Episode XXV: The Martyr of Tabríz

Extinguish that light, choke the stream at its source, and the country will recover its peace.

That was the thought that took hold of the Amír-Nizám, the Grand Vazír of Nasiri’d-Dín Sháh, after Shaykh Tabarsí, after Nayríz, after the first tremors of Zanján. The imperial army had triumphed everywhere. The companions of Mullá Husayn and Vahíd had been mowed down. And yet the spirit behind them had not broken. If anything it had blazed more fiercely. The remnants of the scattered band clung to their Faith with a passion that no amount of slaughter had been able to weaken. And above all, He who had kindled that flame was still alive, still able to exercise the full measure of His influence from His prison in the mountains.

So the Amír-Nizám summoned his counsellors, shared his fears, and laid out his plan.

“Behold,” he told them, “the storm which the Faith of the Siyyid-i-Báb has provoked. Nothing short of his public execution can enable this distracted country to recover its tranquillity and peace. Who dare compute the forces that have perished at Shaykh Tabarsí? No sooner had that mischief been suppressed than the flames of another sedition blazed in Fárs. No sooner had we quelled the south than another insurrection broke out in the north. If you are able to advise a remedy, acquaint me with it, for my sole purpose is to ensure the peace and honour of my countrymen.”

Silence. Not a single voice ventured a reply, except one. Mírzá Áqá Khán-i-Núrí, the Minister of War, objected. To put to death a banished siyyid for the deeds of others would be an act of manifest cruelty. He recalled the example of the late Muhammad Sháh, who had always refused to act on the calumnies of the Báb’s enemies.

The Amír-Nizám was sorely displeased. “Such considerations are wholly irrelevant. The interests of the State are in jeopardy. Was not the Imám Husayn himself executed by those who had seen him receive marks of exceptional affection from Muhammad, his Grandfather? Did they not refuse to consider the rights which his lineage had conferred upon him? Nothing short of the remedy I advocate can uproot this evil.”

One voice of conscience. Overruled.

The Amír-Nizám sent his orders to Navváb Hamzih Mírzá, the governor of Ádhirbayján, a prince known for his kindness and rectitude. He was careful not to reveal his real purpose. The Navváb, assuming his Captive was being returned home, sent an escort to Chihríq with instructions to treat the Báb with the utmost consideration.

But forty days before that escort arrived, the Báb had already prepared.

He gathered all His documents and Tablets, His pen-case, His seals, and His agate rings into a coffer and entrusted them to Mullá Báqir, one of the Letters of the Living. With the coffer He sent a letter addressed to Mírzá Ahmad, His amanuensis, and the key. He urged Mullá Báqir to take the utmost care of that trust and to conceal its contents from anyone except Mírzá Ahmad.

When that coffer was later opened, those present found among its contents a scroll of blue paper, of the most delicate texture. On it the Báb, in His own exquisite handwriting, a fine shikastih script, had penned, in the form of a pentacle, some five hundred verses, all consisting of derivatives from the word “Bahá.” The scroll was spotless, the penmanship so fine and intricate that viewed at a distance it appeared as a single wash of ink on the paper. It looked printed rather than written. No calligraphist, those who saw it believed, could have rivalled it.

The trust was to be delivered into the hands of Bahá’u’lláh in Tihrán.

He was not being carried blindly toward surprise. He was putting His house in order, and He was pointing it toward a Name.

The escort conducted the Báb to Tabríz with respect. The Navváb had arranged for Him to be lodged at the home of a friend and treated with deference. Three days passed.

Then a fresh order arrived from the Grand Vazír, carried by Mírzá Hasan Khán, the Vazír-Nizám, the Amír-Nizám’s own brother. The command: execute the Prisoner on the very day the farmán reached the prince. Whoever professed to be His follower was likewise to be condemned. The Armenian regiment of Urúmíyyih, whose colonel was Sám Khán, was ordered to carry out the sentence in the courtyard of the barracks in the centre of the city.

The Navváb was appalled. He told the Vazír-Nizám plainly: “The Amír would do better to entrust me with services of greater merit. The task I am called upon to perform is a task that only ignoble people would accept. I am neither Ibn-i-Zíyád nor Ibn-i-Sa’d, that he should call upon me to slay an innocent descendant of the Prophet of God.”

