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As for those enemies who have sedulously sought to extinguish the light of Baha'u'llah's Covenant, the condign punishment they have been made to suffer is no less conspicuous than the doom which overtook those who, in an earlier period, had so basely endeavored to crush the hopes of a rising Faith and destroy its foundations. (317:1) To the assassination of the tyrannical Nasiri'd- Din Shah and the subsequent extinction of the Qajar dynasty reference has already been made. Sultan Abdu'l- Hamid, after his deposition, was made a prisoner of state and condemned to a life of complete obscurity and humiliation, scorned by his fellow- rulers and vilified by his subjects. The bloodthirsty Jamal Pasha, who had resolved to crucify Abdu'l- Baha and raze to the ground Baha'u'llah's holy Tomb, had to flee for his life and was slain, while a refugee in the Caucasus, by the hand of an Armenian whose fellow- compatriots he had so pitilessly persecuted. The scheming Jamalu'd- Din Afghani, whose relentless hostility and powerful influence had been so gravely detrimental to the progress of the Faith in Near Eastern countries, was, after a checkered career filled with vicissitudes, stricken with cancer, and having had a major part of his tongue cut away in an unsuccessful operation perished in misery. The four members of the ill- fated Commission of Inquiry, despatched from Constantinople to seal the fate of Abdu'l- Baha, suffered, each in his turn, a humiliation hardly less drastic than that which they had planned for Him. Arif Bey, the head of the Commission, seeking stealthily at midnight to flee from the wrath of the Young Turks, was shot dead by a sentry. Adham Bey succeeded in escaping to Egypt, but was robbed of his possessions by his servant on the way, and was in the end compelled to seek financial assistance from the Baha'is of Cairo, a request which was not refused. Later he sought help from Abdu'l- Baha, Who immediately directed the believers to present him with a sum on His behalf, an instruction which they were unable to carry out owing to his sudden disappearance. Of the other two members, one was exiled to a remote place, and the other died soon after in abject poverty. The notorious Yahya Bey, the Chief of the Police in Akka, a willing and powerful tool in the hand of Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali, the arch- breaker of Baha'u'llah's Covenant, witnessed the frustration of all the hopes he had cherished, lost his position, and had eventually to beg for pecuniary assistance from Abdu'l- Baha. In Constantinople, in the year which witnessed the downfall of Abdu'l- Hamid, no less than thirty- one dignitaries of the state, including ministers and other high officers of the government, among whom numbered redoubtable enemies of the Faith, were, in a single day, arrested and condemned to the gallows, a spectacular retribution for the part they had played in upholding a tyrannical regime and in endeavoring to extirpate the Faith and its institutions.
(317:2)
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