Little wonder that the immortal chronicler [Nabil] of the
events associated with the birth and rise of the Bahá’í Revelation has seen fit
to devote no less than half of his moving narrative to the description of those
happenings that have during such a brief space of time so greatly enriched,
through their tragedy and heroism, the religious annals of mankind. In sheer
dramatic power, in the rapidity with which events of momentous importance
succeeded each other, in the holocaust which baptized its birth, in the
miraculous circumstances attending the martyrdom of the One [the Báb]Who had
ushered it in, in the potentialities with which it had been from the outset so
thoroughly impregnated, in the forces to which it eventually gave birth, this nine-year
period may well rank as unique in the whole range of man’s religious
experience.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
