb had, on the one hand, afforded Him the opportunity of formulating His doctrine, of unfolding the full implications of His Revelation, of formally and publicly declaring His station and of establishing His Covenant, and, on the other hand, had been instrumental in the proclamation of the laws of His Dispensation through the voice of His disciples assembled in Badasht, so did the crisis of unprecedented magnitude, culminating in the execution of the Báb and the imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh, prove to be the prelude of a revival which, through the quickening power of a far mightier Revelation, was to immortalize the fame, and fix on a still more enduring foundation, far beyond the confines of His native land, the original Message of the Prophet of Shíráz. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

“The flame which for nine years had burned with such brilliant intensity was indeed momentarily extinguished”

And yet the Fire which the Hand of Omnipotence had lighted, though smothered by this torrent of tribulations let loose upon it, was not quenched. The flame which for nine years had burned with such brilliant intensity was indeed momentarily extinguished, but the embers which that great conflagration had left behind still glowed, destined, at no distant date, to blaze forth once again, through the reviving breezes of an incomparably greater Revelation, and to shed an illumination that would not only dissipate the surrounding darkness but project its radiance as far as the extremities of both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 6)

“The storm…with unexampled violence”

The storm which subsequently burst, with unexampled violence, on a community already beaten to its knees,

• had, moreover, robbed it of its greatest heroine, the incomparable Táhirih, still in the full tide of her victories,
• had sealed the doom of Siyyid Husayn, the Báb’s trusted amanuensis and chosen repository of His last wishes,
• had laid low Mullá ‘Abdu’l-Karím-i-Qazvíní, admittedly one of the very few who could claim to possess a profound knowledge of the origins of the Faith, and
• had plunged into a dungeon Bahá’u’lláh, the sole survivor among the towering figures of the new Dispensation.
• The Báb—the Fountainhead from whence the vitalizing energies of a newborn Revelation had flowed—had Himself, ere the outburst of that hurricane, succumbed, in harrowing circumstances, to the volleys of a firing squad
• leaving behind, as titular head of a well-nigh disrupted community, a mere figurehead, timid in the extreme, good-natured yet susceptible to the slightest influence, devoid of any outstanding qualities, who now (loosed from the controlling hand of Bahá’u’lláh, the real Leader) was seeking, in the guise of a dervish, the protection afforded by the hills of his native Mázindarán against the threatened assaults of a deadly enemy.
• The voluminous writings of the Founder of the Faith—in manuscript, dispersed, unclassified, poorly transcribed and ill-preserved, were in part, owing to the fever and tumult of the times, either deliberately destroyed, confiscated, or hurriedly dispatched to places of safety beyond the confines of the land in which they were revealed.
• Powerful adversaries, among whom towered the figure of the inordinately ambitious and hypocritical Hájí Mírzá Karím Khán, who at the special request of the Sháh had in a treatise viciously attacked the new Faith and its doctrines, had now raised their heads, and, emboldened by the reverses it had sustained, were heaping abuse and calumnies upon it.
• Furthermore, under the stress of intolerable circumstances, a few of the Bábís were constrained to recant their faith, while others went so far as to apostatize and join the ranks of the enemy.
• And now to the sum of these dire misfortunes a monstrous calumny, arising from the outrage perpetrated by a handful of irresponsible enthusiasts, was added, branding a holy and innocent Faith with an infamy that seemed indelible, and which threatened to loosen it from its foundations.

(Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, chapter 6)

“From its birth, government, clergy and people had risen as one man against” the Cause of the Báb

From its birth, government, clergy and people had risen as one man against it and vowed eternal enmity to its cause.

