Severe as were these tribulations which succeeded one another with bewildering rapidity as a result of the premeditated attacks and the systematic machinations of the court, the clergy, the government and the people, they were but the prelude to a harrowing and extensive captivity which that edict were but the prelude to a harrowing and extensive captivity which that edict had formally initiated. Extending over a period of more than forty years, and carrying Him successively to 'Iraq, Sulaymaniyyih, Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the penal colony of 'Akka, this long banishment was at last ended by His death, at the age of over three score years and ten, terminating a captivity which, in its range, its duration and the diversity of its afflictions, is unexampled in the history of previous Dispensations. (10:1)

No need to expatiate on the particular episodes which cast a lurid light on the moving annals of those years. No need to dwell on the character and actions of the peoples, rulers and divines who have participated in, and contributed to heighten the poignancy of the scenes of this, the greatest drama in the world's spiritual history. (10:2)

Features of This Moving Drama
To enumerate a few of the outstanding features of this moving drama will suffice to evoke in the reader of these pages, already familiar with the history of the Faith, the memory of those vicissitudes which it has experienced, and which the world has until now viewed with such frigid indifference. The forced and sudden retirement of Baha'u'llah to the mountains of Sulaymaniyyih, and the distressing consequences that flowed from His two years' complete withdrawal; the incessant intrigues indulged in by the exponents of Shi'ih Islam in Najaf and Karbila, working in close and constant association with their confederates in Persia; the intensification of the repressive measures decreed by Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz which brought to a head the defection of certain prominent members of the exiled community; the enforcement of yet another banishment by order of the same Sultan, this time to that far off and most desolate of cities, causing such despair as to lead two of the exiles to attempt suicide; the unrelaxing surveillance to which they were subjected upon their arrival in 'Akka, by hostile officials, and the insufferable imprisonment for two years in the barracks of that town; the interrogatory to which the Turkish pasha subsequently subjected his Prisoner at the headquarters of the government; His confinement for no less than eight years in a humble dwelling surrounded by the befouled air of that city, His sole recreation being confined to pacing the narrow space of His room - these, as well as other tribulations, proclaim, on the one hand, the nature of the ordeal and the indignities He suffered, and point, on the other, the finger of accusation at those mighty ones of the earth who had either so sorely maltreated Him, or deliberately withheld from Him their succor. (10:3)

Get Next Page