CHAPTER XVIII
Entombment of the Bab's Remains on Mt. Carmel
Abdu'l- Baha's unexpected and dramatic release from His forty- year confinement dealt a blow to the ambitions cherished by the Covenant- breakers as devastating as that which, a decade before, had shattered their hopes of undermining His authority and of ousting Him from His God- given position. Now, on the very morrow of His triumphant liberation a third blow befell them as stunning as those which preceded it and hardly less spectacular than they. Within a few months of the historic decree which set Him free, in the very year that witnessed the downfall of Sultan Abdu'l- Hamid, that same power from on high which had enabled Abdu'l- Baha to preserve inviolate the rights divinely conferred on Him, to establish His Father's Faith in the North American continent, and to triumph over His royal oppressor, enabled Him to achieve one of the most signal acts of His ministry: the removal of the Bab's remains from their place of concealment in Tihran to Mt. Carmel. He Himself testified, on more than one occasion, that the safe transfer of these remains, the construction of a befitting mausoleum to receive them, and their final interment with His own hands in their permanent resting- place constituted one of the three principal objectives which, ever since the inception of His mission, He had conceived it His paramount duty to achieve. This act indeed deserves to rank as one of the outstanding events in the first Baha'i century. (273:1)

As observed in a previous chapter the mangled bodies of the Bab and His fellow- martyr, Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali, were removed, in the middle of the second night following their execution, through the pious intervention of Haji Sulayman Khan, from the edge of the moat where they had been cast to a silk factory owned by one of the believers of Milan, and were laid the next day in a wooden casket, and thence carried to a place of safety. Subsequently, according to Baha'u'llah's instructions, they were transported to Tihran and placed in the shrine of Imam- Zadih Hasan. They were later removed to the residence of Haji Sulayman Khan himself in the Sar- Chashmih quarter of the city, and from his house were taken to the shrine of Imam- Zadih Ma'sum, where they remained concealed until the year 1284 A.H. (1867- 1868), when a Tablet, revealed by Baha'u'llah in Adrianople, directed Mulla Ali- Akbar- i- Shahmirzadi and Jamal- i- Burujirdi to transfer them without delay to some other spot, an instruction which, in view of the subsequent reconstruction of that shrine, proved to have been providential. (273:2)

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