With the Báb’s return to Shíráz the initial collision of
irreconcilable forces may be said to have commenced. Already the energetic and
audacious Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Basṭámí, one of the Letters of the Living, “the first
to leave the House of God (Shíráz) and the first to suffer for His sake,” who,
in the presence of one of the leading exponents of Shí‘ah Islám, the far-famed
Shaykh Muhammad Hasan, had audaciously asserted that from the pen of his
new-found Master within the space of forty-eight hours, verses had streamed
that equalled in number those of the Qur’án, which it took its Author
twenty-three years to reveal, had been excommunicated, chained, disgraced,
imprisoned, and, in all probability, done to death.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes
By’)