• Muhammad Sháh, weak alike in mind and will, had, under pressure, rejected the overtures made to him by the Báb Himself, had declined to meet Him face to face, and even refused Him admittance to the capital.
• The youthful Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, of a cruel and imperious nature, had, both as crown prince and as reigning sovereign, increasingly evinced the bitter hostility which, at a later stage in his reign, was to blaze forth in all its dark and ruthless savagery.
• The powerful and sagacious Mu‘tamid, the one solitary figure who could have extended Him the support and protection He so sorely needed, was taken from Him by a sudden death.
• The Sherif of Mecca, who through the mediation of Quddús had been made acquainted with the new Revelation on the occasion of the Báb’s pilgrimage to Mecca, had turned a deaf ear to the Divine Message, and received His messenger with curt indifference.
• The prearranged gathering that was to have taken place in the holy city of Karbilá, in the course of the Báb’s return journey from Hijáz, had, to the disappointment of His followers who had been eagerly awaiting His arrival, to be definitely abandoned.
• The eighteen Letters of the Living, the principal bastions that buttressed the infant strength of the Faith, had for the most part fallen.
• The “Mirrors,” the “Guides,” the “Witnesses” comprising the Bábí hierarchy had either been put to the sword, or hounded from their native soil, or bludgeoned into silence.
• The program, whose essentials had been communicated to the foremost among them, had, owing to their excessive zeal, remained for the most part unfulfilled.
• The attempts which two of those disciples had made to establish the Faith in Turkey and India had signally failed at the very outset of their mission.
• The tempests that had swept Mázindarán, Nayríz and Zanján had, in addition to blasting to their roots the promising careers of the venerated Quddús, the lion-hearted Mullá Husayn, the erudite Vahíd, and the indomitable Hujjat, cut short the lives of an alarmingly large number of the most resourceful and most valiant of their fellow-disciples.
• The hideous outrages associated with the death of the Seven Martyrs of Tihrán had been responsible for the extinction of yet another living symbol of the Faith, who, by reason of his close kinship to, and intimate association with, the Báb, no less than by virtue of his inherent qualities, would if spared have decisively contributed to the protection and furtherance of a struggling Cause. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

“the darkest and bloodiest chapter of the history of the first Bahá’í century”

The train of dire events that followed in swift succession the calamitous attempt on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh mark, as already observed, the termination of the Bábí Dispensation and the closing of the initial, the darkest and bloodiest chapter of the history of the first Bahá’í century. A phase of measureless tribulation had been ushered in by these events, in the course of which the fortunes of the Faith proclaimed by the Báb sank to their lowest ebb. Indeed ever since its inception trials and vexations, setbacks and disappointments, denunciations, betrayals and massacres had, in a steadily rising crescendo, contributed to the decimation of the ranks of its followers, strained to the utmost the loyalty of its stoutest upholders, and all but succeeded in disrupting the foundations on which it rested. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By', chapter 6)

“The judgment of God…on those who took a leading or an active part in the crimes committed against the Báb and His followers”

 What, in conclusion, we may well ask ourselves, has been the fate of that flagitious crew who, actuated by malice, by greed or fanaticism, sought to quench the light which the Báb and His followers had diffused over their country and its people? The rod of Divine chastisement, swiftly and with unyielding severity, spared neither the Chief Magistrate of the realm, nor his ministers and counselors, nor the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the religion with which his government was indissolubly connected, nor the governors who acted as his representatives, nor the chiefs of his armed forces who, in varying degrees, deliberately or through fear or neglect, contributed to the appalling trials to which an infant Faith was so undeservedly subjected.

• Muhammad Sháh himself, a sovereign at once bigoted and irresolute who, refusing to heed the appeal of the Báb to receive Him in the capital and enable Him to demonstrate the truth of His Cause, yielded to the importunities of a malevolent minister, succumbed, at the early age of forty, after sustaining a sudden reverse of fortune, to a complication of maladies, and was condemned to that “hell-fire” which, “on the Day of Resurrection,” the Author of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ had sworn would inevitably devour him.
• His evil genius, the omnipotent Hájí Mírzá Áqásí, the power behind the throne and the chief instigator of the outrages perpetrated against the Báb, including His imprisonment in the mountains of Ádhirbáyján, was, after the lapse of scarcely a year and six months from the time he interposed himself between the Sháh and his Captive, hurled from power, deprived of his ill-gotten riches, was disgraced by his sovereign, was driven to seek shelter from the rising wrath of his countrymen in the shrine of Sháh ‘Abdu’l-‘Azím, and was later ignominiously expelled to Karbilá, falling a prey to disease, poverty and gnawing sorrow—a piteous vindication of that denunciatory Tablet in which his Prisoner had foreshadowed his doom and denounced his infamy.

