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be patient, as We have been patient in that which hath befallen Us at your hands, O concourse of kings!"
Condemning specifically the world's ecclesiastical leaders, He has written: "The source and origin of tyranny have been the divines... God, verily, is clear of them, and We, too, are clear of them." "When We observed carefully," He openly affirms, "We discovered that Our enemies are, for the most part, the divines." "O concourse of divines!" He thus addresses them, "Ye shall not henceforth behold yourselves possessed of any power, inasmuch as We have seized it from you..." "Had ye believed in God when He revealed Himself," He explains, "the people would not have turned aside from Him, nor would the things ye witness today have befallen Us." "They," referring more specifically to Muslim ecclesiastics, He asserts, "rose up against Us with such cruelty as hath sapped the strength of Islám..." "The divines of Persia," He affirms, "committed that which no people amongst the peoples of the world hath committed." And again: "...The divines of Persia ... have perpetrated what the Jews have not perpetrated during the Revelation of Him Who is the Spirit (Jesus)." And finally, these portentous prophecies: "Because of you the people were abased, and the banner of Islám was hauled down, and its mighty throne subverted." "Erelong will all that ye possess perish, and your glory be turned into the most wretched abasement, and ye shall behold the punishment for what ye have wrought..." "Erelong," the Báb Himself, even more openly prophesies, "We will, in very truth, torment such as waged war against Husayn (Imám Husayn) ... with the most afflictive torment..." "Erelong will God wreak His vengeance upon them, at the time of Our return, and He hath, in very truth, prepared for them, in the world to come, a severe torment."
Nor should, in a review of this nature, reference be omitted to those princes, ministers and ecclesiastics who have individually been responsible for the afflictive trials which Bahá'u'lláh and His followers have suffered. Fu'ád Páshá, the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, denounced by Him as the "instigator" of His banishment to the Most Great Prison, who had so assiduously striven with his colleague `Alí Páshá, to excite the fears and suspicions of a despot already predisposed against the Faith and its Leader, was, about a year after he had succeeded in executing his design, struck down, while on a trip to Paris, by the avenging rod of God, and died at Nice (1869). `Alí Páshá, the Sadr-i-A'zam (Prime Minister), denounced in such forceful language in the Lawh-i-Ra'ís, whose downfall the Lawh-i-Fu'ád
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had unmistakably predicted, was, a few years after Bahá'u'lláh's banishment to Akká, dismissed from office, was shorn of all power, and sank into complete oblivion. The tyrannical Prince Mas'úd Mírzá, the Zillu's-Sultan, Násiri'd-Dín Sháh's eldest son and ruler over more than two-fifths of his kingdom, stigmatized by Bahá'u'lláh as "the Infernal Tree," fell into disgrace, was deprived of all his governorships, except that of Isfahán, and lost all chances of future eminence or promotion. The rapacious Prince Jalálu'd-Dawlih, branded by the Supreme Pen as "the tyrant of Yazd," was, about a year after the iniquities he had perpetrated, deprived of his post, recalled to Tihrán, and forced to return a part of the property he had stolen from his victims.
The scheming, the ambitious and profligate Mírzá Buzurg Khán, the Persian Consul General in Baghdád, was eventually dismissed from office, "overwhelmed with disaster, filled with remorse and plunged into confusion." The notorious Mujtahid Siyyid Sádiq-i-Tabátabá'í, denounced by Bahá'u'lláh as "the Liar of Tihrán," the author of the monstrous decree condemning every male member of the Bahá'í community in Persia, young or old, high or low, to be put to death, and all its women to be deported, was suddenly taken ill, fell a prey to a disease that ravaged his heart, his brain and his limbs, and precipitated eventually his death. The high-handed Subhí Páshá, who had peremptorily summoned Bahá'u'lláh to the government house in Akká, lost the position he occupied, and was recalled under circumstances highly detrimental to his reputation. Nor were the other governors of the city, who had dealt unjustly with the exalted Prisoner in their charge and His fellow-exiles, spared a like fate. "Every páshá," testifies Nabíl in his narrative, "whose conduct in Akká was commendable enjoyed a long term of office, and was bountifully favored by God, whereas every hostile Mutisárrif (governor) was speedily deposed by the Hand of Divine power, even as `Abdu'r-Rahmán Páshá and Muhammad-Yúsúf Páshá who, on the morrow of the very night they had resolved to lay hands on the loved ones of Bahá'u'lláh, were telegraphically advised of their dismissal. Such was their fate that they were never again given a position."
Shaykh Muhammad-Báqir, surnamed the "Wolf," who, in the strongly condemnatory Lawh-i-Burhán addressed to him by Bahá'u'lláh, had been compared to "the last trace of sunlight upon the mountain-top," witnessed the steady decline of his prestige, and died in a miserable state of acute remorse. His accomplice, Mír Muhammad-Husayn, surnamed the "She-Serpent," whom Bahá'u'lláh described
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as one "infinitely more wicked than the oppressor of Kárbilá," was, about that same time, expelled from Isfahán, wandered from village to village, contracted a disease that engendered so foul an odor that even his wife and daughter could not bear to approach him, and died in such ill-favor with the local authorities that no one dared to attend his funeral, his corpse being ignominiously interred by a few porters.
Mention should, moreover, be made of the devastating famine which, about a year after the illustrious Badí had been tortured to death, ravaged Persia and reduced the population to such extremities that even the rich went hungry, and hundreds of mothers ghoulishly devoured their own children.
Nor can this subject be dismissed without special reference being made to the Arch-Breaker of the Covenant of the Báb, Mírzá Yahyá, who lived long enough to witness, while eking out a miserable existence in Cyprus, termed by the Turks "the Island of Satan," every hope he had so maliciously conceived reduced to naught. A pensioner first of the Turkish and later of the British Government, he was subjected to the further humiliation of having his application for British citizenship refused. Eleven of the eighteen "Witnesses" he had appointed forsook him and turned in repentance to Bahá'u'lláh. He himself became involved in a scandal which besmirched his reputation and that of his eldest son, deprived that son and his descendants of the successorship with which he had previously invested him, and appointed, in his stead, the perfidious Mírzá Hádíy-i-Dawlat-Ábádí, a notorious Azalí, who, on the occasion of the martyrdom of the aforementioned Mírzá Ashraf, was seized with such fear that during four consecutive days he proclaimed from the pulpit-top, and in a most vituperative language, his complete repudiation of the Bábí Faith, as well as of Mírzá Yahyá, his benefactor, who had reposed in him such implicit confidence. It was this same eldest son who, through the workings of a strange destiny, sought years after, together with his nephew and niece, the presence of `Abdu'l-Bahá, the appointed Successor of Bahá'u'lláh and Center of His Covenant, expressed repentance, prayed for forgiveness, was graciously accepted by Him, and remained, till the hour of his death, a loyal follower of the Faith which his father had so foolishly, so shamelessly and so pitifully striven to extinguish.
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