A new ruler, Muhammad VI, the last of the twenty-five successive degenerate sultans, had meanwhile succeeded his wretched brother. The edifice of the empire was now quaking and tottering to its fall. Mustafa Kamal dealt it the final blows. Turkey, that had already shrunk to a small Asiatic state, became a republic. The sultan was deposed, the Ottoman Sultanate was ended, a rulership that had remained unbroken for six and a half centuries was extinguished. An empire which had stretched from the center of Hungary to the Persian Gulf and the Sudan, and from the Caspian Sea to Oran in Africa, had now dwindled to a small Asiatic republic. Constantinople itself, which, after the fall of Byzantium, had been honored as the splendid metropolis of the Roman Empire, and had been made the capital of the Ottoman government, was abandoned by its conquerors, and stripped of its pomp and glory - a mute reminder of the base tyranny that had for so long stained its throne. (66:1)

Such, in their bare outline, were the awful evidences of that retributive justice which so tragically afflicted 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, his successors, his throne and his dynasty. What of Nasiri'd-Din Shah, the other partner in that imperial conspiracy which sought to extirpate, root and branch, the budding Faith of God? His reaction to the Divine Message borne to him by the fearless Badi', the "Pride of the Martyrs," who had spontaneously dedicated himself to this purpose, was characteristic of that implacable hatred which, throughout his reign, glowed so fiercely in his breast. (66:2)

Divine Retribution on the Qajar Dynasty
The French Emperor had, it was reported, flung away Baha'u'llah's Tablet, and directed his minister, as Baha'u'llah Himself asserts, to address to its Author an irreverent reply. The Grand Vizir of 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, it is reliably stated, blanched while reading the communication addressed to his Imperial master and his ministers, and made the following comment: "It is as if the king of kings were issuing his behest to his humblest vassal king, and regulating his conduct!" Queen Victoria, it is said, upon reading the Tablet revealed for her remarked: "If this is of God, it will endure; if not, it can do no harm." It was reserved for Nasiri'd-Din Shah, however, to wreak, at the instigation of the divines, his vengeance on One Whom he could no longer personally chastise by arresting His messenger, a lad of about seventeen, by freighting him with chains, by torturing him on the rack and finally slaying him. (66:3)

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