On the evening of the very day of the Báb's execution, which
fell on the ninth of July 1850 (28th of Sha'ban 1266 A.H.), during the thirty-first
year of His age and the seventh of His ministry, the mangled bodies were
transferred from the courtyard of the barracks to the edge of the moat outside
the gate of the city. Four companies, each consisting of ten sentinels, were
ordered to keep watch in turn over them. On the following morning the Russian
Consul in Tabriz visited the spot, and ordered the artist who had accompanied
him to make a drawing of the remains as they lay beside the moat. In the middle
of the following night a follower of the Báb, Haji Sulayman Khan, succeeded,
through the instrumentality of a certain Haji Allah-Yar, in removing the bodies
to the silk factory owned by one of the believers of Milan, and laid them, the
next day, in a specially made wooden casket, which he later transferred to a
place of safety. Meanwhile the mullas were boastfully proclaiming from the
pulpits that, whereas the holy body of the Immaculate Imam would be preserved
from beasts of prey and from all creeping things, this man's body had been devoured
by wild animals. No sooner had the news of the transfer of the remains of the
Báb and of His fellow-sufferer been communicated to Bahá'u'lláh than He ordered
that same Sulayman Khan to bring them to Tihran, where they were taken to the
Imam-Zadih-Hasan, from whence they were removed to different places, until the
time when, in pursuance of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's instructions, they were transferred
to the Holy Land, and were permanently and ceremoniously laid to rest by Him in
a specially erected mausoleum on the slopes of Mt. Carmel.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God
Passes By’)
