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The enormous expansion in the volume of Baha'u'llah's correspondence; the establishment of a Baha'i agency in Alexandria for its despatch and distribution; the facilities provided by His staunch follower, Muhammad Mustafa, now established in Beirut to safeguard the interests of the pilgrims who passed through that city; the comparative ease with which a titular Prisoner communicated with the multiplying centers in Persia, Iraq, Caucasus, Turkistan, and Egypt; the mission entrusted by Him to Sulayman Khan- i- Tanakabuni, known as Jamal Effendi, to initiate a systematic campaign of teaching in India and Burma; the appointment of a few of His followers as "Hands of the Cause of God"; the restoration of the Holy House in Shiraz, whose custodianship was now formally entrusted by Him to the Bab's wife and her sister; the conversion of a considerable number of the adherents of the Jewish, Zoroastrian and Buddhist Faiths, the first fruits of the zeal and the perseverance which itinerant teachers in Persia, India and Burma were so strikingly displaying -- conversions that automatically resulted in a firm recognition by them of the Divine origin of both Christianity and Islam-- all these attested the vitality of a leadership that neither kings nor ecclesiastics, however powerful or antagonistic, could either destroy or undermine. (195:1) Nor should reference be omitted to the emergence of a prosperous community in the newly laid out city of Ishqabad, in Russian Turkistan, assured of the good will of a sympathetic government, enabling it to establish a Baha'i cemetery and to purchase property and erect thereon structures that were to prove the precursors of the first Mashriqu'l- Adhkar of the Baha'i world; or to the establishment of new outposts of the Faith in far- off Samarqand and Bukhara, in the heart of the Asiatic continent, in consequence of the discourses and writings of the erudite Fadil- i- Qa'ini and the learned apologist Mirza Abu'l- Fadl; or to the publication in India of five volumes of the writings of the Author of the Faith, including His "Most Holy Book"-- publications which were to herald the vast multiplication of its literature, in various scripts and languages, and its dissemination, in later decades, throughout both the East and the West. (195:2) "Sultan Abdu'l- 'Aziz," Baha'u'llah is reported by one of His fellow- exiles to have stated, "banished Us to this country in the greatest abasement, and since his object was to destroy Us and humble Us, whenever the means of glory and ease presented themselves, We did not reject them." "Now, praise be to God," He, moreover, as reported by Nabil in his narrative, once remarked, "it has reached the point when all the people of these regions are manifesting their submissiveness unto Us." And again, as recorded in that same narrative: "The Ottoman Sultan, without any justification, or reason, arose to oppress Us, and sent Us to the fortress of Akka. His imperial farman decreed that none should associate with Us, and that We should become the object of the hatred of every one. The Hand of Divine power, therefore, swiftly avenged Us. It first loosed the winds of destruction upon his two irreplaceable ministers and confidants, Ali and Fu'ad, after which that Hand was stretched out to roll up the panoply of Aziz himself, and to seize him, as He only can seize, Who is the Mighty, the Strong."
(195:3)
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