What, then—might we not consider—has, in the face of so
complete and ignominious a rejection, happened, and is still happening, in the
course, and particularly in the closing years, of this, the first Bahá’í
century, a century fraught with such tumultuous sufferings and violent outrages
for the persecuted Faith of Bahá’u’lláh? Empires fallen in dust, kingdoms
subverted, dynasties extinguished, royalty besmirched, kings assassinated,
poisoned, driven into exile, subjugated in their own realms, whilst the few
remaining thrones are trembling with the repercussions of the fall of their
fellows.
This process, so gigantic, so catastrophic, may be said to
have had its inception on that memorable night when, in an obscure corner of
Shíráz, the Báb, in the presence of the First Letter to believe in Him,
revealed the first chapter of His celebrated commentary on the Súrih of Joseph
(The Qayyúm-i-Asmá), in which He trumpeted His Call to the sovereigns and
princes of the earth. It passed from incubation to visible manifestation when
Bahá’u’lláh’s prophecies, enshrined for all time in the Súriy-i-Haykal, and
uttered before Napoleon III’s dramatic downfall and the self-imposed
imprisonment of Pope Pius IX in the Vatican, were fulfilled. It gathered
momentum when, in the days of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Great War extinguished the
Romanov, the Hohenzollern, and Hapsburg dynasties, and converted powerful
time-honored monarchies into republics. It was further accelerated, soon after
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing, by the demise of the effete Qájár dynasty in Persia,
and the stupendous collapse of both the Sultanate and the Caliphate. It is
still operating, under our very eyes, as we behold the fate which, in the
course of this colossal and ravaging struggle, is successively overtaking the
crowned heads of the European continent. Surely, no man, contemplating
dispassionately the manifestations of this relentless revolutionizing process,
within comparatively so short a time, can escape the conclusion that the last
hundred years may well be regarded, in so far as the fortunes of royalty are
concerned, as one of the most cataclysmic periods in the annals of mankind.
- Shoghi
Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)
The first period (1844–1853), centers around the gentle, the
youthful and irresistible person of the Báb, matchless in His meekness,
imperturbable in His serenity, magnetic in His utterance, unrivaled in the
dramatic episodes of His swift and tragic ministry. It begins with the
Declaration of His Mission, culminates in His martyrdom, and ends in a
veritable orgy of religious massacre revolting in its hideousness. It is
characterized by nine years of fierce and relentless contest, whose theatre was
the whole of Persia, in which above ten thousand heroes laid down their lives,
in which two sovereigns of the Qájár dynasty and their wicked ministers
participated, and which was supported by the entire Shi‘ah ecclesiastical
hierarchy, by the military resources of the state, and by the implacable
hostility of the masses. 