The reported testimony of the man who shot Mulla Husayn at Fort Tabarsi

“The truth of the matter,” is the answer which ‘Abbás-Qulí Khán-i-Láríjání, whose bullet was responsible for the death of Mullá Husayn, is reported to have given to a query addressed to him by Prince Ahmad Mírzá in the presence of several witnesses, “is that any one who had not seen Karbilá would, if he had seen Tabarsí, not only have comprehended what there took place, but would have ceased to consider it; and had he seen Mullá Husayn of Bushrúyih, he would have been convinced that the Chief of Martyrs (Imám Husayn) had returned to earth; and had he witnessed my deeds, he would assuredly have said: ‘This is Shimr come back with sword and lance…’ In truth, I know not what had been shown to these people, or what they had seen, that they came forth to battle with such alacrity and joy.… The imagination of man cannot conceive the vehemence of their courage and valor.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

Words of admiration about the Bábís from some European diplomats and historians present in Persia in the 19th Century

“Tales of magnificent heroism,” is the written testimony of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, “illumine the blood-stained pages of Bábí history.… The fires of Smithfield did not kindle a nobler courage than has met and defied the more refined torture-mongers of Ṭihrán. Of no small account, then, must be the tenets of a creed that can awaken in its followers so rare and beautiful a spirit of self-sacrifice. The heroism and martyrdom of His (the Báb) followers will appeal to many others who can find no similar phenomena in the contemporaneous records of Islám.” “Bábism,” wrote Prof. J. Darmesteter, “which diffused itself in less than five years from one end of Persia to another, which was bathed in 1852 in the blood of its martyrs, has been silently progressing and propagating itself. If Persia is to be at all regenerate it will be through this new Faith.” “Des milliers de martyrs,” attests Renan in his “Les Apôtres,” “sont accourus pour lui (the Báb) avec allégresse au devant de la mort. Un jour sans pareil peut-être dans l’histoire du monde fut celui de la grande boucherie qui se fit des Bábís à Teheran.” “One of those strange outbursts,” declares the well-known Orientalist Prof. E. G. Browne, “of enthusiasm, faith, fervent devotion and indomitable heroism … the birth of a Faith which may not impossibly win a place amidst the great religions of the world.” And again: “The spirit which pervades the Bábís is such that it can hardly fail to affect most powerfully all subjected to its influence.… Let those who have not seen disbelieve me if they will, but, should that spirit once reveal itself to them, they will experience an emotion which they are not likely to forget.” “J’avoue même,” is the assertion made by Comte de Gobineau in his book, “que, si je voyais en Europe une secte d’une nature analogue au Babysme se présenter avec des avantages tels que les siens, foi aveugle, enthousiasme extrême, courage et dévouement éprouvés, respect inspiré aux indifférents, terreur profonde inspirée aux adversaires, et de plus, comme je l’ai dit, un prosélytisme qui ne s’arrête pas, et donc les succès sont constants dans toutes les classes de la société; si je voyais, dis-je, tout cela exister en Europe, je n’hésiterais pas à prédire que, dans un temps donné, la puissance et le sceptre appartiendront de toute nécessité aux possesseurs de ces grands avantages.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

“words of Muhammad, the Apostle of God” concerning “the heroes, saints and martyrs” of the Bábí Dispensation

To whom else could these significant words of Muhammad, the Apostle of God, quoted by Quddús while addressing his companions in the Fort of Shaykh Tabarsí, apply if not to those heroes of God who, with their life-blood, ushered in the Promised Day? “O how I long to behold the countenance of My brethren, my brethren who will appear at the end of the world! Blessed are We, blessed are they; greater is their blessedness than ours.” Who else could be meant by this tradition, called Hadíth-i-Jábir, recorded in the Káfí, and authenticated by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, which, in indubitable language, sets forth the signs of the appearance of the promised Qá’im? “His saints shall be abased in His time, and their heads shall be exchanged as presents, even as the heads of the Turk and the Daylamite are exchanged as presents; they shall be slain and burned, and shall be afraid, fearful and dismayed; the earth shall be dyed with their blood, and lamentation and wailing shall prevail amongst their women; these are My saints indeed.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

