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On that memorable day the "Bugle" mentioned in the Qur'an was sounded, the "stunning trumpet- blast" was loudly raised, and the "Catastrophe" came to pass. The days immediately following so startling a departure from the time- honored traditions of Islam witnessed a veritable revolution in the outlook, habits, ceremonials and manner of worship of these hitherto zealous and devout upholders of the Muhammadan Law. Agitated as had been the Conference from first to last, deplorable as was the secession of the few who refused to countenance the annulment of the fundamental statutes of the Islamic Faith, its purpose had been fully and gloriously accomplished. Only four years earlier the Author of the Babi Revelation had declared His mission to Mulla Husayn in the privacy of His home in Shiraz. Three years after that Declaration, within the walls of the prison- fortress of Mah- Ku, He was dictating to His amanuensis the fundamental and distinguishing precepts of His Dispensation. A year later, His followers, under the actual leadership of Baha'u'llah, their fellow- disciple, were themselves, in the hamlet of Badasht, abrogating the Qur'anic Law, repudiating both the divinely- ordained and man- made precepts of the Faith of Muhammad, and shaking off the shackles of its antiquated system. Almost immediately after, the Bab Himself, still a prisoner, was vindicating the acts of His disciples by asserting, formally and unreservedly, His claim to be the promised Qa'im, in the presence of the Heir to the Throne, the leading exponents of the Shaykhi community, and the most illustrious ecclesiastical dignitaries assembled in the capital of Adhirbayjan. (33:1) A little over four years had elapsed since the birth of the Bab's Revelation when the trumpet- blast announcing the formal extinction of the old, and the inauguration of the new Dispensation was sounded. No pomp, no pageantry marked so great a turning- point in the world's religious history. Nor was its modest setting commensurate with such a sudden, startling, complete emancipation from the dark and embattled forces of fanaticism, of priestcraft, of religious orthodoxy and superstition. The assembled host consisted of no more than a single woman and a handful of men, mostly recruited from the very ranks they were attacking, and devoid, with few exceptions, of wealth, prestige and power. The Captain of the host was Himself an absentee, a captive in the grip of His foes. The arena was a tiny hamlet in the plain of Badasht on the border of Mazindaran. The trumpeter was a lone woman, the noblest of her sex in that Dispensation, whom even some of her co- religionists pronounced a heretic. The call she sounded was the death- knell of the twelve hundred year old law of Islam.
(33:2)
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