The very moment the shots were fired [at the execution of
the Báb] a gale of exceptional violence arose and swept over the city. From
noon till night a whirlwind of dust obscured the light of the sun, and blinded
the eyes of the people. In Shíráz an “earthquake,” foreshadowed in no
less weighty a Book than the Revelation of St. John, occurred in 1268 A.H.
which threw the whole city into turmoil and wrought havoc amongst its people, a
havoc that was greatly aggravated by the outbreak of
cholera, by famine and other afflictions. In that same year no less than two
hundred and fifty of the firing squad, that had replaced Sám Khán’s
regiment, met their death, together with their officers, in a terrible
earthquake, while the remaining five hundred suffered, three years later, as a
punishment for their mutiny, the same fate as that which their hands had
inflicted upon the Báb. To insure that none of them had survived, they were
riddled with a second volley, after which their bodies, pierced with spears and
lances, were exposed to the gaze of the people of Tabríz. The prime instigator
of the Báb’s death, the implacable Amír-Nizám, together with his brother, his
chief accomplice, met their death within two years of that savage act.
(Shoghi
Effendi, ‘God Passes By’)
