August 15, 1852: A round of shot was fired at the Sháh in Níyávarán, north of Tihran

Obsessed by the bitter tragedy of the martyrdom of his beloved Master [the Báb], driven by a frenzy of despair to avenge that odious deed, and believing the author and instigator of that crime to be none other than the Sháh himself, a certain Sádiq-i-Tabrízí, an assistant in a confectioner’s shop in Tihrán, proceeded on an August day (August 15, 1852), together with his accomplice, an equally obscure youth named Fathu’lláh-i-Qumí, to Níyávarán where the imperial army had encamped and the sovereign was in residence, and there, waiting by the roadside, in the guise of an innocent bystander, fired a round of shot from his pistol at the Sháh, shortly after the latter had emerged on horseback from the palace grounds for his morning promenade. The weapon the assailant employed demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt the folly of that half-demented youth, and clearly indicated that no man of sound judgment could have possibly instigated so senseless an act. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By')

The “shameful act of a fanatical and irresponsible Bábí” caused the Faith of the Báb to experience “the oppressive load of a fresh calamity, unprecedented in its gravity, disgraceful in its character, and devastating in its immediate consequences”

Such a severe ordeal the Faith of the Báb, still in the earliest stages of its infancy, was now beginning to experience. Maligned and hounded from the moment it was born, deprived in its earliest days of the sustaining strength of the majority of its leading supporters, stunned by the tragic and sudden removal of its Founder, reeling under the cruel blows it had successively sustained in Mázindarán, Tihrán, Nayríz and Zanján, a sorely persecuted Faith was about to be subjected through the shameful act of a fanatical and irresponsible Bábí, to a humiliation such as it had never before known. To the trials it had undergone was now added the oppressive load of a fresh calamity, unprecedented in its gravity, disgraceful in its character, and devastating in its immediate consequences. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By')

The disastrous plan by a few Bábis to assassinate Násiri’d-Dín Sháh

Nabil explains that according to Baha’u’llah’s brother, Áqáy-i-Kalím, sometime during this homecoming period a Bábí by the name of Mullá Shaykh 'Alí of Turshíz, entitled 'Azím, a veteran of the Faith, approached Baha’u’llah to enlist His support and gain His advice for a plan to assassinate the young Sháh and his new Prime Minister who were deemed to be the source of the continuing persecutions. Supported by his group of Bábí conspirators, 'Azím also aspired to be the successor of the Báb. They also thought that the Sháh's death might be a propitious time for the advancement of the Bábí Cause. Baha’u’llah, however, condemned 'Azím’s designs and advised him in most emphatic terms to abandon the plan he had conceived, and disassociated himself entirely from the intended rash act, warning him that fresh disasters of unprecedented magnitude would thus be precipitated. But 'Azím and his Bábí conspirators chose to disregard Baha’u’llah’s warnings. They continued their secret meeting in various homes, including that of Haji Sulayman Khan, another veteran of the Faith, the same brave and devoted man who had, at  the behest of Baha'u'llah, gone to Tabriz to recover the remains of the martyred Báb and bring them to Tihran. Amongst those Bábis attached to 'Azím were three young men, a confectioner, an engraver of Qum, and a third person who apparently had suffered much at the hands of the adversaries of his Faith. In the eyes of these youths, the young Shah was the source of all the calamities that had befallen them, and so they plotted to assassinate him. It is not known how many were involved in this criminal folly, but 'Azím certainly was. 

(Adapted from ‘The Dawn-Breakers’, by Nabil, ‘Baha’u’llah King of Glory’, by Balyuzi, and ‘Robe of Light, vol. 1’, by David Ruhe)

circa 1930: Village of Afchih, northeast of Tihran

Village of Afchih

Mansion of Baha'u'llah's father in the village of Afchih