…the bigoted Muhammad Sháh, one of his earliest acts,
definitely condemned by the pen of Bahá’u’lláh, was the order to strangle his
first minister, the illustrious Qá’im-Maqám, immortalized by that same pen as
the “Prince of the City of Statesmanship and Literary Accomplishment,” and to
have him replaced by that lowbred, consummate scoundrel, Ḥájí Mírzá Aqásí, who
brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution. It was this same
Sháh who refused to interview the Báb and imprisoned Him in Ádhirbayján, and
who, at the age of forty, was afflicted by a complication of maladies to which
he succumbed, hastening the doom forecast in these words of the Qayyúm-i-Asmá:
“I swear by God, O Sháh! If thou showest enmity unto Him Who is His
Remembrance, God will, on the Day of Resurrection, condemn thee, before the
kings, unto hellfire, and thou shalt not, in very truth, find on that day any
helper except God, the Exalted.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)