Bahá’u’lláh’s references to “the heroes, saints and martyrs of that Primitive Age”

“The whole world,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s matchless testimony in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “marveled at the manner of their sacrifice.… The mind is bewildered at their deeds, and the soul marveleth at their fortitude and bodily endurance.… Hath any age witnessed such momentous happenings?” And again: “Hath the world, since the days of Adam, witnessed such tumult, such violent commotion?… Methinks, patience was revealed only by virtue of their fortitude, and faithfulness itself was begotten only by their deeds.” “Through the blood which they shed,” He, in a prayer, referring more specifically to the martyrs of the Faith, has significantly affirmed, “the earth hath been impregnated with the wondrous revelations of Thy might and the gem-like signs of Thy glorious sovereignty. Ere-long shall she tell out her tidings, when the set time is come.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

“the bloodiest, the most tragic, the most heroic period of the first Bahá’í century”

Thus drew to a close a chapter which records for all time the bloodiest, the most tragic, the most heroic period of the first Bahá’í century. The torrents of blood that poured out during those crowded and calamitous years may be regarded as constituting the fertile seeds of that World Order which a swiftly succeeding and still greater Revelation was to proclaim and establish. The tributes paid the noble army of the heroes, saints and martyrs of that Primitive Age, by friend and foe alike, from Bahá’u’lláh Himself down to the most disinterested observers in distant lands, and from the moment of its birth until the present day, bear imperishable witness to the glory of the deeds that immortalize that Age. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

Examples of “the glaring ferocity of the atrocities perpetrated” against the Bábís during 1852

“My pen,” writes the chronicler of the bloody episodes associated with the birth and rise of our Faith, “shrinks in horror in attempting to describe what befell those valiant men and women.… What I have attempted to recount of the horrors of the siege of Zanján … pales before the glaring ferocity of the atrocities perpetrated a few years later in Nayríz and Shíráz.” The heads of no less than two hundred victims of these outbursts of ferocious fanaticism were impaled on bayonets, and carried triumphantly from Shíráz to Ábádih. Forty women and children were charred to a cinder by being placed in a cave, in which a vast quantity of firewood had been heaped up, soaked with naphtha and set alight. Three hundred women were forced to ride two by two on bare-backed horses all the way to Shíráz. Stripped almost naked they were led between rows of heads hewn from the lifeless bodies of their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers. Untold insults were heaped upon them, and the hardships they suffered were such that many among them perished. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

The spread of the violent conflagration against the Bábís in Tihran to Mázindarán, Yazd, Nayríz and Shíráz

The commotion that had seized Tihrán and had given rise to the campaign of outrage and spoliation in Mázindarán spread even as far as Yazd, Nayríz and Shíráz, rocking the remotest hamlets, and rekindling the flames of persecution. Once again greedy governors and perfidious subordinates vied with each other in despoiling the innocent, in massacring the guiltless, and in dishonoring the noblest of their race. A carnage ensued which repeated the atrocities already perpetrated in Nayríz and Zanján. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

“the confiscation, the plunder and the destruction of all His [Baha’u’llah’s] possessions

The violent conflagration kindled as a result of the attempted assassination of the sovereign could not be confined to the capital. It overran the adjoining provinces, ravaged Mázindarán, the native province of Bahá’u’lláh, and brought about in its wake, the confiscation, the plunder and the destruction of all His possessions. In the village of Tákur, in the district of Núr, His sumptuously furnished home, inherited from His father, was, by order of Mírzá Abú-Ṭálib Khán, nephew of the Grand Vizir, completely despoiled, and whatever could not be carried away was ordered to be destroyed, while its rooms, more stately than those of the palaces of Ṭihrán, were disfigured beyond repair. Even the houses of the people were leveled with the ground, after which the entire village was set on fire. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

