1856: Bahá’u’lláh describes the condition of the Bábi community upon His return

Little wonder that on His return to Baghdád Bahá’u’lláh should have described the situation then existing in these words: “We found no more than a handful of souls, faint and dispirited, nay utterly lost and dead. The Cause of God had ceased to be on any one’s lips, nor was any heart receptive to its message.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

The amazing “decline” in the Bábís fortune in Baghdad

Such was the decline in their fortunes that they hardly dared show themselves in public. Kurds and Persians vied with each other, when confronting them in the streets, in heaping abuse upon them, and in vilifying openly the Cause which they professed. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

circa 1854-56: “twenty-five persons…declare themselves to be the Promised One foretold by the Báb”

Such was the audacity and effrontery of these demoralized and misguided Bábís that no less than twenty-five persons, according to ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s testimony, had the presumption to declare themselves to be the Promised One foretold by the Báb! 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

“The depths of degradation” of the “so-called adherents of the Faith of the Báb” versus “the sublime renunciation shown by the conduct of the companions of Mullá Husayn”

The depths of degradation to which these so-called adherents of the Faith of the Báb had sunk could not but evoke in Nabíl the memory of the sublime renunciation shown by the conduct of the companions of Mullá Ḥusayn, who, at the suggestion of their leader, had scornfully cast by the wayside the gold, the silver and turquoise in their possession, or shown by the behavior of Vaḥíd who refused to allow even the least valuable amongst the treasures which his sumptuously furnished house in Yazd contained to be removed ere it was pillaged by the mob, or shown by the decision of Ḥujjat not to permit his companions, who were on the brink of starvation, to lay hands on the property of others, even though it were to save their own lives. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

The shameful acts of Siyyid Muhammad and his “band of ruffians”

As to Siyyid Muhammad, now given free rein by his master, Mírzá Yahyá, he had surrounded himself, as Nabíl who was at that time with him in Karbilá categorically asserts, with a band of ruffians, whom he allowed, and even encouraged,

• to snatch at night the turbans from the heads of wealthy pilgrims who had congregated in Karbilá,
• to steal their shoes,
• to rob the shrine of the Imám Husayn of its divans and candles,
• and seize the drinking cups from the public fountains. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)