the
night of the Declaration of His Mission to Mulla Husayn in _Sh_iraz. A
clamor in which the _Sh_ah, his government, his people and the entire
ecclesiastical hierarchy of his country unanimously joined had greeted its
birth. Captivity, swift and cruel, in the mountains of A_dh_irbayjan, had
been the lot of its youthful Founder, almost immediately after His return
from His pilgrimage to Mecca. Amidst the solitude of Mah-Ku and _Ch_ihriq,
He had instituted His Covenant, formulated His laws, and transmitted to
posterity the overwhelming majority of His writings. A conference of His
disciples, headed by Baha'u'llah, had, in the hamlet of Bada_sh_t,
abrogated in dramatic circumstances the laws of the Islamic, and ushered
in the new, Dispensation. In Tabriz He had, in the presence of the Heir to
the Throne and the leading ecclesiastical dignitaries of A_dh_irbayjan,
publicly and unreservedly voiced His claim to be none other than the
promised, the long-awaited Qa'im. Tempests of devastating violence in
Mazindaran, Nayriz, Zanjan and Tihran had decimated the ranks of His
followers and robbed Him of the noblest and most valuable of His
supporters. He Himself had to witness the virtual annihilation of His
Faith and the loss of most of the Letters of the Living, and, after
experiencing, in His own person, a series of bitter humiliations, He had
been executed by a firing squad in the barrack-square of Tabriz. A blood
bath of unusual ferocity had engulfed the greatest heroine of His Faith,
had further denuded it of its adherents, had extinguished the life of His
trusted amanuensis and repository of His last wishes, and swept
Baha'u'llah into the depths of the foulest dungeon of Tihran.

In the pestilential atmosphere of the Siyah-_Ch_al, nine years after that
historic Declaration, the Message proclaimed by the Bab had yielded its
fruit, His promise had been redeemed, and the most glorious, the most
momentous period of the Heroic Age of the Baha'i era had dawned. A
momentary eclipse of the newly risen Sun of Truth, the world's greatest
Luminary, had ensued, as a result of Baha'u'llah's precipitate banishment
to 'Iraq by order of Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, of His sudden withdrawal to the
mountains of Kurdistan, and of the degradation and confusion that
afflicted the remnant of the persecuted community of His fellow-disciples
in Ba_gh_dad. A reversal in the fortunes of a fast declining community,
following His return from His two-year reti