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')