651
EPILOGUE
EVER had the
fortunes of the
Faith proclaimed by the Bab sunk to a lower ebb than when Baha'u'llah
was banished from His native land to Iraq.
The Cause for which the Bab had given His life,
for which Baha'u'llah had toiled and suffered, seemed to be
on the very verge of extinction. Its force appeared to have
been spent, its resistance irretrievably broken. Discouragements
and disasters, each more devastating in its effect than
the preceding one, had succeeded one another with bewildering
rapidity, sapping its vitality and dimming the hope of
its stoutest supporters. Indeed, to a superficial reader of the
pages of Nabil's narrative, the whole story from its very beginning
appears to be a mere recital of reverses and massacres,
of humiliations and disappointments, each more severe than
the previous one, culminating at last in the banishment of
Baha'u'llah from His own country. To the sceptical reader,
unwilling to recognise the celestial potency with which that
Faith was endowed, the entire conception that had evolved
in the mind of its Author seems to have been foredoomed to
failure. The work of the Bab, so gloriously conceived, so
heroically undertaken, would appear to have ended in a
colossal disaster. To such a reader, the life of the ill-fated
Youth of Shiraz would seem, judging from the cruel blows
it sustained, to be one of the saddest and most fruitless that
had ever been the lot of mortal men. That short and heroic
career, which, swift as a meteor, flashed across the firmament
of Persia, and seemed for a time to have brought the longed-for
light of eternal salvation into the gloom that encircled
the country, was plunged at last into an abyss of darkness and
despair.
Every step He took, every endeavour He made, had but
served to intensify the sorrows and disappointments that
weighed upon His soul. The plan He had, at the very outset
of His career, conceived of inaugurating His Mission with a
public proclamation in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina
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failed to materialise as He had hoped. The Sherif of Mecca,
to whom Quddus was bidden deliver His Message, accorded
him a reception that betrayed by its icy indifference the
contemptuous disregard in which the Cause of a Youth of
Shiraz was held by the ruler of Hijaz and custodian of its
Ka'bih. The project He had in mind of returning triumphantly
from His pilgrimage to the cities of Karbila and
Najaf, where He hoped to establish His Cause, in the very
heart of that stronghold of shi'ah orthodoxy, was likewise
hopelessly shattered. The programme which He had thought
out, the essentials of which He had already communicated
to the chosen nineteen of His disciples, remained for the
most part unfulfilled. The moderation He had exhorted them
to observe was forgotten in the first flush of enthusiasm that
seized the early missionaries of His Faith, which behaviour
was in no small measure responsible for the failure of the
hopes He had so fondly cherished. The Mu'tamid, that wise
and sagacious ruler, who had so ably warded off the danger
with which that precious Life was threatened, and who had
proved his capacity to render Him services of such distinction
as few of His more modest companions could have hoped
to offer, was suddenly taken from Him, leaving Him at the
mercy of the perfidious Gurgin Khan, the most detestable
and unscrupulous of all His enemies. The Bab's only chance
of meeting Muhammad Shah--a meeting which He Himself
had requested and on which He had pinned His fondest hopes
--was dashed to the ground by the intervention of the cowardly
and capricious Haji Mirza Aqasi, who trembled at the
thought lest His contact with the sovereign, already unduly
inclined to befriend that Cause, should prove fatal to his own
interests. The attempts, inspired and initiated by the Bab,
which two of His foremost disciples, Mulla Aliy-i-Bastami
and Shaykh Sa'id-i-Hindi, had made to introduce the Faith,
the one in Turkish territory and the other in India, ended in
dismal failure. The first enterprise collapsed at its very outset
by reason of the cruel martyrdom of its promoter, whilst
the latter was productive of what might seem a negligible
result, its only fruit being the conversion of a certain siyyid
whose chequered career of service was brought to a sudden
end in Luristan by the action of the treacherous Ildirim
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Mirza. The captivity to which the Bab Himself, during the
greater part of the years of His ministry, was condemned;
His isolation in the mountain fastnesses of Adhirbayjan
from the body of His followers, who were being sorely tried
by a rapacious enemy; above all, the tragedy of His own
martyrdom, so intense, so terribly humiliating, would appear
to have marked the lowest depths of ignominy which so noble
a Cause, from the very hour of its birth, was doomed to
suffer. His death, the culmination of a swift and stormy
career, would seem to have set the seal of failure upon a task
which, however heroic in the efforts it inspired, was impossible
of achievement.