The incredibly amazing martyrdom of courageous Sulaymán Khán

Another victim of the frightful tortures inflicted by an unyielding enemy was the high-minded, the influential and courageous Hájí Sulaymán Khán. So greatly was he esteemed that the Amír-Nizám had felt, on a previous occasion, constrained to ignore his connection with the Faith he had embraced and to spare his life. The turmoil that convulsed Tihrán as a result of the attempt on the life of the sovereign, however, precipitated his arrest and brought about his martyrdom. The Sháh, having failed to induce him through the Hájibu’d-Dawlih to recant, commanded that he be put to death in any way he himself might choose. Nine holes, at his express wish, were made in his flesh, in each of which a lighted candle was placed. As the executioner shrank from performing this gruesome task, he attempted to snatch the knife from his hand that he might himself plunge it into his own body. Fearing lest he should attack him the executioner refused, and bade his men tie the victim’s hands behind his back, whereupon the intrepid sufferer pleaded with them to pierce two holes in his breast, two in his shoulders, one in the nape of his neck, and four others in his back—a wish they complied with. Standing erect as an arrow, his eyes glowing with stoic fortitude, unperturbed by the howling multitude or the sight of his own blood streaming from his wounds, and preceded by minstrels and drummers, he led the concourse that pressed round him to the final place of his martyrdom. Every few steps he would interrupt his march to address the bewildered bystanders in words in which he glorified the Báb and magnified the significance of his own death. As his eyes beheld the candles flickering in their bloody sockets, he would burst forth in exclamations of unrestrained delight. Whenever one of them fell from his body he would with his own hand pick it up, light it from the others, and replace it. “Why dost thou not dance?” asked the executioner mockingly, “since thou findest death so pleasant?” “Dance?” cried the sufferer, “In one hand the wine-cup, in one hand the tresses of the Friend. Such a dance in the midst of the market-place is my desire!” He was still in the bazaar when the flowing of a breeze, fanning the flames of the candles now burning deep in his flesh, caused it to sizzle, whereupon he burst forth addressing the flames that ate into his wounds: “You have long lost your sting, O flames, and have been robbed of your power to pain me. Make haste, for from your very tongues of fire I can hear the voice that calls me to my Beloved.” In a blaze of light he walked as a conqueror might have marched to the scene of his victory. At the foot of the gallows he once again raised his voice in a final appeal to the multitude of onlookers. He then prostrated himself in the direction of the shrine of the Imám-Zádih Hasan, murmuring some words in Arabic. “My work is now finished,” he cried to the executioner, “come and do yours.” Life still lingered in him as his body was sawn into two halves, with the praise of his Beloved still fluttering from his dying lips. The scorched and bloody remnants of his corpse were, as he himself had requested, suspended on either side of the Gate of Naw, mute witnesses to the unquenchable love which the Báb had kindled in the breasts of His disciples. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

The martyrdom of “the Báb’s distinguished amanuensis, Siyyid Husayn-i-Yazdí, surnamed ‘Azíz”

The fierce gale of persecution that had swept Bahá’u’lláh into a subterranean dungeon and snuffed out the light of Táhirih also sealed the fate of the Báb’s distinguished amanuensis, Siyyid Husayn-i-Yazdí, surnamed ‘Azíz, who had shared His confinement in both Máh-Kú and Chihríq. A man of rich experience and high merit, deeply versed in the teachings of his Master, and enjoying His unqualified confidence, he, refusing every offer of deliverance from the leading officials of Ṭihrán, yearned unceasingly for the martyrdom which had been denied him on the day the Báb had laid down His life in the barrack-square of Tabríz. A fellow-prisoner of Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-Chál of Tihrán, from Whom he derived inspiration and solace as he recalled those precious days spent in the company of his Master in Ádhirbáyján, he was finally struck down, in circumstances of shameful cruelty, by that same ‘Azíz Khán-i-Sardár who had dealt the fatal blow to Táhirih. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’, chapter 5)

Some early tributes to Táhirih

Indeed the wondrous story of her life propagated itself as far and as fast as that of the Báb Himself, the direct Source of her inspiration.

