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Little wonder that, confronted by a situation so full of peril, the Faith should have been driven underground, and that arrests, interrogations, imprisonment, vituperation, spoliation, tortures and executions should constitute the outstanding features of this convulsive period in its development. The pilgrimages that had been initiated in Adrianople, and which later assumed in Akka impressive proportions, together with the dissemination of the Tablets of Baha'u'llah and the circulation of enthusiastic reports through the medium of those who had attained His presence served, moreover, to inflame the animosity of clergy and laity alike, who had foolishly imagined that the breach which had occurred in the ranks of the followers of the Faith in Adrianople and the sentence of life banishment pronounced subsequently against its Leader, would seal irretrievably its fate. (198:1) In Abadih a certain Ustad Ali- Akbar was, at the instigation of a local Siyyid, apprehended and so ruthlessly thrashed that he was covered from head to foot with his own blood. In the village of Takur, at the bidding of the Shah, the property of the inhabitants was pillaged, Haji Mirza Rida- Quli, a half- brother of Baha'u'llah, was arrested, conducted to the capital and thrown into the Siyah- Chal, where he remained for a month, whilst the brother- in- law of Mirza Hasan, another half- brother of Baha'u'llah, was seized and branded with red- hot irons, after which the neighboring village of Dar- Kala was delivered to the flames.
(198:2)
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