Much as He Himself had suffered, the agony He was
made to endure was but a drop compared to the calamities
which were to rain down upon the multitude of His avowed
followers. The cup of sorrow that had touched His lips had
yet to be drained to its very dregs by those who still remained
after Him. The catastrophe of Shaykh Tabarsi, which
robbed Him of His ablest lieutenants, Quddus and Mulla
Husayn, and which engulfed no less than three hundred and
thirteen of His staunch companions, came as the cruelest
blow that had yet fallen upon Him, and enveloped with a
shroud of darkness the closing days of His fast-ebbing life.
The struggle of Nayriz, with its attendant horrors and
cruelties, involving as it did the loss of Vahid, the most
learned, the most influential, and the most accomplished
among the followers of the Bab, was an added blow to the
resources and numbers of those who continued to hold aloft
the torch in their hands. The siege of Zanjan, following closely
in the wake of the disaster that had befallen the Faith in
Nayriz, and marked by the butcheries with which the name
of that province will ever remain associated, depleted still
further the ranks of the upholders of the Faith, and deprived
them of the sustaining strength with which the presence
of Hujjat inspired them. With him was gone the last outstanding
figure among the representative leaders of the
Faith who towered, by virtue of their ecclesiastical authority,
their learning, their fearlessness and force of character, above
the rank and file of their fellow-disciples. The flower of the
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Bab's followers had been mown down in a ruthless carnage,
leaving behind it a vast company of enslaved women and
children, who groaned beneath the yoke of an unrelenting
foe. Their leaders, who, alike by their knowledge and example,
had fed and sustained the flame that glowed in those
valiant hearts, had also perished, their work seemingly
abandoned amidst the confusion that afflicted a persecuted
community.
Of all those who had shown themselves capable of carrying
on the work which the Bab had handed down to His
followers, Baha'u'llah alone remained.(1) All the rest had
fallen by the sword of the enemy. Mirza Yahya, the nominal
leader of the band that survived the Bab, had ingloriously
sought refuge in the mountains of Mazindaran from the
perils of the turmoil that had seized the capital. In the
guise of a dervish, kashkul(2) in hand, he had deserted his companions and fled the scene of danger to the forests
of Gilan. Siyyid Husayn, the Bab's amanuensis, and Mirza
Ahmad, his collaborator, who were both well-versed in the
teachings and implications of the newly revealed Bayan and,
by virtue of their intimacy with their Master and their
familiarity with the precepts of His Faith, were in a position
to enlighten the understanding, and consolidate the foundations
of the faith, of their companions, lay in chains in the
Siyah-Chal of Tihran, cut off entirely from the body of the
believers who so greatly needed their counsel, both doomed
to suffer, at an early date, a cruel martyrdom. Even His
own maternal uncle, who, ever since His childhood, had surrounded
Him with a paternal solicitude that no father could
have surpassed, who had rendered Him signal services in the
early days of His sufferings in Shiraz, and who, had he been
allowed to survive Him by only a few years, could have rendered
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inestimable services to His Cause, languished in prison,
forlorn and hopeless of ever continuing the work that was so
close to his heart. Tahirih, that flaming emblem of His
Cause who, alike by her indomitable courage, her impetuous
character, her dauntless faith, her fiery ardour and vast
knowledge, seemed for a time able to win the whole womanhood
of Persia to the Cause of her Beloved, fell, alas, at the
very hour when victory seemed near at hand, a victim to
the wrath of a calumnious enemy. The influence of her work,
the course of which was so prematurely arrested, seemed to
those who stood near as they lowered her into the pit that
served as her grave, to have been completely extinguished.
The Bab's remaining Letters of the Living either had perished
by the sword or were fettered in prison, or again were leading
an obscure life in some remote corner of the realm. The body
of the Bab's voluminous writings suffered, for the most part,
a fate no less humiliating than that which had befallen His
disciples. Many of His copious works were utterly obliterated,
others were torn and reduced to ashes, a few were
corrupted, much was seized by the enemy, and the rest lay
a mass of disorganised and undeciphered manuscripts, precariously
hidden and widely scattered among the survivors
of His companions.
The Faith the Bab had proclaimed, and for which He had
given His all, had indeed reached its lowest ebb. The fires
kindled against it had almost consumed the fabric upon
which its continued existence depended. The wings of death
seemed to be hovering above it. Extermination, complete
and irremediable, appeared to be threatening its very life.
