mission, that
gathering was productive of no other result than the decision, arrived at
after considerable argument and discussion, to inflict the bastinado on
Him, at the hands, and in the prayer-house of the heartless and avaricious
Mirza 'Ali-As_gh_ar, the _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam of that city. Confounded in
his schemes Haji Mirza Aqasi was forced to order the Bab to be taken back
to _Ch_ihriq.

This dramatic, this unqualified and formal declaration of the Bab's
prophetic mission was not the sole consequence of the foolish act which
condemned the Author of so weighty a Revelation to a three years'
confinement in the mountains of A_dh_irbayjan. This period of captivity,
in a remote corner of the realm, far removed from the storm centers of
_Sh_iraz, Isfahan, and Tihran, afforded Him the necessary leisure to
launch upon His most monumental work, as well as to engage on other
subsidiary compositions designed to unfold the whole range, and impart the
full force, of His short-lived yet momentous Dispensation. Alike in the
magnitude of the writings emanating from His pen, and in the diversity of
the subjects treated in those writings, His Revelation stands wholly
unparalleled in the annals of any previous religion. He Himself affirms,
while confined in Mah-Ku, that up to that time His writings, embracing
highly diversified subjects, had amounted to more than five hundred
thousand verses. "The verses which have rained from this Cloud of Divine
mercy," is Baha'u'llah's testimony in the Kitab-i-Iqan, "have been so
abundant that none hath yet been able to estimate their number. A score of
volumes are now available. How many still remain beyond our reach! How
many have been plundered and have fallen into the hands of the enemy, the
fate of which none knoweth!" No less arresting is the variety of themes
presented by these voluminous writings, such as prayers, homilies,
orations, Tablets of visitation, scientific treatises, doctrinal
dissertations, exhortations, commentaries on the Qur'an and on various
traditions, epistles to the highest religious and ecclesiastical
dignitaries of the realm, and laws and ordinances for the consolidation of
His Faith and the direction of its activities.

Already in _Sh_iraz, at the earliest stage of His ministry, He had
revealed what Baha'u'llah has characterized as "the first, the greatest,
and mightiest of all books" in the Babi Dispensation, the celebrated
commentary on the surih of Joseph, entitl