…the fate that has overtaken those kings, ministers and
ecclesiastics, in the East as well as in the West, who have, at various stages
of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry, either deliberately persecuted His Cause, or have
neglected to heed the warnings He had uttered, or have failed in their manifest
duty to respond to His summons or to accord Him and His message the treatment
they deserved, particular attention…
Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, who with Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh was the
author of the calamities heaped upon Bahá’u’lláh, and was himself responsible
for three decrees of banishment against the Prophet; who had been stigmatized,
in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, as occupying the “throne of tyranny,” and whose fall had
been prophesied in the Lawḥ-i-Fu’ád, was deposed in consequence of a palace
revolution, was condemned by a fatvá (sentence) of the Muftí in his own
capital, was four days later assassinated (1876), and was succeeded by a nephew
who was declared to be an imbecile. The war of 1877–78 emancipated eleven
million people from the Turkish yoke; Adrianople was occupied by the Russian
forces; the empire itself was dissolved as a result of the war of 1914–18; the
Sultanate was abolished; a republic was proclaimed; and a rulership that had
endured above six centuries was ended.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
