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The nucleus of this community had been formed by the Bab, soon after the night of the Declaration of His Mission to Mulla Husayn in Shiraz. A clamor in which the Shah, his government, his people and the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy of his country unanimously joined had greeted its birth. Captivity, swift and cruel, in the mountains of Adhirbayjan, had been the lot of its youthful Founder, almost immediately after His return from His pilgrimage to Mecca. Amidst the solitude of Mah- Ku and Chihriq, He had instituted His Covenant, formulated His laws, and transmitted to posterity the overwhelming majority of His writings. A conference of His disciples, headed by Baha'u'llah, had, in the hamlet of Badasht, abrogated in dramatic circumstances the laws of the Islamic, and ushered in the new, Dispensation. In Tabriz He had, in the presence of the Heir to the Throne and the leading ecclesiastical dignitaries of Adhirbayjan, publicly and unreservedly voiced His claim to be none other than the promised, the long- awaited Qa'im. Tempests of devastating violence in Mazindaran, Nayriz, Zanjan and Tihran had decimated the ranks of His followers and robbed Him of the noblest and most valuable of His supporters. He Himself had to witness the virtual annihilation of His Faith and the loss of most of the Letters of the Living, and, after experiencing, in His own person, a series of bitter humiliations, He had been executed by a firing squad in the barrack- square of Tabriz. A blood bath of unusual ferocity had engulfed the greatest heroine of His Faith, had further denuded it of its adherents, had extinguished the life of His trusted amanuensis and repository of His last wishes, and swept Baha'u'llah into the depths of the foulest dungeon of Tihran.
(403:1)
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