ly unexpected sailing of that ship news
was received that a bomb had exploded in the path of the Sultan while he
was returning to his palace from the mosque where he had been offering his
Friday prayers.

A few days after this attempt on his life the Commission submitted its
report to him; but he and his government were too preoccupied to consider
the matter. The case was laid aside, and when, some months later, it was
again brought forward it was abruptly closed forever by an event which,
once and for all, placed the Prisoner of Akka beyond the power of His
royal enemy. The "Young Turk" Revolution, breaking out swiftly and
decisively in 1908, forced a reluctant despot to promulgate the
constitution which he had suspended, and to release all religious and
political prisoners held under the old regime. Even then a telegram had to
be sent to Constantinople to inquire specifically whether 'Abdu'l-Baha was
included in the category of these prisoners, to which an affirmative reply
was promptly received.

Within a few months, in 1909, the Young Turks obtained from the
_Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam the condemnation of the Sultan himself who, as a
result of further attempts to overthrow the constitution, was finally and
ignominiously deposed, deported and made a prisoner of state. On one
single day of that same year there were executed no less than thirty-one
leading ministers, pa_sh_as and officials, among whom were numbered
notorious enemies of the Faith. Tripolitania itself, the scene of
'Abdu'l-Baha's intended exile was subsequently wrested from the Turks by
Italy. Thus ended the reign of the "Great Assassin," "the most mean,
cunning, untrustworthy and cruel intriguer of the long dynasty of
U_th_man," a reign "more disastrous in its immediate losses of territory
and in the certainty of others to follow, and more conspicuous for the
deterioration of the condition of his subjects, than that of any other of
his twenty-three degenerate predecessors since the death of Sulayman the
Magnificent."

Chapter XVIII: Entombment of the Bab's Remains on Mt. Carmel

'Abdu'l-Baha's unexpected and dramatic release from His forty-year
confinement dealt a blow to the ambitions cherished by the
Covenant-breakers as devastating as that which, a decade before, had
shattered their hopes of undermining His authority and of ousting Him from
His God-given position. Now, on the very morrow of His triumphant
liberation a third blow befell them as st