rst 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-_Ch_al 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 _Sh_ay_kh_ 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.

The audacity of Mulla Husayn who, at the command of the Bab, had attired
his head with the green turban worn and sent to him by his Master, who had
hoisted the Black Standard, the unfurling of which would, according to the
Prophet Muhammad, herald the advent of the vicegerent of God on earth, and
who, mounted on his steed, was marching at the head of two hundred and two
of his fellow-disciples to meet and lend his assistance to Quddus in the
Jaziriy-i-_Kh_adra (Verdant Isle)--his audacity was the signal for a clash
the reverberations of which were to resound throughout the entire country.
The contest lasted no less than eleven months. Its theatre was for the
most part the forest of Mazindaran. Its heroes were the flower of the
Bab's disciples. Its martyrs comprised no less than half of the Letters of
the Living, not excluding Quddus and Mulla Husayn, respectively the last
and the first of these Letters. The directive force which however
unobtrusively sustained it was none other than that which flowed from the
mind of Baha'u'llah. It was caused by the unconcealed determination of the
dawn-breakers of a new Age to proclaim, fearlessly and befittingly, its
advent, and by a no less unyielding resolve, should persuasion prove a
failure, to resist and defend themselves against the