An Analysis of the Murder of Azalīs by the Bahāʾīs

 

 

Appendix D: An Analysis of the Murder of Azalīs by the Bahāʾīs[1]

 

 

Observe how utterly heedless these souls are! The Sun of Meanings (shams-i-maʿānī), in the utmost loftiness of grandeur and majesty, has risen and shone forth from the horizon of Reality; yet they have not esteemed him even so much as that which issues from the loins of a cow ~ Bahāʾuʾllāh[2]

 

...ملاحظه نما كه چه قدر غافلند اين نفوس كه شمس معانی با منتهی علوّ عظمت و جلال از افق حقيقت طالع و مشرق شده، او را به قدر مَا يُظْهِرُ مِنْ صُلْبِ الْبَقَرِ هم ندانسته اند...

 

 

O phlebotomist of the Divine Oneness, throb like an artery in the body of Contingent World, and drink from the blood of the Block of Heedlessness, for that he turned aside from the aspect of thy Lord, the Merciful ~ Bahāʾuʾllāh[3]

 

إِنَّ يَا فَصَّادَ الأَحَدِيَّةِ كُنْ نَابِضًا كَالشِّرْيَانِ فِي بَدَنِ الإِمْكَانِ وَاشْرَبْ مِنْ دَمِّ جُرْثُومِ الغَفْلَةِ لِأَنَّهُ أَعْرَضَ عَنْ طَلْعَةِ رَبِّكَ الرَّحْمٰنِ!

 

 

 

 

With Bahāʾuʾllāh’s 1867-68 CE proclamations, first, to being the “Ḥusaynic Return” and then soon thereafter to the station of man yuẓhiruhu’Llāh (the Bābī messiah, He whom God shall make Manifest), a number of leading Bābīs turned away from him and rose in opposition to his claims. Some of these opponents were subsequently killed.[4] The Azalīs have consistently attributed these killings to the Bahāʾīs, maintaining that they were carried out on Bahāʾuʾllāh’s explicit orders. Although the Bahāʾīs have acknowledged that some of these killings indeed occurred, they have invariably denied any involvement on the part of Bahāʾuʾllāh. The question is therefore not whether acts of lethal violence occurred within the context of the Azalī–Bahāʾī schism (because they obviously did), but rather who bore responsibility for them, whether directly or by instigation, and what evidentiary weight should be assigned to the competing accounts preserved by the two parties. This distinction is especially important because later Bahāʾī historiography has tended to isolate individual killings from the wider struggle for authority in which they occurred, whereas Azalī sources present them as components of a sustained campaign against prominent opponents of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims instigated by Bahāʾuʾllāh himself. While neither representation usually can simply be assumed at the outset, at least one primary Bahāʾī source itself (which we analyze below in the final section of this appendix) largely validates the Azalī position and vindicates by direct inference its account. Since the text of Tanbīh al-nāʾimīn already touched on some of these killings and explicitly identifies Bahāʾuʾllāh as their instigator, here we will examine the matter closely. But before we do, some general context is necessary.

Now, the claim of the Azalīs begins with the basic premise that Bahāʾuʾllāh’s earliest adherents were drawn not from the leading Bābīs but mostly from the unlettered and lumpen ranks[5] of that community with the insinuation being that such individuals were prone to violence by virtue of their social pedigree. Thus Mīrzā Muḥammad-Ḥusayn Mutavallī-Bāshī Qummī, a prominent opponent of Bahāʾuʾllāh, collectively derided his early followers as “the tailor” (khayyāṭ-bāshī), “the barber” (dallāk-bāshī), “the dyer” (rangraz-bāshī), and “the carpenter” (najjār-bāshī), adding: “How many of these believers [of Bahāʾuʾllāh] shall I name to you with the epithet ‘so-and-so-bāshī’?”[6] Likewise, Badīʿih Mirʾātī Nūrī lists a number of prominent Azalīs who had mocked the Bahāʾīs by saying  Bahāʾuʾllāh had only managed to attract “the bāshīs,”[7] such as the barber (dallāk-bāshī), the water-carrier (saqqā-bāshī), and the soap-maker (ṣābūn-bāshī).[8]

With that, it should be noted here that the force of this rhetoric lies not in the occupations themselves but in their polemical deployment. Azalī writers invoked such occupational titles to contrast what they presented as the socially modest and religiously unlettered composition of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s earliest following with the learned and prominent Bābīs whom they claimed remained loyal to Ṣubḥ-i-Azal and thus were more refined. These claims form part of the partisan literature of the schism and must therefore be approached critically. However, more fundamentally, the polemical force of these characterizations lay not in any disparagement of manual occupations as such, but in the social contrast they were intended to evoke. Azalī writers depict Bahāʾuʾllāh—a member of the Nūrī aristocracy and landed gentry—as having secured the allegiance not of the leading Bābī scholars and intellectuals but primarily of socially humbler and less educated followers, whom they insinuate were more readily swayed by his aristocratic lineage, personal charisma, and claims to authority. The argument thus serves a broader rhetorical purpose: to suggest that the Bahāʾī movement rested at its inception less upon the assent of the Bābī elite than upon the loyalty of a socially subordinate constituency easily swayed, vulnerable, and thus manipulatable.

As such, this line of argument must also be situated within the broader social dynamics of Qājār era Iranian society (and subsequently a minority Iranian subculture in exile in Ottoman Iraq, Turkey, then Palestine and Cyprus). Although the Bābī movement drew adherents from a wide spectrum of society, the patronage of members of notable families, the landed elite, and the learned classes carried considerable symbolic and practical weight in a feudal society structured by hierarchy and deference. As the eldest surviving son of Mīrzā ꜤAbbās Buzurg Nūrī, Bahāʾuʾllāh possessed a pedigree that distinguished him from most Bābī leaders. From an Azalī perspective, this aristocratic standing furnished a plausible explanation for his ability to attract followers outside the established Bābī leadership. Their polemic accordingly implied that many of his early adherents, particularly those of more modest social and educational backgrounds, were influenced less by theological or spiritual convictions than by the prestige, patronage, and personal authority traditionally associated with elite Qājār households. This characterization illustrates the extent to which disputes over religious legitimacy in this schism were originally framed through the social assumptions and hierarchical conventions of nineteenth-century Iranian society itself, where inherited status and noble lineage continued to command substantial cultural authority.[9] In other words, the accusation revolves around the insinuation that Bahāʾuʾllāh had manufactured a cult of personality around himself based on his social pedigree and status.

The same social logic also helps explain why the Azalīs regarded the contrast between Bahāʾuʾllāh and Ṣubḥ-i-Azal as rhetorically significant. Although both belonged to the Nūrī family, they did not occupy equivalent positions within its internal hierarchy. Bahāʾuʾllāh, as the eldest surviving son of Mīrzā ʿAbbās Buzurg Nūrī by one of the principal women of the household (namely, Khadījah Khānūm), embodied the prestige and authority traditionally associated with the senior line of a prominent Qājār notable family. Ṣubḥ-i-Azal, by contrast, was a much younger son whose Kurdish mother (that is, Kūchak Khānūm Kirmānshāhī, whom the Bahāʾī Stephen Lambden labels a mere “concubine”)[10] had died in childbirth and whose position within the extended Nūrī household was consequently less distinguished.[11] In the hierarchical social world of nineteenth-century Iran, such distinctions of birth and maternal lineage were not without consequence. From the standpoint of the Azalī critique, therefore, Bahāʾuʾllāh’s superior aristocratic pedigree, access to established networks of patronage, and greater social visibility furnished a sociological explanation for why artisans, tradesmen, and other members of the lower urban strata might have gravitated towards him rather than remained loyal to the authority of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal.

This explanation may reflect the extent to which the earliest interpretations of the schism were themselves framed through the idiom of lineage, household rank, and inherited social capital characteristic of Qājār society. It is also in this light that Bahāʾuʾllāh’s off the cuff, disparaging comment that was cited in Appendix B.2 itself may be contextualized: “Man (Baba) this Yahya of ours is not worthy of this rank!”[12] Kirmānī and Rūḥī also framed matters this way in Hasht bihisht: “And since the aforementioned [meaning, Bahāʾuʾllāh], from the beginning of his life, had associated extensively with every class and persuasion—even with sodomites, dervishes, officials of the state, poets, and gnostics—he had consequently acquired a certain breadth of disposition (wusʿat-i-mashrab) and laxity in religion (rikhāvat dar madhhab), as is the habit of persons of this sort.”[13] Whatever weight one assigns to this explicitly polemical Azalī construction, its significance for the present inquiry lies in the social mechanism it proposes. This is because the contest between Bahāʾuʾllāh and Ṣubḥ-i-Azal appears not to have been fought solely through rival interpretations of Bābī scripture or competing assertions of charismatic authority; it unfolded within existing networks of kinship, patronage, personal allegiance, social familiarity, and material dependence. Bahāʾuʾllāh’s seniority within the Nūrī household, his aristocratic bearing and connections, and, if the testimony of Hasht bihisht is credited even in broad outline, his longstanding facility in moving among markedly different social circles, would have constituted considerable practical advantages once the contest for the allegiance of the Bābī community became overt. Yet precisely because allegiance was personal and relational as well as doctrinal, those advantages had their obverse: prominent Bābīs who rejected Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims were not merely dissenters from a theological proposition, but potentially formidable nodes of an alternative network of authority centered upon Ṣubḥ-i-Azal. It is against this combined background of doctrinal rupture, competing personal authority, and rival networks of allegiance that the identities—and subsequent fates—of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s leading Bābī opponents acquire their particular historical importance.

Yet what emerges from this development bears a striking structural resemblance to what the modern sociology of organized crime identifies as a mafia-type formation. The comparison concerns a particular configuration of power: the concentration of personal authority around a dominant patron; the formation of a tightly bound network of loyal dependants; the subordination of formal or doctrinal norms to personal allegiance; and, most importantly, the alleged employment of intimidation and selective violence against competing centers of authority. If the pattern alleged by the Azalī sources—and partially conceded at the level of the killings themselves by Bahāʾī historiography—is substantially correct, the resulting structure approximates what later criminological literature would describe as an extra-legal system of governance: a network in which protection, loyalty, discipline, and coercion become mutually reinforcing instruments for establishing and maintaining authority. The important point is therefore that the social mechanism attributed to the militant nucleus of the early Bahāʾī community resembles the mechanism through which mafia-type organizations historically converted personal patronage into coercive collective power.

The parallel becomes particularly suggestive when placed beside the emergence of organized-crime cultures in Sicily and, subsequently, the United States and elsewhere during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such formations did not ordinarily begin as bureaucratically organized corporations devoted exclusively to illicit commerce. They emerged from pre-existing structures of patronage, kinship, neighborhood allegiance, personal dependence, protection, and reputation, within which violence supplied an alternative means of enforcing obligations and resolving contests for authority. The mafioso’s power consequently rested as much upon the credible possibility of violence as upon its continual exercise: exemplary acts against defectors, informants, competitors, or challengers could discipline a much larger social environment. Letizia Paoli accordingly emphasizes secrecy, fraternity, loyalty, and violence as constitutive features of the classic Sicilian and Calabrian mafia associations, while Federico Varese stresses the provision—and potentially the predatory imposition—of extra-legal protection. The comparison with the violent phase of the Azalī–Bahāʾī schism therefore lies at the level of political sociology: in both instances a personal network could potentially harden into a coercive fraternity in which allegiance to the leader and group increasingly superseded competing norms, while violence against strategically important adversaries served not merely to remove particular individuals but to alter the balance of authority within the community as a whole.[14] On one level, this may also explain why a sizeable number of Bābīs at the time rapidly switched allegiances from Ṣubḥ-i-Azal to Bahāʾuʾllāh, with any theological considerations being secondary to the overall development.

