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This fierce, nation- wide controversy had assumed alarming proportions when Muhammad Shah finally succumbed to his illness, precipitating by his death the downfall of his favorite and all- powerful minister, Haji Mirza Aqasi, who, soon stripped of the treasures he had amassed, fell into disgrace, was expelled from the capital, and sought refuge in Karbila. The seventeen year old Nasiri'd- Din Mirza ascended the throne, leaving the direction of affairs to the obdurate, the iron- hearted Amir- Nizam, Mirza Taqi Khan, who, without consulting his fellow- ministers, decreed that immediate and condign punishment be inflicted on the hapless Babis. Governors, magistrates and civil servants, throughout the provinces, instigated by the monstrous campaign of vilification conducted by the clergy, and prompted by their lust for pecuniary rewards, vied in their respective spheres with each other in hounding and heaping indignities on the adherents of an outlawed Faith. For the first time in the Faith's history a systematic campaign in which the civil and ecclesiastical powers were banded together was being launched against it, a campaign that was to culminate in the horrors experienced by Baha'u'llah in the Siyah- Chal of Tihran and His subsequent banishment to Iraq. Government, clergy and people arose, as one man, to assault and exterminate their common enemy. In remote and isolated centers the scattered disciples of a persecuted community were pitilessly struck down by the sword of their foes, while in centers where large numbers had congregated measures were taken in self- defense, which, misconstrued by a cunning and deceitful adversary, served in their turn to inflame still further the hostility of the authorities, and multiply the outrages perpetrated by the oppressor. In the East at Shaykh Tabarsi, in the south in Nayriz, in the west in Zanjan, and in the capital itself, massacres, upheavals, demonstrations, engagements, sieges, acts of treachery proclaimed, in rapid succession, the violence of the storm which had broken out, and exposed the bankruptcy, and blackened the annals, of a proud yet degenerate people.
(37:1)
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