Bahá’u’lláh’s arrest and the impact on the holy family

The family first heard of the crisis when suddenly a servant came running to lady Ásíyih at the rented mansion in Teheran, crying out that the Master had been arrested and had walked many miles, that His clothes were torn, His feet bare and bleeding, and that He had been mistreated. Quickly the storm broke about their heads as the outcries against the Bábís began and were propagated so that, alarmed, all the Núrí relatives fled their houses in Teheran and were followed by their servants, save only faithful black Isfandíyár and a single black servant-woman. The houses of Bahá’u’lláh and His kindred were looted and stripped by plundering mobs, so that in a single day the family was reduced from wealth to poverty. 

- David Ruhe  (‘Robe of Light: The Persian Years of the Supreme Prophet Bahá’u’lláh 1817-1853)

Bahá’u’lláh describes the exceptionally cruel treatment that He and His fellow-prisoners were subjected to in the Siyáh-Chál

All those who were struck down by the storm that raged during that memorable year in Tihrán were Our fellow-prisoners in the Síyáh-Chál, where We were confined. We were all huddled together in one cell, our feet in stocks, and around our necks fastened the most galling of chains. The air we breathed was laden with the foulest impurities, while the floor on which we sat was covered with filth and infested with vermin. No ray of light was allowed to penetrate that pestilential dungeon or to warm its icy-coldness. 

- Baha’u’llah  (Quoted by Nabil in ‘The Dawn-Breakers’, translated and edited by Shoghi Effendi)

The exceptionally inhumane conditions of the Síyáh-Chál

A barrel roof, vertical sides and a flat brick floor enclosed a dungeon space perhaps twenty meters long, lightless even when the jailers opened the single door above the last short, steep, seven steps from the access hallway to the floor of the pitch-black dungeon. To Bahá’u’lláh who loved light, the blackness itself was a torture. At the angle of wall and floor of the two long sides of the chamber sat the prisoners side by side, the central space between their feet functioning as an aisle for the jailers. There was no drainage and no removal of wastes. Odors of foulest kinds were intermixed with offensive acrid aromatics from the ferments, molds and putrefaction. The prisoners' torments were made additionally intolerable by vermin, doubtless bedbugs, fleas and lice, possibly also with aggressive rats competing for food scraps. The chained prisoners could scarcely move in their floor-fastened shackles, and then only in concert. And they could not escape the mind-curdling din of their fellow prisoners, a confused manic chorus of despair. 

- David Ruhe  (‘Robe of Light: The Persian Years of the Supreme Prophet Bahá’u’lláh 1817-1853)

Bahá’u’lláh was chained with five other Babís, including His nephew

At His side, chained with Him, were five other Bábís, including His nephew Mahmúd [1] and Hájí Mírzá Jání, the merchant of Káshán who had become the historian of the Cause; their fetters were locked together with heavy bolts and screws, the chains fastened to the floor. His clothing was in shreds, and from this appalling state there was no prospect of relief. 

- David Ruhe  (‘Robe of Light: The Persian Years of the Supreme Prophet Bahá’u’lláh 1817-1853)

[1] Mahmúd, was the son of Baha’u’llah’s half-brother, Mírzá Muhammad-'Alí. On his release from Siyah-Chal he is reported to have became a follower of Azal.