 

The Azalī opponents of Bahāʾuʾllāh

That stated, among those leading Bābīs who mounted sustained opposition to Bahāʾuʾllāh were:

1. Ḥājj Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī (d. 1288 AH/1871–72 CE)

Affectionally named Abū Waḥīd (the father of the One) by Ṣubḥ-i-Azal, Ḥājj Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī was among the foremost prominent Bābīs during the leadership of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal[15] and, in the Bahāʾī sources, he is described as “the first refuge of the Azalīs.”[16] Appointed by Ṣubḥ-i-Azal as His Witness in Baghdad and Karbalāʾ,[17] he was already a resolute antagonist of Bahāʾuʾllāh before the latter’s public declaration,[18] and thereafter became one of his principal adversaries after it. Indeed, Bahāʾuʾllāh himself attributes Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s opposition largely to his influence.[19] According to the Azalī sources (as reiterated in Tanbīh al-nāʾimīn) Bahāʾuʾllāh treated Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī with marked honor and deference during the Baghdad period before publicly advancing his own claim while his position was still insecure. Only after consolidating a following did he openly show his hostility towards him.[20] In the Bahāʾī accounts, Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī is excoriated with such epithets as “the Sāmirī,”[21] “the wicked one” (khabīth),[22] and “the vile one” (laʾīm),[23] and is consigned to “the lowest pit of hell.”[24] He also composed a treatise in refutation of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims.[25]

2. Mīrzā Muḥammad-Hādī Qazvīnī

Mīrzā Muḥammad-Hādī Qazvīnī was among the Bāb’s first eighteen disciples or “Letters of the Living” (ḥurūf-i-ḥayy),[26] and, during the period of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s concealed residence in Baghdad, was appointed by Him as one of the witnesses of the Bayān.[27] Simultaneously he also assumed oversight over the Bābīs of Qazvīn. According to the Azalī accounts, Bahāʾuʾllāh consistently treated Qazvīnī with marked respect before the foundations of his own movement had been firmly established.[28] Qazvīnī, however, was to some degree already aware of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s covert manoeuvrings and periodically opposed him and voiced his objections.[29] But once Bahāʾuʾllāh openly disclosed his claims and encountered Qazvīnī’s opposition, he referred to him in distinctly hostile terms.[30]

3. Mullā Muḥammad-Jaʿfar Nirāqī (d. 1286 AH/1872-3 CE)

Mullā Muḥammad-Jaʿfar Nirāqī was likewise among those prominent Azalī Bābīs of the era to oppose Bahāʾuʾllāh. During the period of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s concealed residence in Baghdad, like Qazvīnī he was also appointed by Him as one of the witnesses of the Bayān.[31] From the earliest period of Ṣubḥ-i Azal’s residence in Baghdad, Nirāqī opposed Bahāʾuʾllāh and raised objections against him. Bahāʾuʾllāh, for his part, continued as far as possible to treat him cautiously and with outward respect, apparently to avoid an open confrontation.[32] After Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claim became public, Nirāqī opposed it vigorously and composed Tadhkirāt al-ghāfilīn (Remonstrance to the Heedless Ones) in refutation of his claims.[33] Bahāʾuʾllāh, in turn, referred to Nirāqī—who suffered from a perceptible lameness—as “the Lame One” (al-aʿraj).[34] Azalī sources generally regard Nirāqī’s work as one of the most important early refutations of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims.[35]

4. Mīrzā Muḥammad-Ḥusayn Mutavallī-Bāshī Qummī

This individual, mentioned previously, was a notable Bābī who, according to the testimony of at least one of his co-religionists, enjoyed the distinct regard of the Bāb.[36] From the period in which Bahāʾuʾllāh was allegedly manoeuvring privately to prepare the ground for his new claim, Mutavallī-Bāshī Qummī stood among his opponents,[37] and his opposition continued after that claim became public. Mīrzā Mūsā, Bahāʾuʾllāh’s brother, wrote to him inviting him to accept Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims and teachings. As indicated before, Mutavallī-Bāshī’s reply survives, and Azalī sources number it among the works of those who remained steadfastly loyal to Ṣubḥ-i-Azal and rejected Bahāʾuʾllāh.[38]

5. Mullā Rajab-ʿAlī Qahīr (d. 1286 AH/1869-70 CE)

According to the Azalī accounts, Mullā Rajab-ʿAlī Qahīr was another Bābī who enjoyed the esteem of the Bāb.[39] He was also the brother of the Bāb’s second (“temporary”) wife.[40] During Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s concealed residence in Baghdad, he too was appointed among the witnesses of the Bayān.[41] Following the disclosure of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s new claim, Qahīr was reportedly the first to compose a book specifically refuting it. A copy of this work, in the hand of Mīrzā Muṣṭafā Kātib, was catalogued by E. G. Browne under the title Kitāb-i-mullā rajab-ʿalī-qahīr and is preserved among his Bābī MSS collection at Cambridge University.[42]

6. Mullā ʿAlī-Muḥammad Sirāj (d. 1284 AH/1867 CE)

Mullā ʿAlī-Muḥammad Sirāj was the brother of the abovementioned (likewise a brother to the Bāb’s second “temporary” wife) and was also appointed by Ṣubḥ-i Azal as one of the witnesses of the Bayān.[43] After Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claim became public, Sirāj also composed a treatise refuting him.[44] A lengthy letter from Bahāʾuʾllāh responding to his questions is also extant.[45]

7. Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī (d. 1326 AH/1908-09 CE)

In the generation following those Bābīs named above, Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī appears to have enjoyed a particular esteem in the eyes of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal and was expected to assume the leadership of the Bābīs following the latter’s death; he nevertheless predeceased him.[46] Among Dawlatābādī’s works was Faṣl’ul-kalām,[47] the autograph manuscript of which he sent to Bahāʾuʾllāh.[48] Drawing exclusively upon the  Bayān, the work seeks to demonstrate that Bahāʾuʾllāh could be neither the Bāb’s Promised One nor the genuine “author of a religion” (ṣāḥib-i-dīn). Dawlatābādī consequently became the object of pronounced hostility in Bahāʾuʾllāh’s writings, where he was designated by such epithets as “the heedless one” (ghāfil), “a heap of mud” (gil-pār), and “the essence of error” (jawhar-i ḍalāl).[49]

Beyond these figures were later Azalī writers such as Ḥājj Shaykh Hādī Najmābādī (d. 1320 AH/1902 CE), Mīrzā Muṣṭafā Kātib (d. 1339 AH/1920–21 CE), Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kirmānī (d. 1314 AH/1896 CE), Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī (d. 1314 AH/1896 CE), Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī (d. 1314 AH /1896 CE), Shaykh Mahdī Baḥr al-ʿUlūm Kirmānī, and ʿAbd’ul-Khāliq Sidihʾī Isfahānī (d. 1336 AH/1917–18 CE), among others, who continued to compose refutations of Bahāʾuʾllāh in subsequent years. Nabavi identifies Ḥājj Shaykh Hādī Najmābādī (d. 1320AH/1902 CE) in particular as one of the witnesses of the Bayān who devoted substantial attention to criticism of the Bahāʾīs in his Taḥrīr al-ʿuqalāʾ (The Liberation of the Discerning). Mīrzā Muṣṭafā Kātib composed one complete treatise of refutation—and possibly a second.[50] As already noted in this volume, two refutations by Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kirmānī were appended to Tanbīh al-nāʾimīn, and Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī and Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī, for their part, subjected Bahāʾuʾllāh to an extensive and severe critique in their Hasht bihisht as well as in Kirmānī’s earlier travelogue we provided in translation as Appendix C. At a later date, ʿAbd’ul-Khāliq Sidihʾī Isfahānī transformed his will and testament into an extended refutation of Bahāʾuʾllāh;[51] this, while Siyyid Mahdī Sarlatī—who, after Yaḥyā Dawlatābādī, became a leading Azalī figure in Iṣfahān—adopted a similar position.

The Azalī account of the killing of prominent Bābīs by the Bahāʾīs: The Azalī list of the slain

The Azalī sources repeatedly allege that a number of the followers of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal were killed by Bahāʾīs. Figures including Mullā Muḥammad-Jaʿfar Nirāqī, ʿIzzīyyih Khānum, Fāṭima Khānum (the Bāb’s second wife), Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī, and Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī and Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī all attributed the orders for these killings to Bahāʾuʾllāh himself personally. Dawlatābādī gives the following list of Azalīs allegedly killed by the Bahāʾīs, as follows: Āqā Abuʾl-Qāsim Kāshānī, Mīrzā Muḥammad-Riḍā Iṣfahānī, Mullā Rajab-ʿAlī Qahīr, Mullā ʿAlī-Muḥammad Sirāj, Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kāshānī, Mīrzā Buzurg Kirmānshāhī, Siyyid Ismāʿīl Zavāraʾī, Siyyid ʿAlī-i-ʿArab, Ḥājj Siyyid Muḥammad Iṣfahānī, and Āqā Jān Kaj-Kulāh. He further identifies Nāṣir, the Arab, and Muḥammad-Muṣṭafā Baghdādī as the perpetrators and states that they acted upon Bahāʾuʾllāh’s explicit orders.[52] These sources further allege that certain Bahāʾīs attempted to kill Mullā Muḥammad-Jaʿfar Nirāqī together with his son, Shaykh Muḥammad-Mahdī Sharīf Kāshānī, but that the attempt failed.[53]

Anti-Bahāʾī Refutations as a motive for the killings in the Azalī accounts

Among those named above, Siyyid Muḥammad Iṣfahānī, Mullā Rajab-ʿAlī Qahīr, Mullā ʿAlī-Muḥammad Sirāj, and Mullā Muḥammad-Jaʿfar Nirāqī actively opposed Bahāʾuʾllāh and composed treatises in refutation of his claims. The Azalī sources attribute the killings of Sirāj (1284 AH/1867 CE) and Qahīr (1286 AH/1896-70 CE) specifically to their authored refutations against Bahāʾuʾllāh, adding that Sirāj was killed shortly after completing his treatise.[54] They identify Nāṣir, the Arab—named below as Qahīr’s killer in Karbalāʾ—and a certain ʿAbd’ul-Karīm as the killer of Sirāj in Baghdad.[55] The Bahāʾī sources themselves also acknowledge that these two men were killed by Bahāʾīs.[56] According to the Azalī account, Nāṣir, the Arab, the killer of Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kāshānī, and ʿAbd’ul-Karīm were in all probability among the killers of Siyyid Muḥammad Iṣfahānī.

Now, Nirāqī composed his Tadhkirat al-ghāfilīn in 1284 AH/1867-8 CE.[57] The Azalī accounts nevertheless maintain that, even before Bahāʾuʾllāh openly disclosed his claim, Nirāqī had already heard intimations of it in Baghdad and had begun compiling evidence to refute it. Some of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s followers are said to have contemplated killing him during the Baghdad era itself, although Bahāʾuʾllāh himself prevented them from doing so. Even so, Nirāqī and his son, Sharīf Kāshānī, remained wary until Bahāʾuʾllāh’s departure from Baghdad was effected at the end of 1279 AH/1863 CE.[58]

The Azalī accounts regarding the motives for killing the opponents of Bahāʾuʾllāh

According to Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī, Āqā Abuʾl-Qāsim Kāshānī first informed Ṣubḥ-i-Azal of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s covert manoeuvrings against Him during the early Baghdad period; upon becoming aware of them, Ṣubḥ-i- Azal repudiated Bahāʾuʾllāh and the latter thereupon withdrew to Kurdistan.[59] Mīrzā Muḥammad-Riḍā Isfahānī (maternal uncle of Siyyid Muḥammad Iṣfahānī), one of the witnesses of the Bayān,[60] was likewise ranked among Bahāʾuʾllāh’s opponents before the public disclosure of his claims.[61] His killing is attributed to this hostility, and his nephew identifies him as the first Bābī killed at the hands of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s followers in Baghdad.[62] Dawlatābādī further states that, after the disclosure of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims, Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kāshānī succeeded in turning a number of Bābīs in Baghdad away from him and was killed for that reason.[63] Mīrzā Buzurg Kirmānshāhī was similarly among Bahāʾuʾllāh’s opponents from the period,[64] and Dawlatābādī attributes his killing to his denunciations of Bahāʾuʾllāh.[65] Dawlatābādī also alleges that Bahāʾuʾllāh’s followers killed Siyyid Ismāʿīl Zavāraʾī and subsequently circulated the false explanation that, unable to bear the greatness of “Bahāʾuʾllāh’s Cause,” he had taken his own life.[66] Likewise Āqā Jān Kaj-Kulāh was among those companions of Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī killed at Acre in 1288 AH/1871 CE.