• “Prodige de science, mais aussi prodige de beauté” is the tribute paid her by a noted commentator on the life of the Báb and His disciples.
• “The Persian Joan of Arc, the leader of emancipation for women of the Orient … who bore resemblance both to the mediaeval Heloise and the neo-platonic Hypatia,” thus was she acclaimed by a noted playwright whom Sarah Bernhardt had specifically requested to write a dramatized version of her life.
• “The heroism of the lovely but ill-fated poetess of Qazvín, Zarrín-Táj (Crown of Gold) …” testifies Lord Curzon of Kedleston, “is one of the most affecting episodes in modern history.”
• “The appearance of such a woman as Qurratu’l-‘Ayn,” wrote the well-known British Orientalist, Prof. E. G. Browne, “is, in any country and any age, a rare phenomenon, but in such a country as Persia it is a prodigy—nay, almost a miracle.… Had the Bábí religion no other claim to greatness, this were sufficient … that it produced a heroine like Qurratu’l-‘Ayn.”
• “The harvest sown in Islamic lands by Qurratu’l-‘Ayn,” significantly affirms the renowned English divine, Dr. T. K. Cheyne, in one of his books, “is now beginning to appear … this noble woman … has the credit of opening the catalogue of social reforms in Persia…”

“You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.” – Táhirih: “first woman suffrage martyr”

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’)

Táhirih contributions to the Cause of the Báb

• She it was who while in Karbilá—the foremost stronghold of Shí‘ah Islám—had been moved to address lengthy epistles to each of the ‘ulamás residing in that city, who relegated women to a rank little higher than animals and denied them even the possession of a soul—epistles in which she ably vindicated her high purpose and exposed their malignant designs.
• She it was who, in open defiance of the customs of the fanatical inhabitants of that same city, boldly disregarded the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Imám Husayn, commemorated with elaborate ceremony in the early days of Muharram, and celebrated instead the anniversary of the birthday of the Báb, which fell on the first day of that month.
• It was through her prodigious eloquence and the astounding force of her argument that she confounded the representative delegation of Shí‘ah, of Sunní, of Christian and Jewish notables of Baghdád, who had endeavored to dissuade her from her avowed purpose of spreading the tidings of the new Message.
• She it was who, with consummate skill, defended her faith and vindicated her conduct in the home and in the presence of that eminent jurist, Shaykh Mahmúd-i-Álúsí, the Muftí of Baghdád, and who later held her historic interviews with the princes, the ‘ulamás and the government officials residing in Kirmánsháh, in the course of which the Báb’s commentary on the Súrih of Kawthar was publicly read and translated, and which culminated in the conversion of the Amír (the governor) and his family.

Táhirih (the Pure One); - “her eloquent pleadings, her fearless denunciations, her dissertations, poems and translations, her commentaries and correspondence”

A scion of the highly reputed family of Hájí Mullá Sálih-i-Baraghání, whose members occupied an enviable position in the Persian ecclesiastical hierarchy; the namesake of the illustrious Fátimih; designated as Zarrín-Táj (Crown of Gold) and Zakíyyih (Virtuous) by her family and kindred; born in the same year as Bahá’u’lláh; regarded from childhood, by her fellow-townsmen, as a prodigy, alike in her intelligence and beauty; highly esteemed even by some of the most haughty and learned ‘ulamás of her country, prior to her conversion, for the brilliancy and novelty of the views she propounded; acclaimed as Qurrat-i-‘Ayní (solace of my eyes) by her admiring teacher, Siyyid Kázim; entitled Táhirih (the Pure One) by the “Tongue of Power and Glory;” and the only woman enrolled by the Báb as one of the Letters of the Living; she had, through a dream, referred to earlier in these pages, established her first contact with a Faith which she continued to propagate to her last breath, and in its hour of greatest peril, with all the ardor of her unsubduable spirit. Undeterred by the vehement protests of her father; contemptuous of the anathemas of her uncle; unmoved by the earnest solicitations of her husband and her brothers; undaunted by the measures which, first in Karbilá and subsequently in Baghdád, and later in Qazvín, the civil and ecclesiastical authorities had taken to curtail her activities, with eager energy she urged the Bábí Cause. Through her eloquent pleadings, her fearless denunciations, her dissertations, poems and translations, her commentaries and correspondence, she persisted in firing the imagination and in enlisting the allegiance of Arabs and Persians alike to the new Revelation, in condemning the perversity of her generation, and in advocating a revolutionary transformation in the habits and manners of her people. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By, chapter 5)

Táhirih’s “meteoric career”: “inaugurated in Karbilá, culminating in Badasht, was now about to attain its final consummation in a martyrdom”