His refusal reached the Amír-Nizám, who sent fresh instructions through his brother. “Relieve us from this anxiety that weighs upon our hearts,” the Grand Vazír urged, “and let this affair be brought to an end ere the month of Ramadán breaks upon us, that we may enter the period of fasting with undisturbed tranquillity.”

The prince pretended to be ill. He refused to meet the Vazír-Nizám again. So Mírzá Hasan Khán acted on his own authority. He ordered the Báb’s immediate transfer from that house to a room in the barracks. He sent ten of Sám Khán’s men to guard the door.

The Báb was stripped of His turban and sash, the twin emblems of His noble lineage, and driven into confinement. He knew it was a step further on the road to the goal He had set Himself to reach.

That day, Tabríz erupted. The great convulsion that its people had always associated with the Day of Judgment seemed at last to have come upon them. Never had the city known a turmoil so fierce or so strange.

As the Báb approached the courtyard of the barracks, a youth suddenly leapt forward through the crowd. His face was haggard. His feet were bare. His hair was dishevelled. Breathless with excitement, exhausted by fatigue, he flung himself at the Báb’s feet, seized the hem of His garment, and cried: “Send me not from Thee, O Master. Wherever Thou goest, suffer me to follow Thee.”

“Muhammad-‘Alí,” the Báb answered, “arise, and rest assured that you will be with Me. Tomorrow you shall witness what God has decreed.”

Two other companions rushed forward and declared their loyalty. These, together with Muhammad-‘Alíy-i-Zunúzí, were seized and placed in the same cell where the Báb and Siyyid Husayn, His amanuensis, were confined.

That night, Siyyid Husayn later testified, the face of the Báb was aglow with joy, a joy such as had never shone from His countenance. Indifferent to the storm raging around Him, He conversed with gaiety and cheerfulness. The sorrows that had weighed on Him seemed to have vanished entirely. Their weight appeared to have dissolved in the consciousness of approaching victory.

“Tomorrow will be the day of My martyrdom,” He told them. “Would that one of you might now arise and, with his own hands, end My life. I prefer to be slain by the hand of a friend rather than by that of the enemy.”

Tears streamed from their eyes. They shrank from the thought. They refused. They fell silent.

Muhammad-‘Alí sprang to his feet. He announced himself ready to obey.

The others intervened and forced him to abandon that thought. But the Báb had already spoken: “This same youth who has risen to comply with My wish will, together with Me, suffer martyrdom. Him will I choose to share with Me its crown.”

Early in the morning, Mírzá Hasan Khán ordered his farrásh-báshí to bring the Báb before the leading mujtahids of the city and obtain the authorization required for His execution.

As the Báb was being led from the barracks, Siyyid Husayn asked what he should do.

“Confess not your faith,” the Báb told him. “Thereby you will be enabled, when the hour comes, to convey to those who are destined to hear you the things of which you alone are aware.”

He was still speaking, still in confidential conversation with Siyyid Husayn, when the farrásh-báshí interrupted, seized Siyyid Husayn by the hand, dragged him aside, and rebuked him.

The Báb turned to the farrásh-báshí. “Not until I have said to him all those things that I wish to say can any earthly power silence Me. Though all the world be armed against Me, yet shall they be powerless to deter Me from fulfilling, to the last word, My intention.”

The farrásh-báshí was stunned. He made no reply.

Muhammad-‘Alíy-i-Zunúzí was brought before the mujtahids. They urged him to recant, reminding him of the position his stepfather, Siyyid ‘Alíy-i-Zunúzí, occupied.

“Never will I renounce my Master,” he answered. “He is the essence of my faith and the object of my truest adoration. In Him I have found my paradise, and in the observance of His law I recognise the ark of my salvation.”

“Hold your peace!” thundered Mullá Muhammad-i-Mamaqání. “Such words betray your madness. I can well excuse the words for which you are not responsible.”

“I am not mad,” Muhammad-‘Alí retorted. “Such a charge should rather be brought against you who have sentenced to death a man no less holy than the promised Qá’im. He is not a fool who has embraced His Faith and is longing to shed his blood in His path.”

