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The vast system of that hierarchy, with all its elements and appurtenances - its shaykhu'l-Islams (high priests), its mujtahids (doctors of the law), its mullas (priests), its fuqahas (jurists) its imams (prayer-leaders), its mu'adhdhins (criers), its vu'azz (preachers), its qadis (judges), its mutavallis (custodians), its madrasihs (seminaries), its mudarrisins (professors), its tullabs (pupils), its qurra's (intoners), its mu'abbirins (soothsayers), its Muhaddithins (narrators), its musakhkhirins (spirit-subduers), its dhakirins (rememberers), its 'ummal-i-dhakat (almsgivers), its muqaddasins (saints), its munzavis (recluses), its sufis, its dervishes, and what not - was paralyzed and utterly discredited. Its mujtahids, those firebrands, who wielded powers of life and death, and who for generations had been accorded honors almost regal in character, were reduced to a deplorably insignificant number. The beturbaned prelates of the Islamic church who, in the words of Baha'u'llah, "decked their heads with green and white, and committed what made the Faithful Spirit to groan," were ruthlessly swept away, except for a handful who, in order to safeguard themselves against the fury of an impious populace, are now compelled to submit to the humiliation of producing, whenever the occasion demands it, the license granted them by the civil authorities to wear this vanishing emblem of a vanished authority. The rest of this turbaned class, whether siyyids, mullas, or hajis, were forced not only to exchange their venerable headdress for the kulah-i-farangi (European hat), which not long ago they themselves had anathematized, but also to discard their flowing robes and don the tight-fitting garments of European style, the introduction of which into their country they had, a generation ago, so violently disapproved. (95:1) "The dark blue and white domes" - an allusion by 'Abdu'l-Baha to the rotund and massive headgears of the priests of Persia - had indeed been "inverted." Those whose heads had borne them, the arrogant, fanatical, perfidious, and retrograde clericals, "in the grasp of whose authority," as testified by Baha'u'llah, "were held the reins of the people," whose "words are the pride of the world," and whose "deeds are the shame of the nations," recognizing the wretchedness of their state, betook themselves, crestfallen and destitute of hope, to their homes, there to drag out a miserable existence. Impotent and sullen, they are watching the operations of a process which, having reversed their policy and ruined their handiwork, is irresistibly moving towards a climax.
(95:2)
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