Ḥājj Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī and the three other Azalīs

When Bahāʾuʾllāh fully and openly proclaimed his claim in Edirne in late 1283 AH/1867 CE,[67] Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī was Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s principal supporter.[68] Approximately two years later, when Bahāʾuʾllāh and a group of his followers were exiled to Acre by order of the Ottoman government, Isfahānī and three other Azalīs—Āqā Jān Beg Kaj-Kulāh, Mīrzā Riḍā-Qulī Tafrishī, and the latter’s brother, Mīrzā Naṣr’ullāh Tafrishī—were likewise sent with them. According to the Azalī account, one of these four men, Mīrzā Naṣr’ullāh, was poisoned and killed on Bahāʾuʾllāh’s direct orders before the departure for Acre.[69] They further maintain that, following their arrival there, a group of Bahāʾīs, including ʿAbdu’l-Bahāʾ, went to the residence of the remaining three on Bahāʾuʾllāh’s orders and killed them.[70] The Azalīs further claim that one of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s wives, Badr-i-Jahān Khānum—the sister of the two Tafrishī brothers—was present when the killings occurred and subsequently reported that Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī had been killed personally by ʿAbdu’l-Bahāʾ.[71] Significantly, Bahāʾī sources independently attest to Badr-i-Jahān Khānum’s presence in Acre at the time.[72] The Bāb’s second “temporary” wife—who, on Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s instructions, had married Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī in Baghdad—maintained that Bahāʾuʾllāh’s enmity toward Isfahānī originated in his own unsuccessful attempt to marry her.[73] Bahāʾī sources likewise acknowledge that Isfahānī and his two companions were killed by the followers of Bahāʾuʾllāh, although they do not include ʿAbdu’l-Bahāʾ among the perpetrators and maintain that the killings were contrary to Bahāʾuʾllāh’s wishes. According to the Bahāʾī account, Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī and his companions had persistently harassed the Bahāʾīs of Acre until the patience of a group of Bahāʾīs was exhausted, whereupon they undertook to kill them.[74]

According to Fāḍil Māzandarānī, these Azalīs—who had left no means untried in their hostility toward Bahāʾuʾllāh—were, during 1288 AH/1871 CE, in Acre, “overtaken by divine wrath (qahr-i-ilāhī) and perished at the hands of seven [Bahāʾīs], namely: Muḥammad-ʿAlī Salmānī Iṣfahānī, ʿAbd’ul-Karīm Kharrāṭ Iṣfahānī, Āqā Aḥmad Kāshī and his two sons, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, as well as Āqā Ḥusayn Āshchī Kāshī and Muḥammad-Jaʿfar Yazdī.”[75] As noted above, according to the Azalī account, ʿAbd’ul-Karīm—probably the same individual—had previously killed Mullā ʿAlī-Muḥammad Sirāj in Iraq. Siyyid Mahdī Dahajī,  Bahāʾuʾllāh’s prominent apostle, writes that these Azalīs circulated false and offensive statements concerning the Messengers of God, which they attributed to Bahāʾuʾllāh. According to Dahajī, certain Bahāʾīs consequently resolved to kill them, but were restrained by Bahāʾuʾllāh. A group of his followers nevertheless disregarded his instructions and proceeded to kill these Azalīs anyway.[76]

Following the killings, the authorities in Acre arrested not only the seven perpetrators but also most of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s other followers. Bahāʾuʾllāh and ʿAbdu’l-Bahāʾ were likewise imprisoned for three nights.[77] All were subsequently released, however, with the result that, in the words of the Bahāʾī account, “every thorn and worthless obstruction in ʿAkkā was swept from before the feet of the friends (aḥibbāʾ), and the existing impediments and obstacles were removed.”[78]

Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kāshānī

Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kāshānī was the brother of the prominent Bābī Ḥājjī Mīrzā Jānī Kāshānī (d. 1852 CE), the earliest historian of the Bābī movement and the author of Nuqṭat’ul-kāf.[79] Bahāʾī sources likewise identify Aḥmad Kāshānī as one of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s opponents from the period preceding the disclosure of his claim.[80] According to the Azalī accounts, when Bahāʾuʾllāh fully and publicly proclaimed his claim in Edirne, Ṣubḥ-i-Azal commissioned Aḥmad Kāshānī to return to Baghdad and prevent the Bābīs there from adhering to Bahāʾuʾllāh.[81] As noted above, he reportedly succeeded in dissuading a number of them. Shaykh Muḥammad-Mahdī Sharīf Kāshānī, who had been in Aḥmad Kāshānī’s company shortly before his death, left a detailed account of the killing. He identifies the perpetrator as Nāṣir, the Arab, a follower of Bahāʾuʾllāh, and states that Nāṣir had already killed several others.[82] As noted above, Azalī sources also identify Nāṣir, the Arab, as the killer of Mullā Rajab-ʿAlī Qahīr in Iraq. Fāḍil Māzandarānī reproduces essentially the same account in abbreviated form, stating that Aḥmad Kāshānī was killed by the gun (tufang) of “Nāṣir, the brave Baghdadi youth.” He nevertheless maintains that Nāṣir, like the other perpetrators, acted on his own initiative and without Bahāʾuʾllāh’s authorization.[83]

 

Siyyid ʿAlī -i-ʿArab

Siyyid ʿAlī-i-ʿArab was among those who advanced a theophanic claim following the death of the Bāb. By the time Bahāʾuʾllāh publicly proclaimed his own claim, he appears to have numbered among the supporters of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal. The Bahāʾī sources state that, in Tabrīz, he “laid claim to the station of guardianship (wilāyat), spiritual degrees, inner workings, miracles and supernatural feats, the operation of the [alchemical] elixir, and the power to subjugate spirits, and thereby deceived a number of people,” while simultaneously “promoting Bābism and insulting Bahāʾism.” Three Bahāʾī missionaries confronted him and, following debate and discussion, Siyyid ʿAlī-i-ʿArab proposed that they engage in mubāhala (mutual imprecation), which subsequently took place. According to the Bahāʾī account, “at midnight on the second night of the mubāhala, the Siyyid...in his house...was strangled in his bed by the hand of vengeance and perished.” His associates identified the killer as a Bahāʾī and lodged a complaint with the authorities in Tabrīz; the affair ultimately resulted in the killing of that Bahāʾī.[84] One of the three missionaries was Mīrzā Muṣṭafā Nirāqī, who ranked among the foremost missionaries of Bahāʾuʾllāh.[85] Another prominent Bahāʾī source, however, provides a considerably more explicit account of Siyyid ʿAlī-i-ʿArab’s death: “In the course of conversation, with reference to the Blessed Beauty (jamāl-i-mubārak, i.e. Bahāʾuʾllāh), Siyyid ʿAlī-i-ʿArab spoke ill [of him]; these three persons [including Mīrzā Muṣṭafā Nirāqī] rose up and seized him, threw a shawl around his neck, strangled him, and departed.”[86] Some time after the death of “Mīrzā Muṣṭafā, the martyr, Nirāqī,” Mīrzā Āqā Jān Kāshānī (Khādim’ullāh), Bahāʾuʾllāh’s amanuensis, married Mīrzā Muṣṭafā’s widow on Bahāʾuʾllāh’s instructions.[87]

Azalī sources likewise identify Sayyid ʿAlī-i-ʿArab as one of the Bāb’s earliest followers and state that he was killed by the balāʿima, a derogatory Azalī designation for the Bahāʾīs.[88] They identify Mīrzā Muṣṭafā Nirāqī and another Bahāʾī as his killers.[89] According to these accounts, Ṣubḥ-i-Azal subsequently composed a visitation tablet (ziyārat-nāma) for Siyyid ʿAlī-i-ʿArab in which he greatly exalted the latter’s station.[90]

 

 

Violence and murder by the followers of Bahāʾuʾllāh in Baghdad, and Bahāʾuʾllāh’s response

Tanbīh al-nāʾimīn speaks of the exasperation of “the entire populace of Baghdad” and “all the governors of the Ottoman dominions” at the “wickedness and ignorance” of certain followers of Bahāʾuʾllāh, whom it characterizes as being “man-devouring ghouls” (ghūlān-i-ādam-kush) and “human-slaughtering blood-drinkers” (khūn-khwārān-i-insān-kush).[91] In connection with the killing of several of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s opponents and the attribution to him of the orders for those killings, it further alleges that his disciples “tore a person to pieces in broad daylight in the midst of the auction-market (ḥarrāj), with dagger and dagger-blade (qama).”[92] Significantly, accounts of such conduct broadly consistent with these allegations also occur in Bahāʾī sources, which preserve instances of intimidation, physical violence, and even killing by some of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s followers in Baghdad during the years preceding the public disclosure of his claims. The first concerns one of “the shaykhs of the Shīʿī Kurds,” described as both a “gnostic” (ʿārif) and a “fanatic” (mutaʿaṣṣib), who enjoyed the confidence of the Kurdish community. According to the account, he “in the utmost rancour and obstinacy set about reviling, cursing, abusing, and inciting the rabble” against the Bābīs. On one occasion, he induced another person to insult Bahāʾuʾllāh as he passed by. Bahāʾuʾllāh then instructed one of the Bābīs to chastise (tanbīh) and discipline the offender, whereupon the Bābī “beat and chastised him fully” (ḍarb u taʾdīb-i-kāmil). News of the incident reached the influential shaykh. When the Bābī assailant subsequently appeared before him, the shaykh rebuked and attacked him, “chastising and admonishing him in a most complete fashion.” The assailant then appeared before Bahāʾuʾllāh, weeping and protesting the treatment he had received and complaining of the audacity now displayed toward the Bābīs. Bahāʾuʾllāh replied that he would send persons to investigate the affair and would himself chastise those found responsible.

The man who had originally been beaten, dissatisfied with Bahāʾuʾllāh’s intention to adjudicate the matter and impose punishment independently rather than refer it to the Persian consulate, regarded this as evidence of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s audacity and lodged a complaint with the consulate. A consular representative subsequently came to Bahāʾuʾllāh’s residence and questioned several Bābīs concerning the affair. They replied: “If the insolent ones do not abandon ill manners and slander, at the head of the bridge (sar-i-jisr)—the place of public passage—they shall receive their recompense, so that it may serve as a chastisement for others!” The consulate thereafter arrested and imprisoned both the influential shaykh and the Bābī assailant, although Bahāʾuʾllāh subsequently secured their release.[93] The incident is recorded among the events of 1273 AH/1856–57 CE, approximately a decade before the full public disclosure of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claim, under the heading “The Beginning of Agitation and Sedition in Baghdad.”[94]

The second example concerns Nāṣir the Arab, identified in both Azalī and Bahāʾī accounts as the killer of Ḥājj Mīrzā Aḥmad Kāshānī and, in Azalī sources, also as the killer of Mullā Rajab-ʿAlī Qahīr and several other Azalīs. As noted above, Sharīf Kāshānī states in his account of Aḥmad Kāshānī’s death that Nāṣir had previously killed several people. Bahāʾī sources preserve material that lends support to this assertion. According to their account, while Bahāʾuʾllāh was absent from Baghdad, one of his prominent intimates instructed one of his servants, “Nāṣir, the bold Arab youth,” to kill a particular man. Nāṣir encountered the intended victim in the bazaar accompanied by another man and, “in the intensity of zeal,” struck one of the two with a sword and killed the other with a pistol (ṭabancha). He then proceeded to a dwelling near Bahāʾuʾllāh’s residence, washed his sword, ascended to the upper storey, and occupied himself with “eating dates and smoking the water-pipe (qalyān).” The account records no subsequent attempt by Bahāʾuʾllāh to hold Nāṣir accountable. The episode is dated 1274 AH/1857–58 CE, approximately nine years before the full public disclosure of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims.[95]

The third example concerns the beating of a Shaykhī with a dagger-blade (qama) by one of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s followers. The Shaykhī, who had previously been the object of the assailant’s missionary efforts, reportedly behaved offensively and disrespectfully in public. In this instance, however, Bahāʾuʾllāh is said to have called the assailant to account. The incident is recorded for the year 1275 AH/1858–59 CE, approximately eight years before the full public disclosure of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims.[96]

The fourth example concerns a Bābī who addressed “improper words” to one of the pilgrims of Karbalāʾ. Bahāʾuʾllāh was reportedly angered and displeased by the incident and ordered the Bābīs to disperse, whereupon a number of them departed Baghdad. This episode is likewise recorded for the year 1275 AH/1858–59 CE, approximately eight years before the full public disclosure of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claim.[97]

The fifth example concerns the Persian consulate in Baghdad, who arrested a Bābī tradesman on a charge arising from offensive speech. The individual—apparently a merchant from whom the consulate had purchased goods—was the son of a Persian princess (shāhzāda khānum). Bahāʾuʾllāh ordered the Bābīs to keep their shops closed and sent a message to the Persian consul warning that, unless the prisoner were released, whatever befell the consul would have been brought upon his own head. The consul was reportedly so alarmed that he withdrew from Baghdad to Kāẓimayn and, on his own initiative, released both this Bābī and another Bābī prisoner. He subsequently wrote to Tehran complaining that the affair of the Bābīs had reached such a point that even a criminal could no longer be held in custody; a decree dismissing him from office followed. The episode is recorded for the year 1279 AH/1862–63 CE, the year in which Bahāʾuʾllāh’s public claims is said to have begun to emerge in limited form, approximately four years before its full public disclosure in Edirne.[98]

Taken together, these accounts indicate that coercion, physical violence, and even killing were already present among some of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s followers during the Baghdad period and that, in certain instances, such conduct was accompanied by his intervention, protection, or support. Seen retrospectively, these features constitute precisely the social conditions from which the mafia-type formation described above could emerge: personal loyalty to a charismatic patron, protection extended to violent dependants, and the gradual normalization of coercion as an instrument of collective power. The significance of the Baghdad, Edirne and early Acre periods therefore lies not merely in isolated episodes of violence, but in the apparent emergence of a durable relationship between patronage, allegiance, protection, and coercive enforcement. By the time the Azalī–Bahāʾī schism became explicit, the constituent elements of what may analytically be termed a mafia-type structure were thus already in place; the subsequent violence would represent less its sudden creation than its consolidation and deployment against a newly defined class of internal enemies.

