Well aware of the impending trials that were to afflict Him,
the Báb had, ere His final separation from His family, bequeathed to His mother
and His wife all His possessions, had confided to the latter the secret of what
was to befall Him, and revealed for her a special prayer the reading of which,
He assured her, would resolve her perplexities and allay her sorrows. 
That very night, however, took place an event which, in its
dramatic suddenness, was no doubt providentially designed to confound the
schemes of the plotters, and enable the Object of their hatred to prolong His
ministry and consummate His Revelation. An outbreak of cholera, devastating in
its virulence, had, since midnight, already smitten above a hundred people. The
dread of the plague had entered every heart, and the inhabitants of the
stricken city were, amid shrieks of pain and grief, fleeing in confusion. Three
of the governor’s domestics had already died. Members of his family were lying
dangerously ill. In his despair he, leaving the dead unburied, had fled to a
garden in the outskirts of the city. ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd Khán, [the chief constable
in Shiraz] confronted by this unexpected development, decided to conduct the
Báb to His own home. He was appalled, upon his arrival, to learn that his son
lay in the death-throes of the plague. In his despair he threw himself at the
feet of the Báb, begged to be forgiven, adjured Him not to visit upon the son
the sins of the father, and pledged his word to resign his post, and never
again to accept such a position. Finding that his prayer had been answered, he
addressed a plea to the governor begging him to release his Captive, and
thereby deflect the fatal course of this dire visitation. Husayn Khán acceded
to his request, and released his Prisoner on condition of His quitting the
city. 
While the situation was steadily deteriorating in the
provinces, the bitter hostility of the people of Shíráz was rapidly moving
towards a climax. Ḥusayn Khán, vindictive, relentless, exasperated by the
reports of his sleepless agents that his Captive’s power and fame were hourly
growing, decided to take immediate action. It is even reported that his
accomplice, Hájí Mírzá Áqásí, had ordered him to kill secretly the would-be
disrupter of the state and the wrecker of its established religion. By order of
the governor the chief constable, ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd Khán, scaled, in the dead of
night, the wall and entered the house of Hájí Mírzá Siyyid ‘Alí, where the Báb
was confined, arrested Him, and confiscated all His books and documents. 
Yet another recruit to the ever-swelling army of the new
Faith was the eminent scholar, Mírzá Ahmad-i-Azghandí, the most learned, the
wisest and the most outstanding among the ‘ulamás of Khurásán, who, in anticipation
of the advent of the promised Qá’im, had compiled above twelve thousand
traditions and prophecies concerning the time and character of the expected
Revelation, had circulated them among His fellow-disciples, and had encouraged
them to quote them extensively to all congregations and in all meetings. 
Another famous advocate of the Cause of the Báb, even
fiercer in zeal than Vaḥíd, and almost as eminent in rank, was Mullá Muhammad-‘Alíy-i-Zánjání,
surnamed Hujjat. An Akhbárí, a vehement controversialist, of a bold and
independent temper of mind, impatient of restraint, a man who had dared condemn
the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy from the Abváb-i-Arba‘ih down to the
humblest mullá, he had more than once, through his superior talents and fervid
eloquence, publicly confounded his orthodox Shí‘ah adversaries. Such a person
could not remain indifferent to a Cause that was producing so grave a cleavage
among his countrymen. The disciple he sent to Shíráz to investigate the matter
fell immediately under the spell of the Báb. The perusal of but a page of the
Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, brought by that messenger to Hujjat, sufficed to effect such a
transformation within him that he declared, before the assembled ‘ulamás of his
native city, that should the Author of that work pronounce day to be night and
the sun to be a shadow he would unhesitatingly uphold his verdict. 
During the third interview the circumstances attending the
revelation of the Báb’s commentary on the súrih of Kawthar, comprising no less
than two thousand verses, so overpowered the delegate of the Sháh that he,
contenting himself with a mere written report to the Court Chamberlain, arose
forthwith to dedicate his entire life and resources to the service of a Faith
that was to requite him with the crown of martyrdom during the Nayríz upheaval.
He who had firmly resolved to confute the arguments of an obscure siyyid of
Shíráz, to induce Him to abandon His ideas, and to conduct Him to Tihrán as an
evidence of the ascendancy he had achieved over Him, was made to feel, as he
himself later acknowledged, as “lowly as the dust beneath His feet.” Even
Husayn Khán, who had been Vahíd’s host during his stay in Shíráz, was compelled
to write to the Sháh and express the conviction that his Majesty’s illustrious
delegate had become a Bábí. 
