CHAPTER IV
The Execution of the Bab
The waves of dire tribulation that violently battered at the Faith, and eventually engulfed, in rapid succession, the ablest, the dearest and most trusted disciples of the Bab, plunged Him, as already observed, into unutterable sorrow. For no less than six months the Prisoner of Chihriq, His chronicler has recorded, was unable to either write or dictate. Crushed with grief by the evil tidings that came so fast upon Him, of the endless trials that beset His ablest lieutenants, by the agonies suffered by the besieged and the shameless betrayal of the survivors, by the woeful afflictions endured by the captives and the abominable butchery of men, women and children, as well as the foul indignities heaped on their corpses, He, for nine days, His amanuensis has affirmed, refused to meet any of His friends, and was reluctant to touch the meat and drink that was offered Him. Tears rained continually from His eyes, and profuse expressions of anguish poured forth from His wounded heart, as He languished, for no less than five months, solitary and disconsolate, in His prison. (49:1)

The pillars of His infant Faith had, for the most part, been hurled down at the first onset of the hurricane that had been loosed upon it. Quddus, immortalized by Him as Ismu'llahi'l- Akhir (the Last Name of God); on whom Baha'u'llah's Tablet of Kullu't- Ta'am later conferred the sublime appellation of Nuqtiy- i- Ukhra (the Last Point); whom He elevated, in another Tablet, to a rank second to none except that of the Herald of His Revelation; whom He identifies, in still another Tablet, with one of the "Messengers charged with imposture" mentioned in the Qur'an; whom the Persian Bayan extolled as that fellow- pilgrim round whom mirrors to the number of eight Vahids revolve; on whose "detachment and the sincerity of whose devotion to God's will God prideth Himself amidst the Concourse on high;" whom Abdu'l- Baha designated as the "Moon of Guidance;" and whose appearance the Revelation of St. John the Divine anticipated as one of the two "Witnesses" into whom, ere the "second woe is past," the "spirit of life from God" must enter-- such a man had, in the full bloom of his youth, suffered, in the Sabzih- Maydan of Barfurush, a death which even Jesus Christ, as attested by Baha'u'llah, had not faced in the hour of His greatest agony. Mulla Husayn, the first Letter of the Living, surnamed the Babu'l- Bab (the Gate of the Gate); designated as the "Primal Mirror;" on whom eulogies, prayers and visiting Tablets of a number equivalent to thrice the volume of the Qur'an had been lavished by the pen of the Bab; referred to in these eulogies as "beloved of My Heart;" the dust of whose grave, that same Pen had declared, was so potent as to cheer the sorrowful and heal the sick; whom "the creatures, raised in the beginning and in the end" of the Babi Dispensation, envy, and will continue to envy till the "Day of Judgment;" whom the Kitab- i- Iqan acclaimed as the one but for whom "God would not have been established upon the seat of His mercy, nor ascended the throne of eternal glory;" to whom Siyyid Kazim had paid such tribute that his disciples suspected that the recipient of such praise might well be the promised One Himself-- such a one had likewise, in the prime of his manhood, died a martyr's death at Tabarsi. Vahid, pronounced in the Kitab- i- Iqan to be the "unique and peerless figure of his age," a man of immense erudition and the most preeminent figure to enlist under the banner of the new Faith, to whose "talents and saintliness," to whose "high attainments in the realm of science and philosophy" the Bab had testified in His Dala'il- i- Sab'ih (Seven Proofs), had already, under similar circumstances, been swept into the maelstrom of another upheaval, and was soon to quaff in his turn the cup drained by the heroic martyrs of Mazindaran. Hujjat, another champion of conspicuous audacity, of unsubduable will, of remarkable originality and vehement zeal, was being, swiftly and inevitably, drawn into the fiery furnace whose flames had already enveloped Zanjan and its environs. The Bab's maternal uncle, the only father He had known since His childhood, His shield and support and the trusted guardian of both His mother and His wife, had, moreover, been sundered from Him by the axe of the executioner in Tihran. No less than half of His chosen disciples, the Letters of the Living, had already preceded Him in the field of martyrdom. Tahirih, though still alive, was courageously pursuing a course that was to lead her inevitably to her doom. (49:2)

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