 

 

 

Conclusion: The Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq and the sacralization of the ʿAkkā Murders by Bahāʾuʾllāh[99]

A particularly important primary source for the specific killings of Siyyid Muḥammad Iṣfahānī, Āqā Jān Kaj-Kulāh, and Mīrzā Riḍā-Qulī Tafrishī is the Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq (Tablet of Interrogation), preserved in volume 4 of Ishrāq-Khavāri’s Má'idih-i-āsamání.[100] The title ostensibly derives from the episode in which Bahāʾuʾllāh and members of his entourage were subjected to official Ottoman interrogation (istinṭāq) following the killings in Acre. The importance of the Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq lies precisely in the coexistence of two apparently discordant registers: an explicit denial that any outward command to kill the three Azalīs had issued from Bahāʾuʾllāh, and a subsequent theological interpretation of their deaths as an operation of divine wrath (qahr), punishment, and purification. However, the document requires careful handling because it is not simply a continuous first-person tablet of Bahāʾuʾllāh. Much of it is a retrospective narrative by a writer who repeatedly refers to himself as īn ʿabd (“this servant”), while interspersing it with direct utterances of Bahāʾuʾllāh. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the narrator’s retrospective account, statements attributed directly to Bahāʾuʾllāh, and passages explicitly presented as “revelation.” Nevertheless, when read as a whole, the document presents a remarkably coherent sequence in relation to the three murdered Azalīs: escalating denunciation, invocation of divine wrath, the actual killings, an explicit denial that an outward order for their deaths had issued from Bahāʾuʾllāh personally, and finally a retrospective theological interpretation of their deaths as an operation of divine vengeance and purification. The significance of the source lies precisely in the coexistence of these two registers. On the one hand, it formally denies that Bahāʾuʾllāh ordered the killings; on the other, it subsequently assimilates the murders to the punitive action of God— which here, in its explicit Bahāʾī register, is none other than Bahāʾuʾllāh himself.

The narrative prepares the theological ground well before the murders themselves. Riḍā-Qulī is described, together with his associates, in language that is already heavily morally charged. The narrator calls him and another opponent nafs-i-ẓālim, an “oppressive soul,” and states that they secretly engaged in aʿmāl-i shanīʿa, “shameful deeds.” He claims to have admonished them repeatedly in Iraq, Edirne, and the “Most Great Prison” in Acre, to no effect. Riḍā-Qulī is then alleged to have openly drunk with Christians and committed other reprehensible acts, whereupon “God expelled him through his suzerainty” (aṭradahu allāhu bi-sulṭānihi). He then joined Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī and Āqā Jān Beg, whom the text calls “the two wicked ones” (al-khabīthayn). The narrator further asserts that Riḍā-Qulī repeatedly professed repentance but violated the “Covenant and Testament of God” (ʿahd wa mīthāq-i-allāh), and that his actions had become a cause of the abasement or impairment of the Cause of God (taḍyīʿ-i-amr-i-allāh) among the people. The passage culminates in the curse, laʿnatuʾllāhi ʿalā al-qawmi al-ẓālimīn, “the curse of God be upon the people of oppression!”

Even more important is the metaphysical interpretation placed upon the coalition of the three opponents. Their association is said to have kindled “the fire of sedition and hatred” (nār al-fitna waʾl-baghḍāʾ) to an extent “beyond the capacity of pen or utterance to describe,” although “the All-Merciful” is said eventually to have extinguished it. Their expulsion by Bahāʾuʾllāh is then presented as evidence of his own sanctity: anyone possessing true sight, the narrator says, should inhale from their expulsion “the fragrance of the garment of sanctity and transcendence” (ʿarf-i-qamīṣ-i-taqdīs wa tanzīh). The rhetorical structure is significant. The opponents are not treated merely as dissidents or rivals; they are construed as sources of moral pollution whose removal becomes a manifestation of taqdīs and tanzīh, sanctification and purification/transcendence. The narrative then introduces a further and more consequential development: an escalation in the rhetoric of divine wrath prior to the murders.

A tablet is said to have been revealed in response to a letter that had arrived before Bahāʾuʾllāh, and its production is described in ominous terms. After its descent, the narrator says, “the horizon of this land changed and appeared wholly crimson,” and that redness increased day by day. Later “revelations” reassured him that the divine wrath (ghaḍab-i-ilāhī) was directed specifically against the “wicked souls” (nufūs-i-khabītha). Certain verses of the tablet expressed the yearning and longing of the lovers, whereas others embodied qahr wa iqtidār, wrathful coercion and overpowering might, against the “people of hypocrisy” (ahl-i-nifāq). The narrator explicitly states that until that day he had never heard from the “Tongue of Grandeur” (lisān-i-ʿaẓamat) “verses of wrath” (āyāt-i-qahrīya) of such severity, and that he therefore began to wonder what event was about to occur and what would issue from the “Dawning-Place of the Unseen” (maṭlaʿ-i- ghayb). This passage is of considerable historical importance. It does not constitute an explicit command to kill. Nevertheless, within the narrator’s own conceptual universe, the “revelation” of unprecedentedly severe verses of divine wrath against precisely these opponents produces an expectation of an impending punitive event. The narrative then proceeds almost directly from this atmosphere of qahr (wrath) into the murders themselves. The apologetic claim that the killings occurred in an entirely separate moral universe from the preceding rhetoric is consequently difficult to sustain on the basis of the document’s own literary construction.

The account of the murders is strikingly direct. Officials are said to have informed those present at the government residence that “seven of the Persians” (haft nafar az aʿājim) had gone out and killed Āqā Jān, Siyyid Muḥammad, and Riḍā-Qulī. The sentence immediately following this report is extraordinary. The narrator cites an encomium concerning the killers, calling them “youths from amongst the hosts of wrath” (fitya min junūd al-qahr): men whose assaults left thunder itself without voice or renown, who appeared as angels in beauty when encountered in peace, but as ʿafārīt (demons) when engaged in combat. Although ʿafārīt may literally denote formidable demonic or supernatural beings, the rhetorical function here is unmistakably martial and celebratory. The killers are not described as errant criminals; within the narrator’s rhetoric they become youthful warriors belonging to the “hosts of wrath.” Yet the same passage contains the most emphatic claim by Bahāʾī apologetics in denying that Bahāʾuʾllāh ordered the murders. The narrator states that, after the killings, the accusation was made before the authorities that the “Ancient Beauty” (jamāl-i-qidam) had commanded the execution of the three men. He repudiates the allegation under oath, declaring that “by God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting” no such order had, “according to the outward aspect” (bar ḥasb-i-ẓāhir), issued from the “Seat of the Cause” (maqarr-i amr). On the contrary, Bahāʾuʾllāh is said continually to have forbidden his followers from committing such acts and to have instructed them: “The dog barketh and the wolf howleth! Leave them both alone; interfere not with them; and be ye of those who patiently endure!”

The qualification bar ḥasb-i ẓāhir is key here because, at minimum, it renders the denial conspicuously qualified rather than categorical (in other words, dissimulation). It means “outwardly,” “according to the outward aspect,” or “as regards the external appearance” and so it may inferentially be inflated into direct evidence for a concealed order, although the text nowhere supplies such an order. Thus it should not simply disappear from translation and be waved away. The source does not say only that “no command issued”; it says that no command issued bar ḥasb-i ẓāhir (according to the outward aspect). In a religious discourse in which the distinction between ẓāhir (outer) and bāṭin (inner) is pervasive, the phrase is potentially significant even if it cannot, by itself, prove a prima facie clandestine instruction. The explicit evidentiary conclusion must therefore remain carefully delimited. The Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq does not overtly claim that Bahāʾuʾllāh directly ordered the murders or supplied unequivocal instructions. Indeed, it contains an express denial that any outward command to this effect had issued, together with an instruction attributed to him that the opponents should be left alone.

Yet the stronger historical difficulty lies elsewhere. The very document that denies an outward command simultaneously surrounds the enemies with an escalating rhetoric by Bahāʾuʾllāh himself of divine wrath before their deaths, describes their killers as members of the “hosts of wrath,” and subsequently interprets the killings themselves as manifestations of the punitive agency of God—which, as pointed out, in its explicit Bahāʾī register unequivocally indicates none other than Bahāʾuʾllāh himself. This is particularly evident in the Arabic utterance cited after the events. In the portion beginning with the tribulations of the “Sovereign of all existence” (mālik al-imkān), Bahāʾuʾllāh is represented as accepting affliction for the welfare of creation and as enduring the “darkness of the insinuations” (ẓulumāt al-ishārāt) of those who deny God. The text moves directly into denunciation of the opponents. “The Mute One” (al-akhras), evidently Siyyid Muḥammad Iṣfahānī, is said to have called himself Quddūs and to have claimed for himself what “the Slinking Whisperer” (al-khannās) had claimed. The other, Āqā Jān, had styled himself “the Sword of Truth” (sayf al-ḥaqq) and proclaimed himself “the Conqueror of the Lands” (fātiḥ al-bilād). The decisive sentence then follows: “God hath raised up one who smote him upon the mouth, that all may know with certitude that the tail of Satan (dhanab al-shayṭān) hath been severed by the Sword of the All-Merciful (sayf al-raḥmān).” The verb baʿatha is especially important. It does not merely report that someone happened to strike Āqā Jān. The killer is retrospectively subsumed into providential agency: God—qua Bahāʾuʾllāh—“raised up” or “sent forth” the person who struck him. The blow itself is then transfigured into the action of the “Sword of the All-Merciful!”

More consequential still is the sentence that follows: “Thus doth God seize him who turneth away from him and ariseth to bring his Cause to ruin amongst the servants” (kadhālika yaʾkhudhu allāhu man aʿraḍa ʿanhu wa-qāma ʿalā taḍyīʿ amrihi bayna al-ʿibād). The language is unmistakably theological. The violent death of the opponent is represented as an instance of how God himself—meaning, Bahāʾuʾllāh—“seizes” one who has attempted to destroy or debase his Cause. The passage then moves from punitive violence into cosmic regeneration: “And when they had perished (fa-lammā halakū), the breezes of spring began to blow, the gates of heaven were opened, and the clouds poured down their rain.” The sequence is therefore not accidental. The opponents perish; spring begins; heaven opens; rain descends. Their destruction is represented not merely as a regrettable human incident but as the removal of an obstruction whose disappearance permits cosmic and divine beneficence to resume. The rhetorical economy is that of purification after defilement. The narrator immediately reinforces this interpretation. He relates that a local scholar who had previously heard Āqā Jān boast that he was the “Sword of Truth” later went with the Pasha to view his corpse and remarked that the true “Sword of Truth” had proved to be the weapon that struck him and consigned him to the lowest depth of hell (asfal al-jaḥīm). The narrator then himself rejoices that, after the death of the opponents and their “return” to the lowest hell, rains of mercy (amṭār-i-raḥmat) began to fall night and day, following years of drought and famine. The convergence between the revealed Arabic passage and the narrator’s retrospective commentary is therefore striking. In the “revelation”: the enemies perish, the spring winds blow, the heavens open, and rain descends. In the narrative gloss: the murdered opponents descend to the lowest hell, whereupon the drought ends and the rains of mercy return. The natural world is thus interpreted as cosmically ratifying the violent removal of these opponents of Bahāʾuʾllāh. This material also exposes the inadequacy of reducing the Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq to a single isolated sentence. Disturbing though the passage concerning the ‘Sword of the All-Merciful’ is in itself, such isolation understates the cumulative structure of the text. The phrase qad baʿatha allāhu man ḍaraba ʿalā famihi is better rendered not merely as “God sent the one who smote upon his mouth,” but “God hath raised up one who smote him upon the mouth,” because the verb baʿatha makes the divine causality explicit. More importantly is the following: “Thus doth God seize him who turneth away from him...And when they had perished, the breezes of spring began to blow!” The theological legitimation of the deaths therefore extends much further than the isolated metaphor of the “Sword of the All-Merciful.”

