Indeed, in a most remarkable passage in the Lawh-i-Fu'ad, wherein mention has been made of the death of Fu'ad Pasha, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, the fall of the Sultan himself is unmistakably foretold: "Soon will We dismiss the one who was like unto him, and will lay hold on their Chief who ruleth the land, and I, verily, am the Almighty, the All-Compelling." (63:2)

The Sultan's reaction to these words, bearing upon his person, his empire, his throne, his capital, and his ministers, can be gathered from the recital of the sufferings he inflicted on Baha'u'llah, and already referred to in the beginning of these pages. The extinction of the "outward splendor" surrounding that proud seat of Imperial power is the theme I now proceed to expose. (63:3)

The Doom of Imperial Turkey
A cataclysmic process, one of the most remarkable in modern history. was set in motion ever since Baha'u'llah, while a prisoner in Constantinople, delivered to a Turkish official His Tablet, addressed to Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz and his ministers, to be transmitted to 'Ali Pasha, the Grand Vizir. It was this Tablet which, as attested by that officer and affirmed by Nabil in his chronicle, affected the Vizir so profoundly that he paled while reading it. This process received fresh impetus after the Lawh-i-Ra'is was revealed on the morrow of its Author's final banishment from Adrianople to 'Akka. Relentless, devastating and with ever-increasing momentum, it ominously unfolded, damaging the prestige of the Empire, dismembering its territory, dethroning its sultans, sweeping away their dynasty, degrading and deposing its Caliph, disestablishing its religion, and extinguishing its glory. The "sick man" of Europe, whose condition had been unerringly diagnosed by the Divine Physician, and whose doom was pronounced inevitable, fell a prey, during the reign of five successive sultans, all degenerate, all deposed, to a series of convulsions which, in the end, proved fatal to his life. Imperial Turkey that had, under 'Abdu'l-Majid, been admitted into the European Concert, and had emerged victorious from the Crimean War, entered, under his successor, 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, upon a period of swift decline, culminating, soon after 'Abdu'l-Baha's passing, in the doom which the judgment of God had pronounced against it. (63:4)

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