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In Yazd, at the instigation of the mujtahid of that city, and by order of the callous Maḥmúd Mírzá, the Jalúlu’l-Dawlih, the governor, a son of Zillu’s-Sulṭán, seven were done to death in a single day in horrible circumstances.
“O heedless one!” He thus addresses, in the Lawḥ-i-Burhán, a notorious Persian mujtahid, whose hands were stained with the blood of Bahá’í martyrs, “rely not on thy glory and thy power. Thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountaintop. Soon will it fade away, as decreed by God, the All-Possessing, the Most High. O concourse of divines!
But how were they to resist a motion which affected the authority of Akbar? In this difficulty they came to a decision, which, though they called it a compromise, gave away in fact the whole question. They drew up a document in which the Emperor was certified to be a just ruler, and as such was assigned the rank of a 'Mujtáhid, that is, an infallible authority in all matters relating to Islám.
To their amazement and disappointment, however, they found that the leading mujtahid amongst them, the celebrated Shaykh Murtadáy-i-Ansárí, a man renowned for his tolerance, his wisdom, his undeviating justice, his piety and nobility of character, refused, when apprized of their designs, to pronounce the necessary sentence against the Bábís.
Was it not, he might well ponder, this same Sháh Abbás the Great who had been arrogantly addressed by another mujtahid as “the founder of a borrowed empire,” implying that the kingdom of the “king of kings” really belonged to the expected Imám, and was held by the Sháh solely in the capacity of a temporary trustee?
The wealthy and prominent Muḥammad-Ḥasan Khán-i-Káshí was so mercilessly bastinadoed in Burújird that he succumbed to his ordeal. In Shíráz Mírzá Áqáy-i-Rikáb-Sáz, together with Mírzá Rafí-i-Khayyát and Mashhadí Nabí, were by order of the local mujtahid simultaneously strangled in the dead of night, their graves being later desecrated by a mob who heaped refuse upon them.
The deportation of a considerable number of Muslim ecclesiastical officials, amongst them the heir of that notorious and bloodthirsty Mujtahid of Iṣfáhán, “the Son of the Wolf,” has served to clear the ground for the extension and consolidation of Bahá’í institutions.
Had not Sháh Tahmásp, on receiving an epistle, penned by yet another mujtahid, sprung to his feet, placed it on his eyes, kissed it with rapture, and, because he had been addressed as “brother,” ordered it to be placed within his winding-sheet and buried with him?
It was for the sake of those same defenders, whom He had intended to join, that He suffered His second imprisonment, this time in the masjid of Ámul to which He was led, amidst the tumult raised by no less than four thousand spectators,—for their sake that He was bastinadoed in the namáz-khánih of the mujtahid of that town until His feet bled, and later confined in the private residence of its governor; for their sake that He was bitterly denounced by the leading mullá, and insulted by the mob who, besieging the governor’s residence, pelted Him with stones, and hurled in His face the foulest invectives.
The scheming, the ambitious and profligate Mírzá Buzurg Khán, the Persian Consul General in Baghdád, was eventually dismissed from office, “overwhelmed with disaster, filled with remorse and plunged into confusion.” The notorious Mujtahid Siyyid Ṣádiq-i-Tabátabá’í, denounced by Bahá’u’lláh as “the Liar of Ṭihrán,” the author of the monstrous decree condemning every male member of the Bahá’í community in Persia, young or old, high or low, to be put to death, and all its women to be deported, was suddenly taken ill, fell a prey to a disease that ravaged his heart, his brain and his limbs, and precipitated eventually his death.
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