Amidst the shadows that were fast gathering about it, the
figure of Baha'u'llah alone shone as the potential Deliverer
of a Cause that was fast speeding to its end. The marks of
clear vision, of courage and sagacity which He had shown on
more than one occasion ever since He had risen to champion
the Cause of the Bab, appeared to qualify Him, should His
life and continued existence in Persia be ensured, to revive
the fortunes of an expiring Faith. But this was not to be.
A catastrophe, unexampled in the whole history of that
Faith, precipitated a persecution fiercer than any that had
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hitherto taken place, and this time drew into its vortex the
person of Baha'u'llah Himself. The slender hopes which the
remnants of the believers still entertained were wrecked
amidst the confusion that ensued. For Baha'u'llah, their
only hope and the sole object of their confidence, was so
struck down by the severity of that storm that no recovery
could any longer be thought possible. After He had been
despoiled of all His possessions in Nur and Tihran, denounced
as the prime mover of a dastardly attempt upon the life of
His sovereign, abandoned by His kindred and despised by
His former friends and admirers, plunged into a dark and
pestilential dungeon, and at last, with the members of His
family, driven into hopeless exile beyond the confines of His
native land, all the hopes that had centred round Him as
the possible Redeemer of an afflicted Faith seemed for a
moment to have completely vanished.
No wonder Nasiri'd-Din Shah, under whose eyes and by
whose impulse such blows were being dealt, was already
priding himself on being the wrecker of a Cause against
which he had so consistently battled, and which he had at
last, to outward seeming, been able to crush. No wonder
he imagined, as he sat musing over the successive stages of
this vast and bloody enterprise, that by the act of banishment
which his hands had signed, he was sounding the death-knell
of that hateful heresy which had struck such terror to the
hearts of his people. To Nasiri'd-Din Shah it appeared, at
that supreme moment, that the spell of that terror was
broken, that the tide that had swept over his country was at
last turning and bringing back to his fellow-countrymen the
peace for which they cried. Now that the Bab was no more;
now that the mighty pillars that sustained His Cause had
been crushed into dust; now that the mass of its devotees,
throughout the length and breadth of his dominion, were
cowed and exhausted; now that Baha'u'llah Himself, the
one remaining hope of a leaderless community, had been
driven into exile and had, of His own accord, sought refuge
in the neighbourhood of the stronghold of shi'ah fanaticism,
the spectre that had haunted him ever since he had ascended
the throne had vanished for ever. Never again, he imagined,
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would he hear of that detestable Movement which, if he were
to believe his best counsellors, was swiftly receding into the
shadows of impotence and oblivion.(1)
To even the followers of the Faith who were left to survive
the abominations heaped upon their Cause--to even that
small caravan, with perhaps a few exceptions, wending its
way in the depth of winter through the snows of the mountains
bordering on Iraq,(2) the Cause of the Bab, one can well
imagine, might for a moment have seemed to have failed in
accomplishing its purpose. The forces of darkness that had
encompassed it on every side would seem to have at last
triumphed over, and put out, the light which that young
Prince of Glory had kindled in His land.
In the eyes of Nasiri'd-Din Shah, at all events, the power
that had seemed for a time to have swept within its orbit
the entire forces of his realm had ceased to count. Ill-starred
from its very birth, it had eventually been forced to surrender
to the violence of the blows which his sword had dealt. The
Faith had suffered a disruption certainly well deserved. Delivered
from its curse, which for many nights had robbed him
of his sleep, he could now, with undivided attention, set about
the task of rescuing his land from the devastating effects of
that vast delusion. Henceforth his real mission, as he conceived
it, was to enable both Church and State to consolidate
their foundations and to reinforce their ranks against the
intrusion of similar heresies, which might, in a future day,
poison the life of his countrymen.
How vain were his imaginings, how vast his own delusion!
The Cause he had fondly imagined to have been crushed
was still living, destined to emerge from the midst of that great
convulsion stronger, purer, and nobler than ever. The Cause
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which, to the mind of that foolish monarch, seemed to be
speeding towards destruction was but passing through the
fiery tests of a phase of transition that was to carry it a step
further on the path of its high destiny. A new chapter in
its history was being unfolded, more glorious than any that
had marked its birth or its rise. The repression which that
monarch had believed to have succeeded in sealing its doom
was but the initial stage in an evolution destined to blossom,
in the fulness of time, into a Revelation mightier than any
that the Bab Himself had proclaimed. The seed His hand
had sown, though subjected, for a time, to the fury of a storm
of unexampled violence and though later transplanted to a
foreign soil, was to continue to develop and grow, in due time,
into a Tree destined to spread its shelter over all the kindreds
and peoples of the earth. Though the Bab's disciples might
be tortured and slain, and His companions humiliated and
crushed; though His followers might dwindle in number;
though the voice of the Faith itself might be silenced by the
arm of violence; though despair might settle upon its fortunes;
though its ablest defenders might apostatise from their faith,
yet the promise embedded within the shell of His word no
hand could succeed in ravishing, and no power stand in the
way of its germination and growth.