While Bahá’u’lláh was being so odiously and cruelly subjected to the trials and tribulations inseparable from those tumultuous days, another luminary of the Faith, the valiant Táhirih, was swiftly succumbing to their devastating power. Her meteoric career, inaugurated in Karbilá, culminating in Badasht, was now about to attain its final consummation in a martyrdom that may well rank as one of the most affecting episodes in the most turbulent period of Bahá’í history. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By; chapter 5)

‘Abdu’l Bahá was allowed one day to see Bahá’u’lláh while in the Síyáh-Chál

“‘Abdu’l Bahá,” Dr. J. E. Esslemont records in his book, “tells how, one day, He was allowed to enter the prison yard to see His beloved Father, where He came out for His daily exercise. Bahá’u’lláh 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.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 5)

Condition of Bahá’u’lláh while in the Síyáh-Chál for four months

Bahá’u’lláh’s feet were placed in stocks, and around His neck were fastened the Qará-Guhar chains of such galling weight that their mark remained imprinted upon His body all the days of His life. “A heavy chain,” ‘Abdu’l Bahá Himself has testified, “was placed about His neck by which He was chained to five other Bábís; these fetters were locked together by strong, very heavy, bolts and screws. His clothes were torn to pieces, also His headdress. In this terrible condition He was kept for four months.” For three days and three nights, He was denied all manner of food and drink. Sleep was impossible to Him. The place was chill and damp, filthy, fever-stricken, infested with vermin, and filled with a noisome stench. Animated by a relentless hatred His enemies went even so far as to intercept and poison His food, in the hope of obtaining the favor of the mother of their sovereign, His most implacable foe—an attempt which, though it impaired His health for years to come, failed to achieve its purpose. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 5)

Bahá’u’lláh describes the subterranean dungeon (the Síyáh-Chál) where He was imprisoned

As to the subterranean dungeon into which He was thrown, and which originally had served as a reservoir of water for one of the public baths of the capital, let His own words, recorded in His “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,” bear testimony to the ordeal which He endured in that pestilential hole. “We were consigned for four months to a place foul beyond comparison.… Upon Our arrival We were first conducted along a pitch-black corridor, from whence We descended three steep flights of stairs to the place of confinement assigned to Us. The dungeon was wrapped in thick darkness, and Our fellow-prisoners numbered nearly one 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 those men had neither clothes nor bedding to lie on. God alone knoweth what befell Us in that most foul-smelling and gloomy place!” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 5)

Condition of Bahá’u’lláh on the way to the Síyáh-Chál

From Níyávarán He was conducted “on foot and in chains, with bared head and bare feet,” exposed to the fierce rays of the midsummer sun, to the Síyáh-Chál of Tihrán. On the way He several times was stripped of His outer garments, was overwhelmed with ridicule, and pelted with stones. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (God Passes By, chapter 5 )

Bahá’u’lláh was delivered into the hands of His enemies by Persian prime minister

Delivered into the hands of His enemies, this much-feared, bitterly arraigned and illustrious Exponent of a perpetually hounded Faith was now made to taste of the cup which He Who had been its recognized Leader had drained to the dregs. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (Chapter 5, 'God Passes By')

The Sháh demanded that Bahá’u’lláh be delivered inro his hands: - the Russian Minister refused

The Sháh, greatly amazed, dispatched his trusted officers to the Legation, demanding that the Accused be forthwith delivered into his hands. Refusing to comply with the wishes of the royal envoys, the Russian Minister requested Bahá’u’lláh to proceed to the home of the Grand Vizir, to whom he formally communicated his wish that the safety of the Trust the Russian government was delivering into his keeping should be insured. This purpose, however, was not achieved because of the Grand Vizir’s apprehension that he might forfeit his position if he extended to the Accused the protection demanded for Him. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (Chapter 5, 'God Passes By')

Bahá’u’lláh was conducted to the house of His brother-in-law who was acting as secretary to the Russian Minister, Prince Dolgorouki