As such, what the document establishes is in some respects a pre-murder atmosphere in which precisely these opponents are demonized in extraordinarily severe terms and placed under unprecedented verses of divine wrath. It records the narrator’s expectation that some consequential event would follow. It then describes seven Bahāʾīs as having killed the three men and immediately calls the killers “youths from amongst the hosts of wrath.” It formally denies that an outward command for the killings had issued and attributes to Bahāʾuʾllāh an injunction to leave the opponents alone. Yet thereafter it places in Bahāʾuʾllāh’s mouth a retrospective interpretation according to which God “raised up” the man who struck one of the victims, the blow severed the “tail of Satan” by the “Sword of the All-Merciful,” God thereby “seized” one who had sought to destroy his Cause, and after the opponents “perished” heaven opened and rain descended. The contradiction is therefore not between evidence of an explicit assassination order and a later denial of it. The tension is instead between two registers of agency. On the temporal or juridical plane, the murders are denied as having proceeded from any outward command of Bahāʾuʾllāh. On the providential plane, the completed murders are retrospectively absorbed into divine agency and represented as a manifestation of God’s—meaning, Bahāʾuʾllāh’s—qahr (wrath). Human authorization is denied juridically while theological authorization is supplied after the event. Thus the juridical denial here acts as the ẓāhir (outer) while the theological authorization acts as an explicit affirmation—and so the bāṭin (inner truth) of the matter. This distinction is crucial especially for understanding charismatic sacral violence in other contexts as well. Violence does not require a surviving written command in order to become religiously meaningful or institutionally legitimized. A charismatic authority may disclaim temporal responsibility while simultaneously interpreting the resulting violence as providential judgment, including in cases where independent evidence indicates that the same authority instigated or authorized the violence.[101] In the Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq, the distinction is especially stark: “leave them alone” exists alongside “God hath raised up one who smote him”; “no outward order issued” exists alongside “thus doth God seize him”; and the killing of the opponents is followed symbolically by ‘spring winds’, ‘opened heavens’, and ‘rains of mercy’.

For the history of the Azalī-Bahāʾī schism, the ostensible conclusion is therefore not that this text explicitly proves in an open evidentiary context that Bahāʾuʾllāh personally commanded the triple homicide. Rather, it demonstrates that within an early Bahāʾī textual representation of the event—where the murdered Azalīs were subjected beforehand to a rhetoric of exceptional divine wrath explicitly by Bahāʾuʾllāh himself—their killers could be praised as belonging to the “hosts of wrath,” and the killings themselves could afterward be interpreted as an act of divine seizure and cosmic purification. The document thus supplies circumstantial evidence from which prior instigation or authorization may legitimately be investigated and inferred, whilst simultaneously denying any outward operational command; independently of that question, its sacralization and post-facto legitimation of the violence are explicit. Thus the word used by E.G. Browne—“complaisance”[102]—as his observation to describe Bahāʾuʾllāh’s actual relationship to these murders (and by inference all of the others) is therefore precise and so hard to dismiss given the porous admissions/denials made here together with the overall logic pervading the Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq. What emerges, then, is not a clean exculpatory record but a carefully managed double discourse: juridical non-liability is asserted at the level of outward command, while providential responsibility is simultaneously reclaimed at the level of sacred history. The murders are denied as acts formally ordered from the “Seat of the Cause,” yet once accomplished they are narrated as the work of divine wrath, their perpetrators elevated into the “hosts of wrath,” and the deaths themselves folded into a cosmology of punishment, purification, and renewed mercy. That rhetorical structure is difficult to reconcile with any claim that Bahāʾuʾllāh regarded the killings simply as unauthorized crimes committed by overzealous followers.

Indeed, the very force of the Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq lies in this oscillation between repudiation and appropriation. The text seeks insulation from temporal culpability while preserving the theological meaning of the outcome. In that sense, Browne’s “complaisance” captures not passive indifference but a form of retrospective acquiescence: the violence is ostensibly not openly commanded, but neither is it morally disowned once effected either. Instead, it is absorbed into the sacred economy of “the Cause” and made to signify the vindication of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s authority over those cast as apostates, corrupters, and agents of what is deemed as fitna. This is precisely why the document is so probative. Its value lies less in furnishing a conventional “smoking gun” than in exposing the ideological environment in which such violence could be imagined, executed, and then sanctified. The denial of explicit command therefore does not neutralize the evidentiary significance of the text nor does it plainly exculpate Bahāʾuʾllāh from guilt. Instead it does the very opposite. The Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq therefore preserves, within a single narrative frame, both the distancing formula and the subsequent sacral legitimation of the result, and so one cannot walk away from it without concluding that the Azalī account of the murders and their agency is largely correct. In the endnotes we have provided the originals to all the relevant passages analyzed above.[103]

Seen against the foregoing evidence, Browne’s much-disputed summation can no longer be dismissed merely as the product of Azalī influence or partisan credulity. Although individual details remain open to qualification, the broad pattern he identified—the violent removal of a succession of prominent opponents of Bahāʾuʾllāh, followed in the best-attested instance by a distinctly accommodating and indeed providential interpretation of their deaths—is substantially borne out by the very Bahāʾī materials examined above. His choice of the word “complaisance” is, in this respect, particularly exact. To wit,

 

…All prominent supporters of Subḥ-i-Azal who withstood Mīrzā Ḥusayn ꜤAlī [Bahāʾuʾllāh]’s claims were marked out for death, and in Baghdad Mullā Rajab ꜤAlī “Kahīr” and his brother, Hājji Mīrzā Aḥmad, Hājji Mīrzā Muḥammad Reẓa, and several others fell one by one by the knife or bullet of the assassin...As to the assassination of the three Ezelīs, Akā Jān Bey, Hājji Seyyed Muḥammad of Isfahān, and Mīrzā Riẓa-Kullī of Tafrīsh, by some of Behā’s followers at Acre, there can, I fear, be but little doubt...the passage in the Kitāb-i-Aqdas alluding (apparently) to Hājji Seyyed Muḥammad’s death...proves Behā’u’llāh regarded this event with some complaisance [my italics]...On the murder of one Āqā Muḥammad ꜤAlī of Isfahān in Istanbul by one Mīrzā Abu’l-Qāsim the Bakhtīyārī[104]…At first not a few prominent Bābīs, including even several “Letters of the Living” and personal friends of the Bāb, adhered faithfully to Subḥ-e Azal. One by one these disappeared, most of them, as I fear cannot be doubted, by the foul play on the part of too zealous Bahā’īs…Mīrzā Riẓā Kullī and Mīrzā Naṣr’ullāh of Tafrīsh, were stabbed or poisoned in Adrianople and Acre. Two of the “Letters of the Living,” Akā Siyyid ꜤAlī the Arab, and Mullā Rajab ꜤAlī Kahīr, were assassinated, the one at Tabrīz, the other at Kerbelā. The brother of the latter, Akā ꜤAlī Muḥammad, was also murdered in Baghdād....[105]

 

In contemporary Western literature, the present appendix now supersedes and so replaces Juan R.I. Cole’s tendentiously sectarian and analytically lopsided treatment of the same issue in his “THE AZĀLĪ-BAHĀ’Ī CRISIS OF SEPTEMBER, 1867” (2004).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] This appendix is our augmented translation and revision of Nabavi’s fourth appendix (389-409).

[2] Kitāb-i-badīʾ: 172 (lithograph edition). The Arabic expression mā yuẓhiru min ṣulb al-baqar (مَا يُظْهِرُ مِنْ صُلْبِ الْبَقَرِ), literally “that which issues from the loins of the cow,” is a deliberately circumlocutory reference to bovine semen. Here ṣulb (“loins”) carries its familiar procreative sense, while mā yuẓhiru (“that which issues/emerges”) euphemistically denotes the seminal emission. The expression is intentionally degrading: Bahāʾuʾllāh’s point is that those addressed have valued the theophanic “Sun of Meanings” (shams-i-maʿānī)—that is, himself—as less than even the semen of cattle. Those addressed here are Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī, Ṣubḥ-i-Azal, and the other Bayānīs of the period who rejected Bahāʾuʾllāh’s claims.

[3] Bahāʾuʾllāh as quoted by Browne in A Traveller’s Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bāb, volume 2, Note W: 364.

[4] For the reliable English language sources on this issue, see A Traveller’s Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bāb, volume 2, Note W, and SG Wilson “BAHAISM AND RELIGIOUS ASSASSINATION,” in The Muslim World, volume 4, issue 3, July 1914: 231-45.

[5] Lumpen is employed here in its Marxian sense, not as a descriptor of artisans or manual occupations per se, but to capture the cumulative Azalī portrayal of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s early militant following as consisting of socially marginal, criminal, and politically manipulable elements. As the subsequent narrative develops, the Azalī sources increasingly characterize these adherents as the instruments of intimidation and assassination directed against leading opponents of Bahāʾuʾllāh. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx’s criticism of the lumpenproletariat is not simply that they are poor. It is that they are a socially detached stratum who can be mobilized by a charismatic elite for coercive political ends. The Azalī polemic, mutatis mutandis, makes a structurally similar accusation against Bahāʾuʾllāh: that he allegedly consolidated power not through the assent of the learned Bābī elite but by cultivating the loyalty of socially dependent followers who became the coercive arm for the establishment of his movement. Thus we are using “lumpen” here not because the occupations themselves were lumpen, but because the completed Azalī portrait of Bahāʾuʾllāh’s early constituency ultimately resembles what Marx would later describe as a politically deployable lumpen stratum.

[6] Nabavi: 390 (404n1), citing Mutavallī-Bāshī Qummī’s own Risāla (treatise).

[7] Bāshī (from Turkic başı, “head” or “chief”) was a common Qājār title appended to occupations and offices. In the present polemical context, these Azalī authors employ the suffix collectively and derisively to characterize Bahāʾuʾllāh’s early followers as men of artisan and service backgrounds rather than members of the learned Bābī elite.

[8] Vaqāyiʿ-i-rāstīn-i- tākur-i-nūr, ibid., 58.

[9] For context, see Mangol Bayat Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran (Syracuse University Press: Syracuse, 1982), esp. 84–118; Ervand Abrahamian Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1982): 3–55;  Janet Afary The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (Columbia University Press: New York, 1996), esp. the introductory chapters; Homa Katouzian State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (I.B. Tauris: London, 2000): 1–48.

[10] See online https://hurqalya.ucmerced.edu/node/4011 (retrieved 3 August 2026), where he says, “Mirza Yaḥyā Nūrī  also known as (Per.)  صبح ازل  Ṣubḥ-i Azal (the Morn of Eternity) was the son of Mirza Buzurg Nuri and his concubine Kuchik Khanum…” (my italics).

[11] See E.G. Browne (ed.) Kitāb Nuqṭat’ūl-Kāf: Being the Earliest History of the Bābīs (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1910): 238-44;  ʿAtīyya Rūḥī’s biography of  Ṣubḥ-i-Azal; and the fragment of the longer Persian typescript of the more extensive biography of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal by Nāṣir Dawlatābādī at Harvard University’s Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran page. It appears to be the case that Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s mother, Kūchak Khānūm Kirmānshāhī, was originally of modest social origins. Other than what we have cited from Nuqṭat’ūl-kāf, further information about her is virtually nonexistent. We hesitate to identify her as a mere servant in Mīrzā ʿAbbās Buzurg Nūrī’s household or even as one of his temporary wives. But she certainly did not hold the same rank as the other prominent women of the household. We believe this significant detail to be a key psychological factor that may have later motivated Bahāʾuʾllāh’s rupture with his younger step-brother because by elevating Ṣubḥ-i-Azal’s status above his among the Bābī ranks, the Bāb was openly defying and overturning the unspoken rules of pedigree and social hierarchy within an aristocratic Qājār family, in effect displacing Bahāʾuʾllāh’s seniority in that context and setup. Such an issue, inevitably, could not go without future challenge (as it did).

[12] See Appendix B.2.

[13] Hasht bihisht: 216:

 

...و مشارالیه چون از ابتدای عمر با هر طایفه و هر مشربی حتی الواط و دراویش و امناء دولت و شعرا و عرفا معاشرت بسیاری کرده بود لهذا یکنوع وسعت مشرب  و رخاوتی در مذهب  چنانکه عادت اینگونه اشخاص است...

 

There is considerable insinuation packed into this apparently descriptive sentence. The authors of Hasht bihisht place Bahāʾuʾllāh’s celebrated wusʿat-i-mashrab (“breadth of disposition” or “latitudinarianism”) in a deliberately compromising genealogy: it is represented not as the consequence of spiritual universality, but as the product of prolonged association with socially, morally, and religiously heterogeneous circles. The inclusion of alwāṭ—sodomites/pederasts—alongside dervishes, state officials, poets, and gnostics is particularly pointed. By placing these categories within a single catalogue, the author insinuates that Bahāʾuʾllāh’s religious laxity (rikhāvat dar madhhab) arose from habitual familiarity with milieus regarded by the author as morally or doctrinally suspect. The barb is therefore double-edged: what Bahāʾī representation might construe as breadth, tolerance, or universality is recast polemically as latitudinarianism born of questionable associations, while chinānkih ʿādat-i-īn-gūnih ashkhāṣ ast (“as is the habit of persons of this sort”) further insinuates that such laxity was characteristic of the social type to which the author wishes to assign him, which in this case is as a Qājār aristocrat (not to mention as the head of the Nūrī household) with enormous social privilege and prestige.

[14] Letizia Paoli Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (Oxford University Press: New York, 2003), esp. chs. 1–5; Diego Gambetta The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1993); Federico Varese “Protection and Extortion,” in Letizia Paoli (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2014), 343–358; Letizia Paoli “Mafia, Camorra, and ʾNdrangheta” in Erik Jones and Gianfranco Pasquino (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2015): 668–682.

