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What, in conclusion, we may well ask ourselves, has been the fate of that flagitious crew who, actuated by malice, by greed or fanaticism, sought to quench the light which the Bab and His followers had diffused over their country and its people? The rod of Divine chastisement, swiftly and with unyielding severity, spared neither the Chief Magistrate of the realm, nor his ministers and counselors, nor the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the religion with which his government was indissolubly connected, nor the governors who acted as his representatives, nor the chiefs of his armed forces who, in varying degrees, deliberately or through fear or neglect, contributed to the appalling trials to which an infant Faith was so undeservedly subjected. Muhammad Shah himself, a sovereign at once bigoted and irresolute who, refusing to heed the appeal of the Bab to receive Him in the capital and enable Him to demonstrate the truth of His Cause, yielded to the importunities of a malevolent minister, succumbed, at the early age of forty, after sustaining a sudden reverse of fortune, to a complication of maladies, and was condemned to that "hell- fire" which, "on the Day of Resurrection," the Author of the Qayyumu'l- Asma' had sworn would inevitably devour him. His evil genius, the omnipotent Haji Mirza Aqasi, the power behind the throne and the chief instigator of the outrages perpetrated against the Bab, including His imprisonment in the mountains of Adhirbayjan, was, after the lapse of scarcely a year and six months from the time he interposed himself between the Shah and his Captive, hurled from power, deprived of his ill- gotten riches, was disgraced by his sovereign, was driven to seek shelter from the rising wrath of his countrymen in the shrine of Shah Abdu'l- 'Azim, and was later ignominiously expelled to Karbila, falling a prey to disease, poverty and gnawing sorrow-- a piteous vindication of that denunciatory Tablet in which his Prisoner had foreshadowed his doom and denounced his infamy. As to the low- born and infamous Amir- Nizam, Mirza Taqi Khan, the first year of whose short- lived ministry was stained with the ferocious onslaught against the defenders of the Fort of Tabarsi, who authorized and encouraged the execution of the Seven Martyrs of Tihran, who unleashed the assault against Vahid and his companions, who was directly responsible for the death- sentence of the Bab, and who precipitated the great upheaval of Zanjan, he forfeited, through the unrelenting jealousy of his sovereign and the vindictiveness of court intrigue, all the honors he had enjoyed, and was treacherously put to death by the royal order, his veins being opened in the bath of the Palace of Fin, near Kashan. "Had the Amir- Nizam," Baha'u'llah is reported by Nabil to have stated, "been aware of My true position, he would certainly have laid hold on Me. He exerted the utmost effort to discover the real situation, but was unsuccessful. God wished him to be ignorant of it." Mirza Aqa Khan, who had taken such an active part in the unbridled cruelties perpetrated as a result of the attempt on the life of the sovereign, was driven from office, and placed under strict surveillance in Yazd, where he ended his days in shame and despair.
(81:2)
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