Broad-minded, highly imaginative, zealous by nature,
intimately associated with the court, he, in the course of three interviews,
was completely won over by the arguments and personality of the Báb. Their
first interview centered around the metaphysical teachings of Islám, the most
obscure passages of the Qur’án, and the traditions and prophecies of the Imáms.
In the course of the second interview Vaḥíd was astounded to find that the
questions which he had intended to submit for elucidation had been effaced from
his retentive memory, and yet, to his utter amazement, he discovered that the
Báb was answering the very questions he had forgotten. 
The commotion had assumed such proportions that the Sháh,
unable any longer to ignore the situation, delegated the trusted Siyyid Yaḥyáy-i-Dárábí,
surnamed Vahíd, one of the most erudite, eloquent and influential of his
subjects—a man who had committed to memory no less than thirty thousand
traditions—to investigate and report to him the true situation. 
Meanwhile the fever that had seized His followers was
communicating itself to the members of the clergy and to the merchant classes,
and was invading the higher circles of society. Indeed, a wave of passionate
inquiry had swept the whole country, and unnumbered congregations were
listening with wonder to the testimonies eloquently and fearlessly related by
the Báb’s itinerant messengers. 
The governor, greatly alarmed, ordered the Báb to be
arrested. He was brought to Shíráz under escort, and, in the presence of Husayn
Khán, was severely rebuked, and so violently struck in the face that His turban
fell to the ground. Upon the intervention of the Imám-Jum‘ih He was released on
parole, and entrusted to the custody of His maternal uncle Hájí Mírzá Siyyid
‘Alí. A brief lull ensued, enabling the captive Youth to celebrate the Naw-Rúz
of that and the succeeding year in an atmosphere of relative tranquillity in
the company of His mother, His wife, and His uncle. 
With the Báb’s return to Shíráz the initial collision of
irreconcilable forces may be said to have commenced…Mullá Sádiq-i-Khurásání,
impelled by the injunction of the Báb in the Khasá’il-i-Sab‘ih to alter the
sacrosanct formula of the adhán, sounded it in its amended form before a
scandalized congregation in Shíráz, and was instantly arrested, reviled,
stripped of his garments, and scourged with a thousand lashes. The villainous Ḥusayn
Khán, the Nizámu’d-Dawlih, the governor of Fárs, who had read the challenge
thrown out in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, having ordered that Mullá Sádiq together
with Quddús and another believer be summarily and publicly punished, caused
their beards to be burned, their noses pierced, and threaded with halters;
then, having been led through the streets in this disgraceful condition, they
were expelled from the city. 
With the Báb’s return to Shíráz the initial collision of
irreconcilable forces may be said to have commenced. Already the energetic and
audacious Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Basṭámí, one of the Letters of the Living, “the first
to leave the House of God (Shíráz) and the first to suffer for His sake,” who,
in the presence of one of the leading exponents of Shí‘ah Islám, the far-famed
Shaykh Muhammad Hasan, had audaciously asserted that from the pen of his
new-found Master within the space of forty-eight hours, verses had streamed
that equalled in number those of the Qur’án, which it took its Author
twenty-three years to reveal, had been excommunicated, chained, disgraced,
imprisoned, and, in all probability, done to death. 
Already within the space of less than two years it had
kindled the passions of friend and foe alike. The outbreak of the conflagration
did not even await the return to His native city of the One Who had generated
it. The implications of a Revelation, thrust so dramatically upon a race so
degenerate, so inflammable in temper, could indeed have had no other
consequence than to excite within men’s bosoms the fiercest passions of fear,
of hate, of rage and envy. A Faith Whose Founder did not content Himself with
the claim to be the Gate of the Hidden Imám, Who assumed a rank that excelled even
that of the Sáhibu’z-Zamán, Who regarded Himself as the precursor of one
incomparably greater than Himself, Who peremptorily commanded not only the
subjects of the Sháh, but the monarch himself, and even the kings and princes
of the earth, to forsake their all and follow Him, Who claimed to be the
inheritor of the earth and all that is therein—a Faith Whose religious
doctrines, Whose ethical standards, social principles and religious laws
challenged the whole structure of the society in which it was born, soon
ranged, with startling unanimity, the mass of the people behind their priests,
and behind their chief magistrate, with his ministers and his government, and
welded them into an opposition sworn to destroy, root and branch, the movement
initiated by One Whom they regarded as an impious and presumptuous pretender. 
