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To the tide of calamity which, during the concluding years of the Bab's ministry, was sweeping with such ominous fury the provinces of Persia, whether in the East, in the South, or in the West, the heart and center of the realm itself could not remain impervious. Four months before the Bab's martyrdom Tihran in its turn was to participate, to a lesser degree and under less dramatic circumstances, in the carnage that was besmirching the face of the country. A tragedy was being enacted in that city which was to prove but a prelude to the orgy of massacre which, after the Bab's execution, convulsed its inhabitants and sowed consternation as far as the outlying provinces. It originated in the orders and was perpetrated under the very eyes of the irate and murderous Amir- Nizam, supported by Mahmud Khan- i- Kalantar, and aided by a certain Husayn, one of the ulamas of Kashan. The heroes of that tragedy were the Seven Martyrs of Tihran, who represented the more important classes among their countrymen, and who deliberately refused to purchase life by that mere lip- denial which, under the name of taqiyyih, Shi'ah Islam had for centuries recognized as a wholly justifiable and indeed commendable subterfuge in the hour of peril. Neither the repeated and vigorous intercessions of highly placed members of the professions to which these martyrs belonged, nor the considerable sums which, in the case of one of them-- the noble and serene Haji Mirza Siyyid Ali, the Bab's maternal uncle-- affluent merchants of Shiraz and Tihran were eager to offer as ransom, nor the impassioned pleas of state officials on behalf of another-- the pious and highly esteemed dervish, Mirza Qurban- 'Ali-- nor even the personal intervention of the Amir- Nizam, who endeavored to induce both of these brave men to recant, could succeed in persuading any of the seven to forego the coveted laurels of martyrdom. The defiant answers which they flung at their persecutors; the ecstatic joy which seized them as they drew near the scene of their death; the jubilant shouts they raised as they faced their executioner; the poignancy of the verses which, in their last moments, some of them recited; the appeals and challenges they addressed to the multitude of onlookers who gazed with stupefaction upon them; the eagerness with which the last three victims strove to precede one another in sealing their faith with their blood; and lastly, the atrocities which a bloodthirsty foe degraded itself by inflicting upon their dead bodies which lay unburied for three days and three nights in the Sabzih- Maydan, during which time thousands of so- called devout Shi'ahs kicked their corpses, spat upon their faces, pelted, cursed, derided, and heaped refuse upon them-- these were the chief features of the tragedy of the Seven Martyrs of Tihran, a tragedy which stands out as one of the grimmest scenes witnessed in the course of the early unfoldment of the Faith of Baha'u'llah. Little wonder that the Bab, bowed down by the weight of His accumulated sorrows in the Fortress of Chihriq, should have acclaimed and glorified them, in the pages of a lengthy eulogy which immortalized their fidelity to His Cause, as those same "Seven Goats" who, according to Islamic tradition, should, on the Day of Judgment, "walk in front" of the promised Qa'im, and whose death was to precede the impending martyrdom of their true Shepherd.
(46:1)
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