A little over four years had elapsed since the birth of the
Báb’s Revelation when the trumpet-blast announcing the formal extinction of the
old, and the inauguration of the new Dispensation was sounded. No pomp, no pageantry marked so great a turning-point in the world’s
religious history. Nor was its modest setting commensurate with such a sudden,
startling, complete emancipation from the dark and embattled forces of
fanaticism, of priestcraft, of religious orthodoxy and superstition. The
assembled host consisted of no more than a single woman and a handful of men,
mostly recruited from the very ranks they were attacking, and devoid, with few
exceptions, of wealth, prestige and power. The Captain of the host was Himself
an absentee, a captive in the grip of His foes. The arena was a tiny hamlet in
the plain of Badasht on the border of Mázindarán. The trumpeter was a lone
woman, the noblest of her sex in that Dispensation, whom even some of her
co-religionists pronounced a heretic. The call she sounded was the death-knell
of the twelve hundred year old law of Islám.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
