It was during this… period, [the “last three and most
eventful years of the Báb's ministry”] in the early days of His incarceration
in the fortress of Chihriq, that the independence of the new-born Faith was
openly recognized and asserted by His disciples. The laws underlying the new
Dispensation had been revealed by its Author in a prison-fortress in the
mountains of Adhirbayjan, while the Dispensation itself was now to be
inaugurated in a plain on the border of Mazindaran, at a conference of His
assembled followers.
Bahá'u'lláh, maintaining through continual correspondence
close contact with the Báb, and Himself the directing force behind the manifold
activities of His struggling fellow-disciples, unobtrusively yet effectually
presided over that conference, and guided and controlled its proceedings.
Quddus, regarded as the exponent of the conservative element within it,
affected, in pursuance of a pre-conceived plan designed to mitigate the alarm
and consternation which such a conference was sure to arouse, to oppose the
seemingly extremist views advocated by the impetuous Tahirih. The primary
purpose of that gathering was to implement the revelation of the Bayan by a
sudden, a complete and dramatic break with the past -- with its order, its
ecclesiasticism, its traditions, and ceremonials. The subsidiary purpose of the
conference was to consider the means of emancipating the Báb from His cruel
confinement in Chihriq. The first was eminently successful; the second was
destined from the outset to fail.
The scene of such a challenging and far-reaching
proclamation was the hamlet of Badasht, where Bahá'u'lláh had rented, amidst
pleasant surroundings, three gardens, one of which He assigned to Quddus,
another to Tahirih, whilst the third He reserved for Himself. The eighty-one
disciples who had gathered from various provinces were His guests from the day
of their arrival to the day they dispersed. On each of the twenty-two days of
His sojourn in that hamlet He revealed a Tablet, which was chanted in the
presence of the assembled believers. On every believer He conferred a new name,
without, however, disclosing the identity of the one who had bestowed it. He
Himself was henceforth designated by the name Baha. Upon the Last Letter of the
Living was conferred the appellation of Quddus, while Qurratu'l-'Ayn was given
the title of Tahirih. By these names they were all subsequently addressed by the
Báb in the Tablets He revealed for each one of them.
It was Bahá'u'lláh Who steadily, unerringly, yet
unsuspectedly, steered the course of that memorable episode, and it was
Bahá'u'lláh Who brought the meeting to its final and dramatic climax. One day
in His presence, when illness had confined Him to bed, Tahirih, regarded as the
fair and spotless emblem of chastity and the incarnation of the holy Fatimih,
appeared suddenly, adorned yet unveiled, before the assembled companions,
seated herself on the right-hand of the affrighted and infuriated Quddus, and,
tearing through her fiery words the veils guarding the sanctity of the
ordinances of Islam, sounded the clarion-call, and proclaimed the inauguration,
of a new Dispensation. The effect was electric and instantaneous. She, of such
stainless purity, so reverenced that even to gaze at her shadow was deemed an
improper act, appeared for a moment, in the eyes of her scandalized beholders,
to have defamed herself, shamed the Faith she had espoused, and sullied the
immortal Countenance she symbolized. Fear, anger, bewilderment, swept their
inmost souls, and stunned their faculties. Abdu'l-Khaliq-i-Isfahani, aghast and
deranged at such a sight, cut his throat with his own hands. Spattered with
blood, and frantic with excitement, he fled away from her face. A few,
abandoning their companions, renounced their Faith. Others stood mute and
transfixed before her. Still others must have recalled with throbbing hearts
the Islamic tradition foreshadowing the appearance of Fatimih herself unveiled
while crossing the Bridge (Sirat) on the promised Day of Judgment. Quddus, mute
with rage, seemed to be only waiting for the moment when he could strike her
down with the sword he happened to be then holding in his hand.
Undeterred, unruffled, exultant with joy, Tahirih arose,
and, without the least premeditation and in a language strikingly resembling
that of the Qur'án, delivered a fervid and eloquent appeal to the remnant of
the assembly, ending it with this bold assertion: "I am the Word which the
Qá'im is to utter, the Word which shall put to flight the chiefs and nobles of
the earth!" Thereupon, she invited them to embrace each other and
celebrate so great an occasion.
On that memorable day the "Bugle" mentioned in the
Qur'án was sounded, the "stunning trumpet-blast" was loudly raised,
and the "Catastrophe" came to pass. The days immediately following so
startling a departure from the time-honored traditions of Islam witnessed a
veritable revolution in the outlook, habits, ceremonials and manner of worship
of these hitherto zealous and devout upholders of the Muhammadan Law. Agitated
as had been the Conference from first to last, deplorable as was the secession
of the few who refused to countenance the annulment of the fundamental statutes
of the Islamic Faith, its purpose had been fully and gloriously accomplished.
Only four years earlier the Author of the Bábí Revelation had declared His
mission to Mulla Husayn in the privacy of His home in Shiraz. Three years after
that Declaration, within the walls of the prison-fortress of Mah-Ku, He was
dictating to His amanuensis the fundamental and distinguishing precepts of His
Dispensation. A year later, His followers, under the actual leadership of
Bahá'u'lláh, their fellow-disciple, were themselves, in the hamlet of Badasht,
abrogating the Qur'ánic Law, repudiating both the divinely-ordained and
man-made precepts of the Faith of Muhammad, and shaking off the shackles of its
antiquated system. Almost immediately after, the Báb Himself, still a prisoner,
was vindicating the acts of His disciples by asserting, formally and
unreservedly, His claim to be the promised Qá'im, in the presence of the Heir
to the Throne, the leading exponents of the Shaykhi community, and the most
illustrious ecclesiastical dignitaries assembled in the capital of Adhirbayjan.
A little over four years had elapsed since the birth of the
Báb's Revelation when the trumpet-blast announcing the formal extinction of the
old, and the inauguration of the new Dispensation was sounded. No pomp, no
pageantry marked so great a turning-point in the world's religious history. Nor
was its modest setting commensurate with such a sudden, startling, complete
emancipation from the dark and embattled forces of fanaticism, of priestcraft,
of religious orthodoxy and superstition. The assembled host consisted of no
more than a single woman and a handful of men, mostly recruited from the very
ranks they were attacking, and devoid, with few exceptions, of wealth, prestige
and power. The Captain of the host was Himself an absentee, a captive in the
grip of His foes. The arena was a tiny hamlet in the plain of Badasht on the
border of Mazindaran. The trumpeter was a lone woman, the noblest of her sex in
that Dispensation, whom even some of her co-religionists pronounced a heretic.
The call she sounded was the death-knell of the twelve hundred year old law of
Islam.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