Indeed, the first glimmerings of the dawning Revelation,
of which the Bab had declared Himself to be the Herald, and
to the approach and certainty of which He had so repeatedly
alluded,(1) could already be discerned amidst the gloom that
encircled Baha'u'llah in the Siyah-Chal of Tihran.(2) The
659
force that, growing out of the momentous Revelation released
by the Bab, was at a later time to unfold itself in all
its glory and encompass the globe, was already pulsating in
the veins of Baha'u'llah as He lay exposed in His cell to the
sword of His executioner. The still voice which, in the hour
of bitter agony, announced to the Prisoner the Revelation of
which He was chosen to be the Mouthpiece, could not, of a
certainty, have reached the ears of the monarch who was
already preparing the celebration of the extinction of the
Faith his Captive had championed. That imprisonment which
he who had caused it, believed to have branded with infamy
the fair name of Baha'u'llah, and which he regarded as a
prelude to a still more humiliating banishment to Iraq, was,
indeed, the very scene that witnessed the first stirrings of
that Movement of which Baha'u'llah was to be the Author,
a Movement which was first to be made known in the city
of Baghdad and at a later time to be proclaimed from the
prison-city of Akka to the Shah, no less than to the other
rulers and crowned heads of the world.
Little did Nasiri'd-Din Shah imagine that by the very
act of pronouncing the sentence of banishment against Baha'u'llah
he was helping in the unfolding of God's irrepressible
Purpose and that he himself was but an instrument in the
execution of that Design. Little did he imagine that as his
reign was drawing to a close it would witness a revival of
the very forces he had sought so strenuously to exterminate--a revival that would manifest a vitality such as he, in the
hour of darkest despair, had never believed that Faith to
possess. Not only within the confines of his own realm,(1)
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not only throughout the adjacent territories of Iraq and
Russia, but as far as India in the East,(1) as far as Egypt and
European Turkey in the West, a recrudescence of the Faith
such as he had never expected, awakened him from the
dreams in which he had so fondly indulged. The Cause of
the Bab seemed as if risen from the dead. It appeared under
a form infinitely more formidable than any under which it
had appeared in the past. The fresh impetus which, despite
his calculations, the personality of Baha'u'llah, and, above
all, the inherent strength of the Revelation which He personified,
had lent to the Cause of the Bab, was one Nasiri'd Din
Shah had never imagined. The rapidity with which a
661
slumbering Faith had been revived and consolidated within
his own territory; its spreading out to States beyond its confines;
the stupendous claims advanced by Baha'u'llah almost
in the midst of the stronghold where He had chosen to dwell;
the public declaration of that claim in European Turkey,
and its proclamation in challenging Epistles to the crowned
heads of the earth, one of which the Shah himself was destined
to receive; the enthusiasm that announcement evoked in the
662
hearts of countless followers; the transference to the Holy Land
of the centre of His Cause; the gradual relaxation of the
severity of His confinement which marked the closing days
of His life; the lifting of the ban that had been imposed by
the Sultan of Turkey on His intercourse with visitors and pil-
grims who flocked from various parts of the East to His
prison; the awakening of the spirit of enquiry among the
thinkers of the West; the utter disruption of the forces that
had attempted to effect a schism in the ranks of His followers,
and the fate that had befallen its chief instigator; above all,
663
the sublimity of those teachings with which His published
works abounded and which were being read, disseminated,
and taught by an ever-increasing number of adherents in
Russian Turkistan, in Iraq, in India, in Syria, and as far off
as European Turkey--these were among the chief factors
that convincingly revealed to the eyes of the Shah the invincible
character of a Faith he believed himself to have
bridled and destroyed. The futility of his efforts, however
much he might attempt to conceal his feelings, was only too
apparent. The Cause of the Bab, the birth and tribulations
of which he had himself witnessed, and the triumphant progress
of which he was now beholding, had risen phoenix-like
from its ashes and was pressing forward along the road leading
to undreamt-of achievements.(1)
664
Little did Nabil himself imagine that within twoscore
years of the writing of his narrative the Revelation of Baha'u'llah,
the flower and fruit of all the Dispensations of the past,
would have been capable of advancing thus far on the road
leading to its world-wide recognition and triumph. Little
did he imagine that less than forty years after the death of
Baha'u'llah His Cause, bursting beyond the confines of Persia
and the East, would have penetrated the furthermost regions
of the globe and would have encircled the whole earth.