[15] Nirāqī, ibid., Tadhkirat al-ghāfilīn: 24.

[16] Nabavi: 390 (404n4), citing an anonymous Tārīkh-i -amr (History of the Cause):115.

[17] See our Organizational Hierarchy.

[18] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī, ibid., Tārīkh-i-ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 4: 181.

[19] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 1: p. 151.

[20] Javāb-i-lawḥ-i-jināb-i-ʿabbās effendi: 48-9.

[21] That is, the Qurānic seducer of Israel into the worship of the Golden Calf. See Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 4: 100-01.

[22] This is Bahāʾuʾllāh’s own utterance as recorded in ʿAbd’ul-Ḥamīd Ishrāq-Khāvārī Má'idih-i-āsamání, vol. 8: 150.

[23] Per the Persian translation of Shoghi Effendi’s God Passes By.

[24] Má'idih-i-āsamání, ibid.

[25] See the bibliography.

[26] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq: 304-306.

[27] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 5, pp. 251 and 312; and our Organizational Hierarchy piece.

[28] Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī Faṣl’ul-kalām: 48.

[29] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 5, ibid.

[30] Ibid., 252.

[31] Siyyid Mahdī Dahajī Risāla: 61; and our Organizational Hierarchy piece.

[32] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 5, ibid., 312-344.

[33] Although we possess a scanned autograph version of this text that the Iranian Bayānīs supplied us with during 2018 CE, CUL F.63(9) is the version referred to here and elsewhere.

[34] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 5: 150.

[35] Nāṣir Dawlatābādī’s introduction to the 1950s printed edition of Tanbīh al-Nāʾimīn: 3.

[36] Nirāqī Tadhkirat al-ghāfilīn, ibid., 24.

[37] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 4: 181.

[38] See the critical introduction and bibliography.

[39] Nirāqī Tadhkirat al-ghāfilīn, ibid.

[40] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 4: 7.

[41] See our Organizational Hierarchy piece.

[42] In CUL F.24(9).

[43] See our Organizational Hierarchy piece.

[44] See the critical introduction and bibliography.

[45] In INBA 76.

[46] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 8: part one, 506.

[47] See the critical introduction and bibliography.

[48] See the critical introduction.

[49] Ibid.

[50] See the critical introduction (and especially our comment in the relevant endnote) and bibliography.

[51] In William M. Miller Princeton Bābī MSS collection. Islamic Manuscripts, Third Series No. 16 (formerly no. 230).

[52] See Faṣl’ul-kalām.

[53] Shaykh Muḥammad-Mahdī Sharīf Kāshānī Tārīkh-i-jaʿfarī: 52-4.

[54] See the critical introduction.

[55] Hasht bihisht: 308.

[56] See Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī above.

[57] Tadhkirat al-ghāfilīn: 76.

[58] Shaykh Muḥammad-Mahdī Sharīf Kāshānī Tārīkh-i-jaʿfarī, ibid., 48-50.

[59] Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī Faṣl’ul-kalām, ibid., 66.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Hasht bihisht, ibid., 304.

[62] Javāb-i-lawḥ-i-jināb-i-ʿabbās effendī: 58.

[63] Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī Faṣl’ul-kalām, ibid., 67.

[64] Hasht bihisht, ibid.

[65] Ḥājj Mīrzā Hādī Dawlatābādī Faṣl’ul-kalām, ibid.

[66] Ibid. The Bahāʾī account of the suicide of Sayyid Ismāʿīl Zavāraʾī (in 1275 AH/1858–1859 CE) states that, “from observing the states and the blessed works [of Bahāʾuʾllāh], a condition of love and rapture (ʿishq u jadhba) came over him,” and that, in the end, “he went to the bank of the Tigris; the people of the Takyih-i-bektāshī (the Bektāshī Sufi hospice) had withdrawn and were going to and fro; he turned his face to a [certain] house, sat down, cut his own throat with a razor, and the blood poured into the Tigris . . .” See Asaduʾllāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī, Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 4: 191–192.

[67] Siyyid Mahdī Dahajī Risāla: 36.

[68] Asaduʾllāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 5, ibid., 5.

[69] He was Mīrzā Naṣr’ullāh Tafrishī (the brother of the wife of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal). See Hasht bihisht, ibid., 306.

[70] Dawlatābādī Faṣl’ul-kalām, ibid., 67-8.

[71] In William M. Miller Princeton Bābī MSS collection, Islamic Manuscripts Third Series No. 34 (formerly no. 261),titled Tarjamah-i tārīkh-i bābīh, ff. 60a (paginated as 117).

[72] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 5, ibid., 207; see also the Lawḥ-i-istinṭāq below where she is explicitly indicated.

[73] Javāb-i-lawḥ-i-jināb-i-ʿabbās effendī, ibid.

[74] See the final section below.

[75] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 5, ibid., 163.

[76] Siyyid Mahdī Dahajī Risāla, ibid., 286-7.

[77] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 5, ibid., 163-7.

[78] Ibid., 204-207.

[79] See Browne’s Persian introduction to Nuqṭat’ul-kāf: يب  يو _.

[80] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Asrār al-āthār-i-khuṣūṣī, vol. 5, ibid., 106.

[81] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 4, ibid., 181.

[82] Shaykh Muḥammad-Mahdī Sharīf Kāshānī Tārīkh-i-jaʿfarī, ibid., 161.

[83] Ibid.; see also Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 5, ibid., 9.

[84] Ibid., 10-16.

[85] ʿAbdu’l-Bahāʾ Tadhkirat al-wafāʾ fī tarjama ḥayāt qudamāʾ al-aḥibbāʾ: 227-230.

[86] Ḥaydar ʿAlī Uskūʾī Tārīkh-i-amr-i-āzarbāyjān: 31.

[87] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 6: 650.

[88] Hasht bihisht, ibid., 308.  Balāʿima (بلعمة), “the Balaams,” a derogatory collective derived from Balʿam b. Bāʿūrāʾ (Balaam), traditionally identified in Islamic exegesis with the apostate alluded to in Q. 7:175–176. In Bābī-Azalī polemical usage, the term denotes apostates or betrayers of the divine cause.

[89] Ibid., 282.

[90] Dawlatābādī Faṣl’ul-kalām, ibid., 67.

[91] See Part 2.

[92] Ibid.

[93] Asadu’llāh Fāḍil Māzandarānī Tārīkh-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, vol. 4, ibid., 174-6.

[94] Ibid.

[95] Ibid., 177-180.

[96] Ibid., 194-5.

[97] Ibid., 195.

[98] Ibid., 246-7.

[99] Here we have replaced in translation Nabavi’s concluding analysis instead with the following here by us since its evidentiary value, in our view, supersedes the summary conclusion Nabavi diligently brought to bear on the overall question.

[100] Here we rely on the text of it provided by the Oceans of Light website, online https://oceanoflights.org/bahaullah-pub20-092-fa/ (retrieved 8 August 2026).

[101] This dynamic is by no means peculiar to nineteenth-century Iranian religious movements. Modern new-religious movements furnish striking comparative examples of charismatic leaders simultaneously distancing themselves from temporal responsibility for violence while providing the theological categories through which that violence could be understood as sacred or providential. The clearest case is Aum Shinrikyō under Asahara Shōkō (d. 2018 CE). As Aum became increasingly militarized, Asahara remained its ultimate religious authority, while absolute obedience to the guru was cultivated as a spiritual discipline. Most significantly, the Buddhist concept of poa was transformed within Aum into a soteriological justification for killing: the victim might ostensibly be “saved” from accumulating further negative karma through being killed. Evidence subsequently established that Asahara ordered the murder of dissident member Taguchi Shūji and the “poa” of lawyer Sakamoto Tsutsumi and his family, while the organization publicly denied responsibility; Asahara and senior disciples similarly denied culpability while investigations were underway, see Rin Ushiyama Aum Shinrikyo and Religious Terrorism in Japanese Collective Memory (British Academy/Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2022), esp. 30–51. Ian Reader likewise emphasizes the conjunction of charismatic authority, apocalyptic ideology, and violence carried out by disciples acting within a hierarchical structure ultimately centred upon Asahara: Ian Reader “Dramatic Confrontations: Aum Shinrikyô against the World,” in (eds.) David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton Cults, Religion, and Violence (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2002), where Aum’s clandestine weapons programme is described as operating under Asahara’s orders. The comparison is structural rather than an assertion of historical equivalence: the relevant phenomenon is the capacity of charismatic religious authority to create a sacral interpretive framework within which violence performed by subordinates may be understood as the operation of a transcendent will, even while ordinary or juridical responsibility is denied or displaced. The Jonestown case provides a related, although different, example: surviving documentary and audio evidence demonstrates that the leadership developed an organized mass-death plan, while Jones himself finally redescribed the resulting deaths not as suicide but as “revolutionary suicide,” thereby translating physical killing into an ideologically redemptive act. See Rebecca Moore “The Violence at Jonestown,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (2023); and the contemporaneous Q042 recording preserved in the Peoples Temple Collection, San Diego State University.

The comparative significance is therefore considerable: modern cases of destructive charismatic “cult” authority demonstrate why a leader’s formal denial of temporal or operational responsibility cannot, standing alone, dispose of the question of instigation, particularly where the same authority has previously sacralized punitive action against the victims and subsequently appropriates their violent deaths as the execution of transcendent judgment.

[102]  A Traveller’s Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bāb, Volume 2, Note W: 370.

[103]  We give these in the sequence used above (no vocalization or punctuation has been provided for the originals below). All translations below are ours:  

 

1. Riḍā-Qulī, Siyyid Muḥammad, and Āqā Jān before the killings:

 

...التقدیس و التنزیه و العمل بما امروا به من لدن علیم خبیر باری نفس ظالم و رضا قلی ال زال سرا باعمال شنیعه مشغول بودند و این عبد بکرات هر دو را نصیحت مینمود چه در عراق و چه در ارض سر و چه در سجن اعظم که شاید متنبه شوند و از خواب غفلت منتبه گردند ابدا تأثیری ننمود ما تأثرت فیهما کلمات النصحیة و بیانات الشافیة المعلنة تا آنکه رضا قلی با بعضی از نصاری جهرة بشرب و اعمال شنیعه مشغول گشت لذا اطرده الله بسلطانه و با خبیثین هم یعنی سید محمد و آقا جان متصل شد چندی از میان گذشت یومی عریضه بساحت اقدس فرستاد مشعر بتوبه از خطیئات ما قبل و همچنین چند یوم بعد عریضه اخری و لکن چون بکرات توبه نموده و نقض عهد و میثاق الله از او ظاهر لذا عرایض مقبول نیفتاد و بعضی اعمال از او ظاهر که شبه و مثل نداشته و سبب تضییع امر الله بین عباد گشته این عبد فانی دوست نداشته که ذکر نماید شاید که ملائکه ناشرات اعمال آن خبیث مردود را در ارض انتشار دهند الا لعنة الله علی القوم الظالمین و در اتصال آن خبیث و خبیثین اشتعلت نار الفتنة و البغضاء علی شأن لا يحصیه القلم و البیان ولکن الرحمن اخمدها و اطفاءها انه لهو المقتدر القدیر هر ذی بصر از طرد جمال قدم آن نفوس را عرف قمیص تقدیس و تنزیه استنشاق مینماید چه که اعمال رضا قلی و آقا جان خبیث و ذنبه نزد کل واضح و مشهود است نسئل الله بان یفتح عیون الناس و یعرفهم من اعماله و احکامه جل و عز ما تدل علی تقدیس ذاته و تنزیه نفسه و ساذج امره...

 

…sanctification and transcendence (al-taqdīs wa’l-tanzīh), and acting in accordance with that which they have been commanded by One All-Knowing, All-Informed (ʿalīm khabīr)! In any case, that oppressive soul (nafs-i ẓālim) and Riḍā-Qulī continued secretly to occupy themselves with shameful deeds (aʿmāl-i-shanīʿa), and this servant (īn ʿabd) repeatedly admonished them both, whether in Iraq, in the Land of the Mystery (arḍ-i-sirr) [i.e. Edirne], or in the Most Great Prison (sijn-i-aʿẓam) [i.e. Acre], perchance they might take heed (mutanabbih) and awaken from the sleep of heedlessness (khwāb-i-ghaflat)! It produced no effect whatsoever upon them! The words of admonition (kalimāt al-naṣīḥa) and the openly proclaimed, healing expositions (bayānāt al-shāfīya al-muʿlana) had no effect upon them!

