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The audacity of Mulla Husayn who, at the command of the Bab, had attired his head with the green turban worn and sent to him by his Master, who had hoisted the Black Standard, the unfurling of which would, according to the Prophet Muhammad, herald the advent of the vicegerent of God on earth, and who, mounted on his steed, was marching at the head of two hundred and two of his fellow- disciples to meet and lend his assistance to Quddus in the Jaziriy- i- Khadra (Verdant Isle)-- his audacity was the signal for a clash the reverberations of which were to resound throughout the entire country. The contest lasted no less than eleven months. Its theatre was for the most part the forest of Mazindaran. Its heroes were the flower of the Bab's disciples. Its martyrs comprised no less than half of the Letters of the Living, not excluding Quddus and Mulla Husayn, respectively the last and the first of these Letters. The directive force which however unobtrusively sustained it was none other than that which flowed from the mind of Baha'u'llah. It was caused by the unconcealed determination of the dawn- breakers of a new Age to proclaim, fearlessly and befittingly, its advent, and by a no less unyielding resolve, should persuasion prove a failure, to resist and defend themselves against the onslaughts of malicious and unreasoning assailants. It demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt what the indomitable spirit of a band of three hundred and thirteen untrained, unequipped yet God- intoxicated students, mostly sedentary recluses of the college and cloister, could achieve when pitted in self- defense against a trained army, well equipped, supported by the masses of the people, blessed by the clergy, headed by a prince of the royal blood, backed by the resources of the state, acting with the enthusiastic approval of its sovereign, and animated by the unfailing counsels of a resolute and all- powerful minister. Its outcome was a heinous betrayal ending in an orgy of slaughter, staining with everlasting infamy its perpetrators, investing its victims with a halo of imperishable glory, and generating the very seeds which, in a later age, were to blossom into world- wide administrative institutions, and which must, in the fullness of time, yield their golden fruit in the shape of a world- redeeming, earth- encircling Order.
(38:1)
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