While the convulsions of Mázindarán and Nayríz were pursuing
their bloody course the Grand Vizir of Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, anxiously pondering
the significance of these dire happenings, and apprehensive of their
repercussions on his countrymen, his government and his sovereign, was
feverishly revolving in his mind that fateful decision which was not only
destined to leave its indelible imprint on the fortunes of his country, but was
to be fraught with such incalculable consequences for the destinies of the
whole of mankind. The repressive measures taken against the followers of the
Báb, he was by now fully convinced, had but served to inflame their zeal, steel
their resolution and confirm their loyalty to their persecuted Faith. The Báb’s
isolation and captivity had produced the opposite effect to that which the
Amír-Nizám had confidently anticipated. Gravely perturbed, he bitterly
condemned the disastrous leniency of his predecessor, Hájí Mírzá Aqásí, which
had brought matters to such a pass. A more drastic and still more exemplary
punishment, he felt, must now be administered to what he regarded as an
abomination of heresy which was polluting the civil and ecclesiastical
institutions of the realm. Nothing short, he believed, of the extinction of the
life of Him Who was the fountain-head of so odious a doctrine and the driving
force behind so dynamic a movement could stem the tide that had wrought such
havoc throughout the land.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