Then the Báb Himself was brought before Mamaqání. The mujtahid did not examine Him. He did not question Him. He recognized the face and reached for the death-warrant he had already written. “No need to bring the Siyyid-i-Báb into my presence,” he said, handing it to his attendant. “This death-warrant I penned the very day I met him at the gathering presided over by the Valí-‘Ahd.”

From there they took the Báb to the house of Mírzá Báqir, the second mujtahid. His attendant was already waiting at the gate, death-warrant in hand. “No need to enter,” he told them. “My master is already satisfied that his father was right in pronouncing the sentence of death.”

Mullá Murtadá-Qulí, the third mujtahid, had likewise issued his written testimony and refused to meet the condemned Man face to face.

Three death-warrants. Not one of them had required an encounter. Not one of them had required the mujtahid to look at the Man he was sentencing to die.

The farrásh-báshí delivered his Captive to Sám Khán. The authorization of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities had been secured. The sentence could proceed.

Meanwhile, Muhammad-‘Alí burst into tears as they tried to place him in the room where Siyyid Husayn had been confined. He entreated them to let him remain with his Master. He was handed over to Sám Khán, with orders to execute him as well if he persisted in refusing to deny his Faith.

And now Sám Khán himself began to falter. He was seized with fear that his action would bring upon him the wrath of God. He approached the Báb.

“I profess the Christian Faith,” he said, “and entertain no ill will against you. If your Cause be the Cause of Truth, enable me to free myself from the obligation to shed your blood.”

“Follow your instructions,” the Báb replied, “and if your intention be sincere, the Almighty is surely able to relieve you from your perplexity.”

Sám Khán ordered his men to drive a nail into the pillar between the door of Siyyid Husayn’s room and the entrance to the adjoining one. Two ropes were fastened to that nail. The Báb and Muhammad-‘Alí were separately suspended. Muhammad-‘Alí had begged to be placed so that his own body shielded his Master. He was hung in such a position that his head reposed on the breast of the Báb.

A regiment of soldiers arranged itself in three files of two hundred and fifty men each. Each file was ordered to fire in turn until the whole seven hundred and fifty had discharged their volleys.

On the roof of the barracks and the tops of adjoining houses, some ten thousand people had crowded to witness the scene.

The rifles fired.

The smoke of seven hundred and fifty rifles turned the light of the noonday sun to darkness.

And when it cleared,

There, standing before the astounded multitude, alive and unhurt, was Muhammad-‘Alí. The cords from which they had been suspended had been rent to pieces by the bullets. But their bodies had not been touched. The tunic Muhammad-‘Alí was wearing had remained unsullied, without a mark, despite the thickness of the smoke. The Báb had vanished from sight.

“The Siyyid-i-Báb has gone from our sight!” rang out the voices of the bewildered crowd.

They searched. They found Him, eventually, seated in the same room He had occupied the night before, engaged in completing His interrupted conversation with Siyyid Husayn. His face bore an expression of unruffled calm. His body had emerged unscathed from the shower of bullets.

“I have finished My conversation with Siyyid Husayn,” the Báb told the farrásh-báshí. “Now you may proceed to fulfil your intention.”

The farrásh-báshí could not proceed. He refused to resume what he had already attempted. That same moment he left the scene and resigned his post. He told everything he had witnessed to his neighbor, Mírzá Siyyid Muhsin, one of the notables of Tabríz. Mírzá Siyyid Muhsin, as soon as he heard the story, embraced the Faith.

Sám Khán was likewise stunned. He ordered his men to leave the barracks immediately. He swore, as he walked out of that courtyard, never again to take part in any act that involved the least injury to the Báb, even if his refusal cost him his own life.

No sooner had Sám Khán departed than Áqá Ján Khán-i-Khamsíh, colonel of the bodyguard, volunteered to carry out the execution.

On the same wall. In the same manner. The Báb and Muhammad-‘Alí were suspended again.

The regiment formed its line.

As the soldiers prepared to fire the final volley, the Báb addressed the gazing multitude. These were His last words:

“Had you believed in Me, O wayward generation, every one of you would have followed the example of this youth, who stood in rank above most of you, and willingly would have sacrificed himself in My path. The day will come when you will have recognised Me; that day I shall have ceased to be with you.”

The rifles fired. This time the bullets did their work. The bodies of the Báb and His companion were shattered and blended into one mass of mingled flesh and bone.