The Báb’s return to His native land (Safar 1261)
(February–March, 1845) was the signal for a commotion that rocked the entire
country. The fire which the declaration of His mission had lit was being fanned
into flame through the dispersal and activities of His appointed disciples. 
The Báb’s visit to Medina marked the conclusion of His
pilgrimage. Regaining Jaddih, He returned to Búshihr, where one of His first
acts was to bid His last farewell to His fellow-traveler and disciple, and to
assure him that he would meet the Beloved of their hearts. He, moreover,
announced to him that he would be crowned with a martyr’s death, and that He
Himself would subsequently suffer a similar fate at the hands of their common
foe. 
The second was the invitation, in the form of an Epistle,
conveyed by Quddús, to the Sherif of Mecca, in which the custodian of the House
of God was called upon to embrace the truth of the new Revelation. Absorbed in
his own pursuits the Sherif however failed to respond. Seven years later, when
in the course of a conversation with a certain Hájí Níyáz-i-Baghdádí, this same
Sherif was informed of the circumstances attending the mission and martyrdom of
the Prophet of Shíráz, he listened attentively to the description of those
events and expressed his indignation at the tragic fate that had overtaken Him. 
His [the Báb's] visit to Hijáz was marked by two episodes of particular
importance. The first was the declaration of His mission and His open challenge
to the haughty Mírzá Muhít-i-Kirmání, one of the most outstanding exponents of
the Shaykhí school, who at times went so far as to assert his independence of
the leadership of that school assumed after the death of Siyyid Kaẓím by Ḥájí
Muhammad Karím Khán, a redoubtable enemy of the Bábí Faith. 
…He [the Báb] donned the pilgrim’s garb, mounted a camel,
and set out for Mecca, arriving on the first of Dhi’l-Ḥajjih (December 12).
Quddús, holding the bridle in his hands, accompanied his Master on foot to that
holy Shrine. 
Landing at Jaddih after a stormy voyage of over a month’s
duration…
It was not until, however, the Báb had received the eagerly
anticipated letter of Mullá Husayn, His trusted and beloved lieutenant,
communicating the joyful tidings of his interview with Bahá’u’lláh, that He
decided to undertake His long and arduous pilgrimage to the Tombs of His
ancestors. In the month of Sha‘bán, of the year 1260 A.H. (September, 1844) He
Who, both on His father’s and mother’s side, was of the seed of the illustrious
Fátimih, and Who was a descendant of the Imám Husayn, the most eminent among
the lawful successors of the Prophet of Islám, proceeded, in fulfillment of
Islamic traditions, to visit the Kaaba. He embarked from Bushihr on the 19th of
Ramadán (October, 1844) on a sailing vessel, accompanied by Quddús whom He was
assiduously preparing for the assumption of his future office. 
Galvanized into action by the mandate conferred upon them,
launched on their perilous and revolutionizing mission, these lesser luminaries
who, together with the Báb, constitute the First Váhid (Unity) of the
Dispensation of the Bayán, scattered far and wide through the provinces of
their native land, where, with matchless heroism, they resisted the savage and
concerted onslaught of the forces arrayed against them, and immortalized their
Faith by their own exploits and those of their co-religionists, raising thereby
a tumult that convulsed their country and sent its echoes reverberating as far
as the capitals of Western Europe. 
To the care of Mullá Husayn He [the Báb] committed a
mission, more specific in character and mightier in import. He affirmed that
His covenant with him had been established, cautioned him to be forbearing with
the divines he would encounter, directed him to proceed to Tihrán, and alluded,
in the most glowing terms, to the as yet unrevealed Mystery enshrined in that
city—a Mystery that would, He affirmed, transcend the light shed by both Hijáz
and Shíráz. 
He [the Báb] enjoined them [Letters of the Living] to
observe the utmost caution and moderation in their behavior, unveiled the
loftiness of their rank, and stressed the magnitude of their responsibilities.