At length, Riḍā-Qulī, together with certain Christians (naṣārā), openly (jahratan) occupied himself with drinking and shameful deeds (aʿmāl-i-shanīʿa)! Therefore God expelled him through his sovereignty (aṭradahu allāhu bi-sulṭānihi), and he joined himself to the two wicked ones (al-khabīthayn), namely Siyyid Muḥammad and Āqā Jān. Some time passed. One day he sent a petition (ʿarīḍa) to the Most Holy Presence (sāḥat-i-aqdas), declaring his repentance (tawba) for his former transgressions (khaṭīʾāt-i-mā qabl), and several days later [sent] another petition. But since he had repeatedly repented and thereafter manifested violation of the Covenant and Testament of God (naqḍ-i-ʿahd wa mīthāq allāh), his petitions were not accepted. Certain deeds then proceeded from him whose like and parallel had never been [seen], and which became the cause of the impairment of the Cause of God (taḍyīʿ-i-amr allāh) amongst his servants!

This evanescent servant (īn ʿabd-i-fānī) has not wished to make mention [of them]; perchance the angels who disseminate [the record of] deeds (malāʾika-i-nāshirāt-i-aʿmāl) shall spread throughout the earth the deeds of that rejected wicked one (khabīth-i-mardūd). Lo! The curse of God be upon the people of oppression (laʿnat allāh ʿalā al-qawm al-ẓālimīn)!

Through the association of that wicked one with the two wicked ones (khabīth wa khabīthayn), the fire of sedition and hatred (nār al-fitna wa’l-baghḍāʾ) was kindled to such a degree that neither pen nor utterance can reckon it! But the All-Merciful (al-raḥmān) suppressed and extinguished it (akhmadahā wa aṭfaʾahā). Verily, It is the All-Powerful, the Omnipotent (al-muqtadir al-qadīr)!

Every possessor of sight (dhī baṣar) inhales, from the Ancient Beauty’s (jamāl-i-qidam) expulsion of those souls, the fragrance of the garment of sanctification and transcendence (ʿarf-i qamīṣ-i-taqdīs wa tanzīh), for the deeds of Riḍā-Qulī and of the wicked Āqā Jān and his associate (dhanabihi) are clear and manifest before all! We beseech God to open the eyes of the people and to make known unto them, from his deeds and his ordinances (aʿmālihi wa aḥkāmihi)—exalted and glorified is he!—that which demonstrates the sanctification of Its Essence (taqdīs-i-dhātihi), the transcendence of Its Self (tanzīh-i-nafsihi), and the pristine purity of Its Cause (sādhij-i-amrihi)!

 

2. The unprecedented “verses of wrath”:

 

...باری امر بمقامی رسید که جمال قدم در بیت عاکف و امر بسد باب از کل فرمودند و بهیچوجه ملاقات از برای احدی ممکن نه و بر حسب ظاهر آنچه از مفتریات مشرکین و حیل مبغضین استماع میشد ابدا از مطلع اوامر الهیه امری ظاهر نه تا آنکه یومی از ایام در شهر رجب او شعبان مکتوبی ... لدی العرش حاضر بعد از عرض ما فی المکتوب لدی الوجه جواب لوح امنع اقدس الذی جعله الله رحمة للمخلصین و نقمة للمشرکین از مطلع بیان رحمن نازل بعد از تنزیل آن لوح مبارک افق این ارض تغییر نموده و بحمرة تمام ظاهر و در هر یوم در ازدیاد بود تا آنکه یومی از ایام آیات عنایت از مطلع رحمت نازل بعد از استماع آن این عبد مطمئن شد که الحمد لله غضب الهی مخصوص نفوس خبیثه بوده بعضی از آیات آن لوح مبارک در شوق و اشتیاق عشاق بوده و بعضی در قهر و اقتدار اهل نفاق...این عبد تا آن یوم از لسان عظمت آیات قهریه باین شأن استماع ننموده لذا بسیار متفکر که چه واقع خواهد شد و چه امری از مطلع غیب ظاهر شود...

 

…In any case, matters reached such a point that the Ancient Beauty (jamāl-i-qidam) remained secluded within the house (bayt) and commanded that the door be closed to everyone! In no wise was it possible for anyone to obtain an audience. And, according to the outward aspect (bar ḥasb-i ẓāhir), notwithstanding all that was heard of the fabrications of the polytheists (muftarīyāt-i-mushrikīn) and the stratagems of the malevolent (ḥiyal-i-mubghiḍīn), no command whatsoever issued from the Dawning-Place of the divine commands (maṭlaʿ-i awāmir-i-ilāhīya)!

Until, one day, in the month of Rajab or Shaʿbān, a letter (maktūb) [...] was presented before the Throne (ladā al-ʿarsh)! After the contents of the letter (mā fī al-maktūb) had been laid before the [Divine] Countenance (ladā al-wajh), in reply there descended from the Dawning-Place of the Utterance of the All-Merciful (maṭlaʿ-i bayān-i raḥmān) a Tablet—most exalted, most holy (lawḥ-i amnaʿ-i-aqdas)—which God had made a mercy (raḥma) unto the sincere (mukhliṣīn) and a vengeance (niqma) upon the polytheists (mushrikīn)!

After the revelation (tanzīl) of that blessed Tablet (lawḥ-i mubārak), the horizon of this land changed and appeared entirely crimson (bi-ḥumrat-i-tamām), and with every passing day [the redness] continued to increase, until, one day, verses of loving-kindness (āyāt-i-ʿināyat) descended from the Dawning-Place of Mercy (maṭlaʿ-i-raḥmat)! After hearing them, this servant (īn ʿabd) became assured that, praise be to God, the divine wrath (ghaḍab-i-ilāhī) had been reserved specifically for the wicked souls (nufūs-i khabītha)!

Some of the verses of that blessed Tablet concerned the yearning and longing (shawq wa ishtiyāq) of the lovers (ʿushshāq), while others concerned wrathful coercion and overpowering might (qahr wa iqtidār) against the people of hypocrisy (ahl-i-nifāq)....Until that day, this servant had never heard from the Tongue of Grandeur (lisān-i-ʿaẓamat) verses of wrath (āyāt-i-qahriyya) of such a kind! I therefore became deeply contemplative as to what would occur and what affair (amr) would become manifest from the Dawning-Place of the Unseen (maṭlaʿ-i ghayb)....

 

3. The report of the murders and the “hosts of wrath”:

 

...بعد از ورود سرایه اهل حکومت مذکور نمودند که هفت نفر از اعجام رفته اند آقا جان و سید محمد و رضا قلی را کشته اند لله در من قال فی فتیة من جنود القهر ما ترکت للرعد کراتهم صوتا و لا صیتا قوم اذا قوبلوا کانوا ملائکة حسنا و ان قوتلوا کانوا عفاریتا...

 

…After entering the government residence (sarāya-i-ahl-i-ḥukūmat), they reported that seven of the Persians (haft nafar az aʿājim) had gone forth and killed Āqā Jān, Siyyid Muḥammad, and Riḍā-Qulī! How excellent was he who said concerning youths from among the hosts of wrath (fitya min junūd al-qahr): “Their onslaughts (karrātuhum) left thunder neither voice nor renown! They are a people who, when encountered [in peace], are angels in beauty (malāʾika ḥusnan), but when fought, are formidable demons (ʿafārīt)!”

 

4. The denial of an outward command:

 

...عجب در آنست مع آنکه جمال قدم در اشهر معدودات مع غصنین اعظمین سد باب نموده ابدا با احدی از خارج و داخل معاشرت نمیفرمودند و خود سید محمد باطراف نوشته که جمیع اصحاب اعراض نمودند معذلک بعد از وقوع این امر خبیثه کاذبه علیها لعنة الله و لعنة اولیائه در مجلس حکومت رفته و ذکر نموده که جمال قدم امر فرموده اند که این نفوس را بقتل رسانیدند مع آنکه و الله المهیمن القیوم که ابدا بر حسب ظاهر از مقر امر صادر نشد و لا زال کل را از ارتکاب این امورات نهی میفرمودند و میفرمودند: ان الکلب ینبح و الذئب یعوی ان اترکوهما و لا تتعرضوا بهما و کونوا من الصابرین...

 

…What is remarkable (ʿajab) is that, although the Ancient Beauty (jamāl-i-qidam), for a number of months (ashhur-i-maʿdūdāt), together with the two Most Great Branches (ghuṣnayn-i-aʿẓamayn), had closed the door [to all] (sadd-i-bāb namūda) and had absolutely no association (muʿāsharat) with anyone, whether from without or within, and although Siyyid Muḥammad himself had written in every direction that all the companions (jamīʿ-i-aṣḥāb) had turned away [from them], nevertheless, after the occurrence of this affair, that wicked liar (khabītha-i-kādhiba) [meaning, Badr-i-Jahān Khānūm, i.e. the sister of the two Tafrishī murdered]—upon her be the curse of God and the curse of his saints (ʿalayhā laʿnat allāh wa laʿnat awliyāʾihi)—went before the government council (majlis-i-ḥukūmat) and stated that the Ancient Beauty had commanded (amr farmūda-and) that these souls be put to death (bi-qatl rasānīdand)!

Yet, by God, the Protecter, the Peerless, according to the outward aspect (bar ḥasb-i-ẓāhir), no such [command] whatsoever issued from the Seat of the Cause (maqarr-i-amr)! Rather, he continually forbade everyone from committing such deeds (irtikāb-i-īn umūr) and would say: “The dog barketh and the wolf howleth! Leave them both alone; interfere not with them (lā tataʿarraḍū bihimā), and be ye of those who patiently endure (al-ṣābirīn)....”

 

The operative phrase here is:

ابداً بر حسب ظاهر از مقر امر صادر نشد

“Nothing whatsoever, according to the outward aspect (bar ḥasb-i ẓāhir), issued from the Seat of the Cause,” meaning Bahāʾuʾllāh.

 

5. Revelation during the interrogation:

 

...بسمه الباقی الدائم العزیز العظیم قد ماج بحر البلاء و احاطت الامواج فلک الله المهیمن القیوم ان یا ملاح لا تضطرب من الریاح ان فالق الاصباح معک فی هذه الظلمة التی احاطت العالمین توکل علی الله فی کل الاحوال و لا تخف من هبوب عواصف البغضاء ان استعذ بالله ربک المقتدر العلیم انه یحفظ من یشاء بسلطان من عنده انه لهو العلیم الحکیم فی بحبوحة الظلمة کان مشرقا بضیاء احاط من فی السموات و الارضین انا فی تلک الحالة ندع البریة الی الله و لا يخوفنا اجتماع الذینهم کفروا بالله اذ اتی بامر بدیع قد سرق السارق ما نزل من لدی العرش و احضره لدی الذین یحکمون علی العباد کذلک فعل ذاک المشرک البعید قل مت بغیظک یا ایها الجاهل هل تظن انک تسبقنا لا و اسمی الذی به فاحت نفحات الروح علی کل صغیر و کبیر انا بلغنا الامر بایدی الذین اعرضوا انه لا يضره مکر الماکرین ان الخناس حضر بکتابی بین الناس و ظن بذلک یهجمون علی مطلع الامر و یحتقر به شأن الله فیما سواه کذلک سولت له نفسه و حقت علیه کلمة العذاب من لدن غالب محیط قل بذلک یرفع امره و ینتشر آیاته و یعلو هذا الذکر الذی به قدر کل امر حکیم یالیت یجتمعون علینا العباد و یسفکون دمائنا فی هذا السبیل المستقیم انا فدینا ما عندنا فی سبیل الله یشهد بذلک ما انا فیه من البلایا...

 

...In Its Name, the Ever-Abiding, the Everlasting, the Almighty, the Most Great (bismihi al-bāqī al-dāʾim al-ʿazīz al-ʿaẓīm)! The sea of tribulation (baḥr al-balāʾ) hath surged, and the waves have encompassed [us]. By God, the Protector, the Peerless! O mariner (mallāḥ), be not perturbed by the winds! Verily, the Cleaver of the Dawn (fāliq al-iṣbāḥ) is with thee in this darkness which hath encompassed all the worlds! Put thy trust in God (tawakkal ʿalā allāh) under all conditions, and fear not the blowing of the tempests of hatred (ʿawāṣif al-baghḍāʾ)! Seek thou refuge in God, thy Lord, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing (al-muqtadir al-ʿalīm)! Verily, It preserveth whomsoever It willeth through a sovereignty (sulṭān) from Its presence! It, verily, is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise (al-ʿalīm al-ḥakīm)!

In the very midst of the darkness (buḥbūḥat al-ẓulma), he was shining with a radiance (ḍiyāʾ) that encompassed all who are in the heavens and on the earths! In that condition, we summon creation (al-barīya) unto God, nor doth the gathering together of those who have disbelieved in God cause us fear, for he hath come with a wondrous Cause (amr badīʿ)!

