eversal in the
circumstances attending the twenty-four years of His banishment to Akka,
Baha'u'llah Himself should have penned these weighty words: "The Almighty
... hath transformed this Prison-House into the Most Exalted Paradise, the
Heaven of Heavens."

Chapter XII: Baha'u'llah's Incarceration in Akka (Continued)

While Baha'u'llah and the little band that bore Him company were being
subjected to the severe hardships of a banishment intended to blot them
from the face of the earth, the steadily expanding community of His
followers in the land of His birth were undergoing a persecution more
violent and of longer duration than the trials with which He and His
companions were being afflicted. Though on a far smaller scale than the
blood baths which had baptized the birth of the Faith, when in the course
of a single year, as attested by 'Abdu'l-Baha, "more than four thousand
souls were slain, and a great multitude of women and children left without
protector and helper," the murderous and horrible acts subsequently
perpetrated by an insatiable and unyielding enemy covered as wide a range
and were marked by an even greater degree of ferocity.

Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, stigmatized by Baha'u'llah as the "Prince of
Oppressors," as one who had "perpetrated what hath caused the denizens of
the cities of justice and equity to lament," was, during the period under
review, in the full tide of his manhood and had reached the plenitude of
his despotic power. The sole arbiter of the fortunes of a country "firmly
stereotyped in the immemorial traditions of the East"; surrounded by
"venal, artful and false" ministers whom he could elevate or abase at his
pleasure; the head of an administration in which "every actor was, in
different aspects, both the briber and the bribed"; allied, in his
opposition to the Faith, with a sacerdotal order which constituted a
veritable "church-state"; supported by a people preeminent in atrocity,
notorious for its fanaticism, its servility, cupidity and corrupt
practices, this capricious monarch, no longer able to lay hands upon the
person of Baha'u'llah, had to content himself with the task of attempting
to stamp out in his own dominions the remnants of a much-feared and newly
resuscitated community. Next to him in rank and power were his three
eldest sons, to whom, for purposes of internal administration, he had
practically delegated his authority, and in whom he had invested the
governorship of