He recalled the words addressed by Jesus to His disciples, and emphasized the
superlative greatness of the New Day. He warned them lest by turning back they
forfeit the Kingdom of God, and assured them that if they did God’s bidding,
God would make them His heirs and spiritual leaders among men. He hinted at the
secret, and announced the approach, of a still mightier Day, and bade them
prepare themselves for its advent. He called to remembrance the triumph of
Abraham over Nimrod, of Moses over Pharaoh, of Jesus over the Jewish people,
and of Muhammad over the tribes of Arabia, and asserted the inevitability and
ultimate ascendancy of His own Revelation. 
…a woman, the only one of her sex, who, unlike her
fellow-disciples, never attained the presence of the Báb, was invested with the
rank of apostleship in the new Dispensation. A poetess, less than thirty years
of age, of distinguished birth, of bewitching charm, of captivating eloquence,
indomitable in spirit, unorthodox in her views, audacious in her acts,
immortalized as Táhirih (the Pure One) by the “Tongue of Glory,” and surnamed
Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Solace of the Eyes) by Siyyid Kázim, her teacher, she had, in
consequence of the appearance of the Báb to her in a dream, received the first
intimation of a Cause which was destined to exalt her to the fairest heights of
fame, and on which she, through her bold heroism, was to shed such imperishable
luster. 
With this historic Declaration the dawn of an Age that
signalizes the consummation of all ages had broken. The first impulse of a
momentous Revelation had been communicated to the one “but for whom,” according
to the testimony of the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “God would not have been established upon
the seat of His mercy, nor ascended the throne of eternal glory.” Not until
forty days had elapsed, however, did the enrollment of the seventeen remaining
Letters of the Living commence. Gradually, spontaneously, some in sleep, others
while awake, some through fasting and prayer, others through dreams and
visions, they discovered the Object of their quest, and were enlisted under the
banner of the new-born Faith. 
A more significant light, however, is shed on this episode,
marking the Declaration of the Mission of the Báb, by the perusal of that
“first, greatest and mightiest” of all books in the Bábí Dispensation, the
celebrated commentary on the Súrih of Joseph, the first chapter of which, we
are assured, proceeded, in its entirety, in the course of that night of nights
from the pen of its divine Revealer. The description of this episode by Mullá
Husayn, as well as the opening pages of that Book attest the magnitude and
force of that weighty Declaration. A claim to be no less than the mouthpiece of
God Himself, promised by the Prophets of bygone ages; the assertion that He
was, at the same time, the Herald of One immeasurably greater than Himself; the
summons which He trumpeted forth to the kings and princes of the earth; the
dire warnings directed to the Chief Magistrate of the realm, Muhammad Sháh; the
counsel imparted to Hájí Mírzá Áqásí to fear God, and the peremptory command to
abdicate his authority as grand vizir of the Sháh and submit to the One Who is
the “Inheritor of the earth and all that is therein”; the challenge issued to
the rulers of the world proclaiming the self-sufficiency of His Cause,
denouncing the vanity of their ephemeral power, and calling upon them to “lay
aside, one and all, their dominion,” and deliver His Message to “lands in both
the East and the West”—these constitute the dominant features of that initial
contact that marked the birth, and fixed the date, of the inception of the most
glorious era in the spiritual life of mankind. 
“This Revelation,” Mullá Ḥusayn has further testified, “so
suddenly and impetuously thrust upon me, came as a thunderbolt which, for a
time, seemed to have benumbed my faculties. I was blinded by its dazzling
splendor and overwhelmed by its crushing force. Excitement, joy, awe, and
wonder stirred the depths of my soul. Predominant among these emotions was a
sense of gladness and strength which seemed to have transfigured me. How feeble
and impotent, how dejected and timid, I had felt previously! Then I could
neither write nor walk, so tremulous were my hands and feet. Now, however, the
knowledge of His Revelation had galvanized my being. I felt possessed of such
courage and power that were the world, all its peoples and its potentates, to
rise against me, I would, alone and undaunted, withstand their onslaught. The
universe seemed but a handful of dust in my grasp. I seemed to be the voice of
Gabriel personified, calling unto all mankind: ‘Awake, for, lo! the morning
Light has broken. Arise, for His Cause is made manifest. The portal of His
grace is open wide; enter therein, O peoples of the world! For He Who is your
promised One is come!’” 
