CHAPTER XVII This second major crisis of His ministry, external in nature and hardly less severe than the one precipitated by the rebellion of Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali, gravely imperiled His life, deprived Him, for a number of years, of the relative freedom He had enjoyed, plunged into anguish His family and the followers of the Faith in East and West, and exposed as never before, the degradation and infamy of His relentless adversaries. It originated two years after the departure of the first American pilgrims from the Holy Land. It persisted, with varying degrees of intensity, during more than seven years, and was directly attributable to the incessant intrigues and monstrous misrepresentations of the Arch- Breaker of Baha'u'llah's Covenant and his supporters. (263:2) Embittered by his abject failure to create a schism on which he had fondly pinned his hopes; stung by the conspicuous success which the standard- bearers of the Covenant had, despite his machinations, achieved in the North American continent; encouraged by the existence of a regime that throve in an atmosphere of intrigue and suspicion, and which was presided over by a cunning and cruel potentate; determined to exploit to the full the opportunities for mischief afforded him by the arrival of Western pilgrims at the prison- fortress of Akka, as well as by the commencement of the construction of the Bab's sepulcher on Mt. Carmel, Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali, seconded by his brother, Mirza Badi'u'llah, and aided by his brother- in- law, Mirza Majdi'd- Din, succeeded through strenuous and persistent endeavors in exciting the suspicion of the Turkish government and its officials, and in inducing them to reimpose on Abdu'l- Baha the confinement from which, in the days of Baha'u'llah, He had so grievously suffered.
(263:3)
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