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March 9, 2018

Summer of 1849 to summer of 1850: “one of the most glorious chapters ever recorded” in the bloodstained history of the Bábí Faith

The… year from the summer of 1849 to the summer of 1850, witnessed a number of signal events in the ministry of the Báb:
  • May 1849 had marked the termination of the eleven-month-long Mazindaran upheaval at Shaykh Tabarsi and the martyrdom of Quddus, the last Letter of the Living and the foremost disciple of the Báb.
  • Persecution of the Babis erupted with unprecedented ferocity in the opening months of 1850:
    • In Tihran occurred the episode of the Seven Martyrs.
    • In Yazd, Siyyid Yahyay-i-Darabi (Vahid) became embroiled in agitation against the Faith of the Báb and had to leave, but in Nayriz (in the province of Fars in the south of Persia), he and his companions were surrounded, and fell eventually to treachery on the part of his opponents.
    • At Zanjan, in the north, the Shi'ih 'ulama incited the people against the redoubtable Mulla Muhammad Ali (Hujjat), a conflict that was to continue to the end of the year, with an outcome equally tragic.
  • Finally, the Báb, Himself, was martyred in July 1850 in Tabriz. 
(Adapted from ‘Baha’u’llah, the King of Glory’, by Hand of the Cause Hassan Balyuzi)