sequence, momentarily ensued, which was destined to be
broken, at a later stage, by a further wave of repressive measures in
which the Sultan of Turkey and his ministers, as well as the Sunni
sacerdotal order, were to join hands with the _Sh_ah and the _Sh_i'ah
clericals of Persia and 'Iraq in an endeavor to stamp out, once and for
all, the Faith and all it stood for. While this lull persisted the initial
manifestations of the internal crisis, already mentioned, were beginning
to reveal themselves--a crisis which, though less spectacular in the public
eye, proved itself, as it moved to its climax, to be one of unprecedented
gravity, reducing the numerical strength of the infant community,
imperiling its unity, causing immense damage to its prestige, and
tarnishing for a considerable period of time its glory.

This crisis had already been brewing in the days immediately following the
execution of the Bab, was intensified during the months when the
controlling hand of Baha'u'llah was suddenly withdrawn as a result of His
confinement in the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran, was further aggravated by His
precipitate banishment from Persia, and began to protrude its disturbing
features during the first years of His sojourn in Ba_gh_dad. Its
devastating force gathered momentum during His two year retirement to the
mountains of Kurdistan, and though it was checked, for a time, after His
return from Sulaymaniyyih, under the overmastering influences exerted
preparatory to the Declaration of His Mission, it broke out later, with
still greater violence, and reached its climax in Adrianople, only to
receive finally its death-blow under the impact of the irresistible forces
released through the proclamation of that Mission to all mankind.

Its central figure was no less a person than the nominee of the Bab
Himself, the credulous and cowardly Mirza Yahya, to certain traits of
whose character reference has already been made in the foregoing pages.
The black-hearted scoundrel who befooled and manipulated this vain and
flaccid man with consummate skill and unyielding persistence was a certain
Siyyid Muhammad, a native of Isfahan, notorious for his inordinate
ambition, his blind obstinacy and uncontrollable jealousy. To him
Baha'u'llah had later referred in the Kitab-i-Aqdas as the one who had
"led astray" Mirza Yahya, and stigmatized him, in one of His Tablets, as
the "source of envy and the quintessence of mischief," while 'Abdu'l-Baha
had descr