The martyrdom of the Báb took place at noon on Sunday, the twenty-eighth of Sha’bán, in the year 1266 A.H., thirty-one lunar years, seven months, and twenty-seven days from the day of His birth in Shíráz.

The very moment the shots were fired, a gale of exceptional severity swept over the city. A whirlwind of dust of incredible density obscured the sun and blinded the eyes of the people. From noon until night, the entire city remained in darkness.

And still the hearts of the people of Tabríz did not move. They had seen Sám Khán’s regiment fail. They had watched the farrásh-báshí resign. They had examined the tunic that remained stainless despite seven hundred and fifty bullets. They had read the expression of undisturbed serenity on the face of the Báb as He resumed His conversation with Siyyid Husayn. None of them troubled themselves to ask what those signs meant.

That evening, the mangled bodies of the Báb and Muhammad-‘Alí were removed from the courtyard and placed beside the moat outside the city gate. Four companies, each of ten sentinels, took turns keeping watch.

The next morning, the Russian consul in Tabríz came to the moat with an artist. He ordered a sketch of the remains.

Haji ‘Alí-‘Askar later described what he saw in that sketch. No bullet had struck the Báb’s forehead, His cheeks, or His lips. A smile seemed still to linger upon His countenance. But His body had been severely mutilated. The arms and head of His companion were visible, and Muhammad-‘Alí seemed to be holding Him in an embrace. Haji ‘Alí-‘Askar turned his face away. He went home, locked himself in his room, and for three days and three nights could neither sleep nor eat. That short and tumultuous life, its sorrows, its banishments, and the awe-inspiring martyrdom that crowned it, seemed to be re-enacted before his eyes.

On the afternoon of the second day after the martyrdom, Haji Sulaymán Khán arrived at Bagh-Míshih, a suburb of Tabríz. He had left Tihrán as soon as he heard of the danger to the Báb’s life. He had come to deliver Him. He arrived too late.

But he resolved that at least the bodies would not remain in the hands of the enemy. Acting on the advice of his host, the Kalantar, he waited. That night, Haji Alláh-Yár bore the remains from the edge of the moat to a silk factory owned by a believer of Milán. They were laid the next day in a specially constructed wooden case and transferred to a place of safety.

The sentinels, covering their failure, claimed that wild beasts had carried away the bodies while they slept. Their superiors, unwilling to compromise their own honor, concealed the truth.

Haji Sulaymán Khán reported the matter to Bahá’u’lláh, who instructed that the remains be brought to the capital.

Word of the martyrdom spread. When it reached Mírzá Áqá Khán-i-Núrí, the same Minister of War who had once protested the execution, he went to Bahá’u’lláh. He expressed the hope that the fire he had always feared would one day bring untold calamity upon Him was at last extinguished.

“Not so,” Bahá’u’lláh replied. “If this be true, you can be certain that the flame that has been kindled will, by this very act, blaze forth more fiercely than ever, and will set up a conflagration such as the combined forces of the statesmen of this realm will be powerless to quench.”

And the consequences descended.

Plague and famine ravaged Persia. Prince and peasant alike felt the sting. The gaunt spectre of starvation stalked abroad, and the prospect of a slow and painful death haunted the vision of a people who had watched with sullen indifference while the tragedy was enacted before them.

As for the regiment that volunteered to fire the second volley: two hundred and fifty of its members died that same year in an earthquake between Ardibíl and Tabríz. They had been resting under the shadow of a wall on a hot summer day. The wall collapsed. Not one survived. The remaining five hundred mutinied three years later and were themselves shot, their bodies pierced with spears and left exposed. The people of Tabríz, remembering the circumstances of the Báb’s death, began to whisper: “Could it be the vengeance of God that has brought the whole regiment to so dishonourable and tragic an end?” The leading mujtahids, seized with fear, ordered that anyone expressing such doubts be punished.

And the prime movers, the Amír-Nizám and his brother, the Vazír-Nizám, were, within two years, subjected to a dreadful punishment that ended in their own deaths. The blood of the Amír-Nizám stained the wall of the bath of Fín.

They tried to choke the stream at its source.

The flame they struck down blazed forth more fiercely than ever. And the statesmen who lit the pyre were powerless to quench it.