“I sat spellbound by His utterance, oblivious of time and of
those who awaited me,” he himself has testified, after describing the nature of
the questions he had put to his Host and the conclusive replies he had received
from Him, replies which had established beyond the shadow of a doubt the
validity of His claim to be the promised Qá’im. “Suddenly the call of the
Mu’adhdhin, summoning the faithful to their morning prayer, awakened me from the
state of ecstasy into which I seemed to have fallen. All the delights, all the
ineffable glories, which the Almighty has recounted in His Book as the
priceless possessions of the people of Paradise—these I seemed to be
experiencing that night. Methinks I was in a place of which it could be truly
said: ‘Therein no toil shall reach us, and therein no weariness shall touch
us;’ ‘no vain discourse shall they hear therein, nor any falsehood, but only
the cry, “Peace! Peace!”’; ‘their cry therein shall be, “Glory be to Thee, O
God!” and their salutation therein, “Peace!”, and the close of their cry,
“Praise be to God, Lord of all creatures!”’ Sleep had departed from me that
night. I was enthralled by the music of that voice which rose and fell as He
chanted; now swelling forth as He revealed verses of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, again
acquiring ethereal, subtle harmonies as He uttered the prayers He was
revealing. At the end of each invocation, He would repeat this verse: ‘Far from
the glory of thy Lord, the All-Glorious, be that which His creatures affirm of
Him! And peace be upon His Messengers! And praise be to God, the Lord of all
beings!’” 
The opening scene of the initial act of this great drama was
laid in the upper chamber of the modest residence of the son of a mercer of
Shíráz, in an obscure corner of that city. The time was the hour before sunset,
on the 22nd day of May, 1844. The participants were the Báb, a twenty-five year
old siyyid, of pure and holy lineage, and the young Mullá Husayn, the first to
believe in Him. Their meeting immediately before that interview seemed to be
purely fortuitous. The interview itself was protracted till the hour of dawn.
The Host remained closeted alone with His guest, nor was the sleeping city
remotely aware of the import of the conversation they held with each other. No
record has passed to posterity of that unique night save the fragmentary but
highly illuminating account that fell from the lips of Mullá Husayn. 
The heroes whose deeds shine upon the record of this fierce
spiritual contest, involving at once people, clergy, monarch and government,
were the Báb’s chosen disciples, the Letters of the Living, and their
companions, the trail-breakers of the New Day, who to so much intrigue,
ignorance, depravity, cruelty, superstition and cowardice opposed a spirit
exalted, unquenchable and awe-inspiring, a knowledge surprisingly profound, an
eloquence sweeping in its force, a piety unexcelled in fervor, a courage
leonine in its fierceness, a self-abnegation saintly in its purity, a resolve
granite-like in its firmness, a vision stupendous in its range, a veneration
for the Prophet and His Imáms disconcerting to their adversaries, a power of
persuasion alarming to their antagonists, a standard of faith and a code of
conduct that challenged and revolutionized the lives of their countrymen. 
The willing tools who prostituted their high office for the
accomplishment of the enemy’s designs were no less than the sovereigns of the
Qájár dynasty, first, the bigoted, the sickly, the vacillating Muhammad Sháh,
who at the last moment cancelled the Báb’s imminent visit to the capital, and,
second, the youthful and inexperienced Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, who gave his ready assent
to the sentence of his Captive’s death. The arch villains who joined hands with
the prime movers of so wicked a conspiracy were the two grand vizirs, Hájí
Mírzá Áqásí, the idolized tutor of Muhammad Sháh, a vulgar, false-hearted and
fickle-minded schemer, and the arbitrary, bloodthirsty, reckless Amír-Niẓám,
Mírzá Taqí Khán, the first of whom exiled the Báb to the mountain fastnesses of
Ádhirbáyján, and the latter decreed His death in Tabríz. Their accomplice in
these and other heinous crimes was a government bolstered up by a flock of
idle, parasitical princelings and governors, corrupt, incompetent, tenaciously
holding to their ill-gotten privileges, and utterly subservient to a
notoriously degraded clerical order. 
The arch-enemy who repudiated His claim, challenged His
authority, persecuted His Cause, succeeded in almost quenching His light, and
who eventually became disintegrated under the impact of His Revelation was the
Shí‘ah priesthood. Fiercely fanatic, unspeakably corrupt, enjoying unlimited
ascendancy over the masses, jealous of their position, and irreconcilably
opposed to all liberal ideas, the members of this caste had for one thousand
years invoked the name of the Hidden Imám, their breasts had glowed with the
expectation of His advent, their pulpits had rung with the praises of His
world-embracing dominion, their lips were still devoutly and perpetually
murmuring prayers for the hastening of His coming.