The thief hath stolen that which was sent down from before the Throne (mā nuzzila min ladā al-ʿarsh) and brought it before those who exercise judgment over the servants! Thus acted that remote polytheist (al-mushrik al-baʿīd)! Say: Die in thy rage (mut bi-ghayẓika), O ignorant one! Dost thou imagine that thou canst outstrip us? Nay, by my name through which the breaths of the Spirit (nafaḥāt al-rūḥ) have wafted over every small and great one!

We have proclaimed the Cause (ballaghnā al-amr) through the hands of those who turned away! Verily, the scheming of the schemers (makr al-mākirīn) harmeth it not! The Whisperer (al-khannās) appeared with my book (kitābī) amongst the people, and imagined that thereby they would assail the Dawning-Place of the Cause (maṭlaʿ al-amr) and thereby abase the station of God (shaʾn allāh) amongst all besides him! Thus did his own soul entice him, and the Word of Chastisement (kalimat al-ʿadhāb) became justly his from One All-Subduing, All-Encompassing (ghālib muḥīṭ)!

Say: Thereby shall His Cause (amruhu) be exalted, his verses (āyātuhu) be spread abroad, and this remembrance (hādhā al-dhikr) be raised on high, through whom every wise decree (kull amr ḥakīm) hath been ordained! Would that the servants might all assemble against us and shed our blood (yusfikūna dimāʾanā) in this Straight Path (al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm)! We have sacrificed whatsoever We possessed in the path of God (fī sabīl allāh); to this bear witness the tribulations (al-balāyā) wherein We now abide....

 

6. The denunciation of Siyyid Muḥammad and Āqā Jān:

 

...و ما ذکر فی الاسلاف ان العجب فی الذین اتبعوا الذفراء بعد الذی تضوع رائحة المحبوب بین العالمین مثل آنکه بسید محمد اصفهانی و اقوال او که ابدا از اصل امر مطلع نبوده و لا زال بفساد مشغول از حق امنع اقدس محتجب مانده اند اگر چه قول عوام است و لکن مناسب این مقام کوری نگر که عصا کش کور دگر شود فو الله فو الله هر ذی بصری و ذی شمی که یکمرتبه او را دیده از وجهش اثر جحیم و از نفسش رائحه اهل سجین یافته هر روز بتدلیسی مشغول چون وارد سجن اعظم شدیم اسمش را قدوس افندی گذاشت بگمان آنکه اسم بیمعنی سبب اعلای مسمی خواهد شد ویل له و لمن اتبعه و همچنین آقا جان را رئیس المشرکین سیف الحق نامیده و عراق را باو وعده داد چنانچه مکتوب خود آقا جان الآن موجود است که برئیس المشرکین نوشته استغاثه نموده که آن وعده که دادید چند وقت دیگر ظاهر میشود باری در این ارض نزد هر شخصی ذکر نمود که من سیف الحقم و اکثر بلاد را عنقریب فتح میکنم الا لعنة الله علی الکاذبین...

 

…And as for what was mentioned concerning those who have gone before (aslāf), the astonishing thing is [the condition of] those who followed the fetid one (al-dhafrāʾ) after the fragrance of the Beloved (rāʾiḥat al-maḥbūb) had been diffused amongst all the worlds. For example, [they followed] Siyyid Muḥammad Isfahānī and his assertions, although he had never possessed the slightest knowledge of the foundation of the Cause (aṣl-i-amr), had continually occupied himself with corruption (fasād), and had remained veiled from the Most Exalted, Most Holy Truth (ḥaqq-i-amnaʿ-i-aqdas)!

Although it is a saying of the common people (qawl-i-ʿawāmm), it is appropriate to this station: “Behold the blind man who becomes the guide-stick bearer of another blind man!”

By God! By God! Every possessor of sight (dhī baṣar) and possessor of smell (dhī shamm) who beheld him but once perceived upon his face the trace of hell (athar-i- jaḥīm) and, from his breath, the stench of the people of Sijjīn (rāʾiḥa-i-ahl-i-sijjīn)! Every day he occupied himself with some deception (tadlīs)!

When we entered the Most Great Prison (sijn-i-aʿẓam), he gave himself the name “Quddūs Effendi” (quddūs afandī), imagining that a meaningless name (ism-i-bī-maʿnā) would become the cause of exalting the one named (iʿlā-i-musammā)! Woe unto him and unto whosoever followed him (waylun lahu wa-li-man ittabaʿahu)! Likewise, he named Āqā Jān—Chief of the Polytheists (raʾīs al-mushrikīn)—“Sword of the Truth” (sayf al-ḥaqq), and promised him Iraq. Indeed, Āqā Jān’s own letter (maktūb) is still extant, which he wrote to the Chief of the Polytheists, beseeching him (istighātha namūda) [and asking]: “How much longer will it be before that promise which you gave becomes manifest?”

In any case, in this land he declared before everyone: “I am the Sword of the Truth (sayf al-ḥaqq), and very soon I shall conquer most of the lands (akthar-i-bilād)!” Lo! The curse of God be upon the liars (laʿnat allāh ʿalā al-kādhibīn)....

 

7. The central revelation interpreting the deaths:

 

This is the most important passage:

 

...الاقدس الاعظم الابهی ان فی ابتلاء مالک الامکان فی کل الاحیان لآیات لمن فی الاکوان قد قبل الشدة لرخاء البریة و المشقة لراحة من فی الامکان نفسی لفضله الفداء و کینونتی لرحمته الفداء و روحی لعنایته التی احاطت الآفاق ما اصبح الا و احاطته ظلمات الاشارات من الذین کفروا بالله منزل الآیات و انه لا يمنعه شیء عما اراد فی امر الله مالک یوم التناد مرة ینادی بلسانه المبین و طورا یشیر باصبع الیقین و یدعو الکل الی الله مالک الرقاب لو نذکر ما ورد علینا لتنفطر السماء و تخر الجبال ان الذین کفروا افتخروا بما عندهم من الالقاب ان الاخرس سمی نفسه بالقدوس و ادعی فی نفسه ما ادعی الخناس و الآخر سمی نفسه بسیف الحق و قال انی انا فاتح البلاد قد بعث الله من ضرب علی فمه لیوقنن الکل بانه ذنب الشیطان قطع من سیف الرحمن قد کان ان ینتظر ایام عزه و ظهوره بما وعده من کفر بالله فالق الاصباح کذلک یأخذ الله من اعرض عنه و قام علی تضییع امره بین العباد فلما هلکوا سرت اریاح الربیع و فتحت ابواب السماء و امطر السحاب طوبی لمن فاز بعرفان الله فی ایامه و انقطع بکله عن کل الجهات قل أ و لم یکفکم رب السموات و الارض انه قد اتی بالحق باسمه المهیمن علی الابداع انک نور قلبک بمصباح الاعظم الذی اوقده مالک القدم ثم استقم علی الامر بسلطان ربک المقتدر المختار...

 

…The Most Holy, the Most Great, the All-Glorious (al-aqdas al-aʿẓam al-abhā)! Verily, in the affliction (ibtilāʾ) of the Sovereign of the contingent world (mālik al-imkān) at all times are signs (āyāt) for those who dwell within the worlds (akwān)! He hath accepted hardship (shidda) for the prosperity of creation (rakhāʾ al-bariyya), and travail (mashaqqa) for the repose of all who are within the realm of contingency (al-imkān)! My soul be a sacrifice for his bounty (faḍl), my very onticity (kaynūnatī) a sacrifice for his mercy (raḥma), and my spirit a sacrifice for his loving-kindness (ʿināya), which hath encompassed the horizons!

No morn hath dawned save that he hath been encompassed by the darknesses of insinuations (ẓulumāt al-ishārāt) proceeding from those who have disbelieved in God, the Revealer of the verses (munazzil al-āyāt)! Yet nothing can hinder him from whatsoever he hath willed in the Cause of God, the Sovereign of the Day of the Summoning (mālik yawm al-tanād)! At one time he calleth aloud with his perspicuous Tongue (lisānihi al-mubīn), and at another he pointeth with the Finger of Certitude (iṣbaʿ al-yaqīn), summoning all unto God, the Sovereign of all necks (mālik al-riqāb)!

Were We to recount that which hath befallen us, the heaven would assuredly be rent asunder and the mountains would fall down! Those who disbelieved took pride in the titles (alqāb) they possessed! The Dumb One (al-akhras) named himself “Quddūs” (al-Quddūs) and inwardly laid claim to that which the Whisperer (al-khannās) had claimed; while the other named himself “the Sword of the Truth” (sayf al-ḥaqq) and said: “Verily, I am the conqueror of the lands (fātiḥ al-bilād)!”

God then raised up one who struck him upon the mouth (man ḍaraba ʿalā famihi), that all might assuredly know that he was [but] the tail of Satan (dhanab al-shayṭān), severed by the Sword of the All-Merciful (sayf al-raḥmān)! He had been awaiting the days of his might and his manifestation (ayyām ʿizzihi wa-ẓuhūrihi) in accordance with that which had been promised him by one who disbelieved in God, the Cleaver of the Dawn (fāliq al-iṣbāḥ)!

Thus doth God seize (yaʾkhudhu) him who turneth away from him and riseth up to bring the Cause of God to ruin (taḍyīʿ amrihi) amongst the servants!

Then, when they had perished (halakū), the winds of spring (aryāḥ al-rabīʿ) blew, the gates of heaven were opened, and the clouds poured down rain! Blessed (ṭūbā) is he who hath attained unto the gnosis of God (ʿirfān allāh) in his days and hath wholly severed himself (inqaṭaʿa bi-kullihi) from every direction!

Say: Hath not the Lord of the heavens and the earth sufficed you? Verily, he hath come with the Truth (bi’l-ḥaqq) in his name, the Protector over all creation (al-muhaymin ʿalā al-ibdāʿ)! Illumine thy heart (nawwir qalbaka) with the Most Great Lamp (al-miṣbāḥ al-aʿẓam), which the Sovereign of Eternity (mālik al-qidam) hath kindled; then remain steadfast in the Cause (istaqim ʿalā al-amr) through the sovereignty of thy Lord, the All-Powerful, the All-Ordaining (al-muqtadir al-mukhtār)....

 

The two most important clauses are:

 

قد بعث الله من ضرب علی فمه لیوقنن الکل بانه ذنب الشیطان قطع من سیف الرحمن

 

“God hath raised up one who smote him upon the mouth, that all may know with certitude that the tail of Satan was severed by the Sword of the All-Merciful.” And:

 

...کذلک یأخذ الله من اعرض عنه و قام علی تضییع امره بین العباد فلما هلکوا سرت اریاح الربیع و فتحت ابواب السماء و امطر السحاب...

“Thus doth God seize him who turneth away from him and ariseth to bring his Cause to ruin amongst the servants! And when they had perished, the breezes of spring began to blow, the gates of heaven were opened, and the clouds poured down their rain!”

8. The narrator’s post-murder gloss:

 

...شخصی در این مدینه از علمای مدینه کبیره بوده آقا جان نزد او مراوده داشت نزد او هم تفصیل را ذکر نموده که من سیف الحقم عنقریب فتوحات اکثر بلاد بدست من خواهد شد آن شخص عالم جاهل اگر چه از سبیل حق بعید بوده کلمه خوبی ذکر نمود کان روح القدس نطق علی لسانه چنانچه بعد از قتل مشرکین في الفور مع پاشای بلد بر سر نعش آقا جان حاضر مذکور نمود این ملعون میگفت من سیف الحقم حال معلوم شد که سیف الحق آن بود که بر کمرش خورد و باسفل الجحیم مقرش داد باری الحمدلله بعد از وقوع این فقره و رجوع مشرکین باسفل الجحیم امطار رحمت لیلا و نهارا بارید بعد از آنکه در چند سنه رحمت ممنوع بود ناس بقحط و غلا معذب و مبتلا...

 

…There was in this city a certain man counted among the learned of the Great City, with whom Āqā Jān associated. To him also he recounted the matter, saying: “I am the Sword of Truth, and ere long the conquest of most of the lands shall be accomplished at my hand!” That ignorant learned man, though far removed from the path of Truth, uttered a goodly word—as though the Holy Spirit had spoken upon his tongue! For immediately after the killing of the polytheists, he accompanied the Pasha of the city to the corpse of Āqā Jān and said: ‘This accursed one used to say, “I am the Sword of Truth.”’ Now it hath become evident that the Sword of Truth was that which struck him upon the waist and assigned his dwelling to the lowest depth of hell (asfal al-jaḥīm). In short, praise be to God, after this affair occurred and the polytheists returned unto the lowest depth of hell, the rains of mercy (amṭār-i-raḥmat) poured down night and day, after mercy had for several years been withheld and the people had been tormented and afflicted by drought and dearth!

 

[104] A Travellers Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab, volume 2, Note W:  359, 370 and 363.

[105] E.G. Browne’s introduction to Tārīkh-i-Jadīd or New History of Mirza ꜤAlī Muḥammad, the Bāb (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1893; reprint, Amsterdam, 1975): xxiii- xxiv.