proclamation produced an immediate far-reaching effect in Persia, attracting many thousands of faithful souls but also creating frantic opposition among the leaders of Islám. Their hatred, in alliance with the power of the government in Ṭihrán, brought about the martyrdom of this radiant Spirit at Tabríz, July 9, 1850.
Far from extinguishing the light of this new Faith, the cruel execution of the Báb resulted in a great increase in the number and loyalty of His adherents. As the ecclesiastics continued to inflame the civil authorities and the ignorant populace, scenes of indescribable barbarism took place in the public streets and squares of cities and towns throughout the land. Thousands of helpless, inoffensive men, women and children perished under the sword of the executioner, or the knives, stones and clubs of the maddened mob. Some of these Bahá’ís were blown from the mouth of cannon; others were scourged through crowded streets and, as in the case of the glorious martyr Sulaymán Khán, lighted candles placed in their bleeding wounds. Thus was paid the price of a new spirit of hope and love brought to earth in this age!
No attention need any longer be paid to that apparent confusion in the internal affairs of the Cause of God following the Báb’s martyrdom. His followers needed and sought a leader able to unite their moral forces, instruct their minds and point out their spiritual duties under the difficult conditions obtaining throughout the country. Several claimants arose, but He who alone fulfilled the conditions and met the opportunities was Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí, eldest son of a family of exalted rank in the realm, known to history as Bahá’u’lláh.
Bahá’u’lláh offered Himself as the target for all the blows aimed at the helpless Bábís; assumed all responsibility as their leader in the eyes of the government, was imprisoned under heavy chains for their sake in Ṭihrán, bastinadoed, stripped of property and rights, banished to Baghdád with His family, then successively exiled to Constantinople, to Adrianople and finally condemned to life-imprisonment in the barracks of pestilential ‘Akká, the Turkish penal colony, situated at the foot of Mount Carmel in Palestine.
The rulers of Persia and of Turkey were associated together in this sentence of exile and imprisonment, acting to put down a movement whose inner power they recognized but whose meaning they could not understand. But the spiritual mission of Bahá’u’lláh could not be eclipsed by any material opposition. Serenely, under the shadow of death, He completed the Book of His religion, and while suffering the treatment of slaves and criminals, predicted the overthrow of both those dynasties conspiring against His Cause. And, as your Majesty so well knows, that which He foretold has come to pass. Students of the Christian and Jewish Scriptures who have become cognizant of the facts concerning the exile and imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh recognize that these events fulfill their most glorious prophecy, even as the martyrdom of the Báb fulfilled the prophecy of the Qur’án.
Who, even now, can read unmoved the noble words uttered by Bahá’u’lláh in the famous letters sent forth from His prison to the Sulṭán and the Sháh?—
[see appendix two at the conclusion of this letter]
As history has recorded, these letters were written more than fifty years ago.
Today the Epistles and Books of Bahá’u’lláh are held in grateful reverence by uncounted thousands of devoted followers throughout the world. In them they have found a source of unity and fellowship overcoming every difference of creed, language, custom and tradition. The Books of Bahá’u’lláh create in hearts the reality of human oneness and the spirit of peace, burning away the veils of indifference, misunderstanding, antagonism and fear. They uphold the doctrine