Scarcely would he have believed the prediction had he been
told that the Cause would, within that period, have implanted
its banner in the heart of the American continent, would have
made itself felt in the leading capitals of Europe, would have
reached out to the southern confines of Africa, and would
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have established its outposts as far as Australasia. Hardly
would his imagination, fired as it was by a conviction as to
the destiny of his Faith, have carried him to a point at which
he could have pictured to his mind the Tomb Shrine of the
Bab, of the ultimate destination of whose remains he confesses
himself to be ignorant, embosomed in the heart of Carmel,
a place of pilgrimage and a beacon of light to many a visitor
from the ends of the earth. Hardly could he have imagined
that the humble dwelling of Baha'u'llah, lost amid the tortuous
lanes of old Baghdad, would one day, as a result of the
machinations of a tireless enemy, have forced itself on the
attention, and become the object of the earnest deliberations,
of the assembled representatives of the leading Powers of
Europe. Little did he imagine that, with all the praise he,
in his narrative, lavishes upon Him, there would proceed
from the Most Great Branch(1) a power that within a short
period would have awakened the northern States of the
American continent to the glory of the Revelation bequeathed
to Him by Baha'u'llah. Little did he imagine that the dynasties
of those monarchs the evidences of whose tyranny
he recounts so vividly in his narrative, would have tottered
to their fall and suffered the very fate which their representatives
had so desperately striven to inflict upon their dreaded
opponents. Little did he imagine that the whole ecclesiastical
hierarchy of his country, the prime mover and the willing
instrument of the abominations heaped upon his Faith,
would so swiftly and easily be overthrown by the very forces
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it had attempted to subdue. Never would he have believed
that the highest institutions of sunni Islam, the Sultanate
and the Caliphate,(1) those twin oppressors of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah, would have been swept away so ruthlessly by
the very hands of the professing adherents of the Faith of
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Islam. Little did he imagine that side by side with the steady
expansion of the Cause of Baha'u'llah the forces of consolidation
and internal administration would so progress as to
present to the world the unique spectacle of a Commonwealth
of peoples, world-wide in its ramifications, united in its purpose,
co-ordinated in its efforts, and fired by a zeal and
enthusiasm that no amount of adversity can quench.
And yet who knows what achievements, greater than any
that the past and the present have witnessed, may not still
be in store for those into whose hands so precious a heritage
has been entrusted? Who knows but that out of the turmoil
which agitates the face of present-day society there may
not emerge, sooner than we expect, the World-Order of
Baha'u'llah, the bare outline of which is being but faintly
discerned among the world-wide communities that bear His
name? For, great and marvellous as have been the achievements
of the past, the glory of the golden age of the Cause,
whose promise lies embedded within the shell of Baha'u'llah's
immortal utterance, is yet to be revealed. Fierce as may
seem the onslaught of the forces of darkness that may still
afflict this Cause, desperate and prolonged as may be that
struggle, severe as may be the disappointments it may still
experience, the ascendancy it will eventually obtain will be
such as no other Faith has ever in its history achieved. The
welding of the communities of East and West into the world-wide
Brotherhood of which poets and dreamers have sung,
and the promise of which lies at the very core of the Revelation
conceived by Baha'u'llah; the recognition of His law as the
indissoluble bond uniting the peoples and nations of the
earth; and the proclamation of the reign of the Most Great
Peace, are but a few among the chapters of the glorious tale
which the consummation of the Faith of Baha'u'llah will
unfold.
Who knows but that triumphs, unsurpassed in splendour,
are not in store for the mass of Baha'u'llah's toiling followers?
Surely, we stand too near the colossal edifice His hand has
reared to be able, at the present stage of the evolution of His
Revelation, to claim to be able even to conceive the full
measure of its promised glory. Its past history, stained by
the blood of countless martyrs, may well inspire us with the
668
thought that, whatever may yet befall this Cause, however
formidable the forces that may still assail it, however numerous
the reverses it will inevitably suffer, its onward march
can never be stayed, and that it will continue to advance
until the very last promise, enshrined within the words of
Baha'u'llah, shall have been completely redeemed.