In the village of Zarkandih He was met by, and conducted to the home of, His brother-in-law, Mírzá Majíd, who, at that time, was acting as secretary to the Russian Minister, Prince Dolgorouki, and whose house adjoined that of his superior. Apprised of Bahá’u’lláh’s arrival the attendants of the Hájibu’d-Dawlih, Hájí ‘Alí Khán, straightway informed their master, who in turn brought the matter to the attention of his sovereign. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (Chapter 5, 'God Passes B'y)

The attempted assassination of the Sháh: - Bahá’u’lláh “rode forth…to the headquarters of the Imperial army”

Bahá’u’lláh, when that attempt had been made on the life of the sovereign, was in Lavásán, the guest of the Grand Vizir, and was staying in the village of Afchih when the momentous news reached Him. Refusing to heed the advice of the Grand Vizir’s brother, Ja‘far-Qulí Khán, who was acting as His host, to remain for a time concealed in that neighborhood, and dispensing with the good offices of the messenger specially dispatched to insure His safety, He rode forth, the following morning, with cool intrepidity, to the headquarters of the Imperial army which was then stationed in Níyávarán, in the Shimírán district. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (Chapter 5, 'God Passes By')

Some of Baha’u’llah’s powerful early enemies

• Already so conspicuous and towering a figure had, through the accusations levelled against Him, kindled the wrath of Muhammad Sháh, who, after having heard what had transpired in Badasht, had ordered His arrest, in a number of farmáns addressed to the kháns of Mázindarán, and expressed his determination to put Him to death.
• Hájí Mírzá Áqásí, previously alienated from the Vazír (Bahá’u’lláh’s father), and infuriated by his own failure to appropriate by fraud an estate that belonged to Bahá’u’lláh, had sworn eternal enmity to the One Who had so brilliantly succeeded in frustrating his evil designs.
• The Amír-Nizám, moreover, fully aware of the pervasive influence of so energetic an opponent, had, in the presence of a distinguished gathering, accused Him of having inflicted, as a result of His activities, a loss of no less than five kurúrs upon the government, and had expressly requested Him, at a critical moment in the fortunes of the Faith, to temporarily transfer His residence to Karbilá.
• Mírzá Áqá Khán-i-Núrí, who succeeded the Amír-Nizám, had endeavored, at the very outset of his ministry, to effect a reconciliation between his government and the One Whom he regarded as the most resourceful of the Báb’s disciples.
• Little wonder that when, later, an act of such gravity and temerity was committed, [the attempted assassination of the Sháh] a suspicion as dire as it was unfounded, should at once have crept into the minds of the Sháh, his government, his court, and his people against Bahá’u’lláh.
• Foremost among them was the mother of the youthful sovereign, who, inflamed with anger, was openly denouncing Him as the would-be murderer of her son. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (Chapter 5, God Passes By)

Some of Baha’u’llah’s character traits

Such a man, with such a record of achievements to His credit, could not, indeed did not, escape either the detection or the fury of a vigilant and fully aroused enemy.

• Afire from the very beginning with an uncontrollable enthusiasm for the Cause He had espoused;
• conspicuously fearless in His advocacy of the rights of the downtrodden;
• in the full bloom of youth;
• immensely resourceful;
• matchless in His eloquence;
• endowed with inexhaustible energy and penetrating judgment;
• possessed of the riches, and enjoying, in full measure, the esteem, power and prestige associated with an enviably high and noble position, and yet contemptuous of all earthly pomp, rewards, vanities and possessions;
• closely associated, on the one hand, through His regular correspondence with the Author of the Faith He had risen to champion, and intimately acquainted, on the other, with the hopes and fears, the plans and activities of its leading exponents;
• at one time advancing openly and assuming a position of acknowledged leadership in the forefront of the forces struggling for that Faith’s emancipation, at another deliberately drawing back with consummate discretion in order to remedy, with greater efficacy, an awkward or dangerous situation;
• at all times vigilant, ready and indefatigable in His exertions to preserve the integrity of that Faith, to resolve its problems, to plead its cause, to galvanize its followers, and to confound its antagonists, Bahá’u’lláh, at this supremely critical hour in its fortunes, was at last stepping into the very center of the stage so tragically vacated by the Báb—a stage on which He was destined, for no less a period than forty years, to play a part unapproached in its majesty, pathos and splendor by any of the great Founders of the world’s historic religions. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (Chapter 5, God Passes By)