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)
