ng that the Ottoman
authorities did not anticipate what would result from the establishment of
Baha'u'llah in another major provincial capital. Within a year of His
arrival in Adrianople, their prisoner had attracted first the interest and
then the fervent admiration of figures prominent in both the intellectual
and administrative life of the region. To the dismay of the Persian
consular representatives, two of the most devoted of these admirers were
_Kh_ur_sh_id Pa_sh_a, the Governor of the province, and the
_Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam, the leading Sunni religious dignitary. In the eyes of
His hosts and the public generally, the exile was a moral philosopher and
saint the validity of whose teachings was reflected not only in the
example of His own life but in the changes they effected among the flood
of Persian pilgrims who flocked to this remote center of the Ottoman
Empire in order to visit Him.(75)

These unanticipated developments convinced the Persian ambassador and his
colleagues that it was only a matter of time before the Baha'i movement,
which was continuing to spread in Persia, would have established itself as
a major influence in Persia's neighboring and rival empire. Throughout
this period of its history, the ramshackle Ottoman Empire was struggling
against repeated incursions by Tsarist Russia, uprisings among its subject
peoples, and persistent attempts by the ostensibly sympathetic British and
Austrian governments to detach various Turkish territories and incorporate
them into their own empires. These unstable political conditions in
Turkey's European provinces offered new and urgent arguments supporting
the ambassador's appeal that the exiles be sent to a distant colony where
Baha'u'llah would have no further contact with influential circles,
whether Turkish or Western.

When the Turkish foreign minister, Fu'ad Pa_sh_a, returned from a visit to
Adrianople, his astonished reports of the reputation which Baha'u'llah had
come to enjoy throughout the region appeared to lend credibility to the
Persian embassy's suggestions. In this climate of opinion, the government
abruptly decided to subject its guest to strict confinement. Without
warning, early one day, Baha'u'llah's house was surrounded by soldiers,
and the exiles were ordered to prepare for departure to an unknown
destination.

The place chosen for this final banishment was the grim fortress-town of
Akka (Acre) on the coast of the Holy Land. Notorious throug