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. The high-handed Subhí Páshá, who had peremptorily summoned Bahá’u’lláh to the government house in Akká, lost the position he occupied, and was recalled under circumstances highly detrimental to his reputation. Nor were the other governors of the city, who had dealt unjustly with the exalted Prisoner in their charge and His fellow-exiles, spared a like fate. “Every páshá,” testifies Nabíl in his narrative, “whose conduct in Akká was commendable enjoyed a long term of office, and was bountifully favored by God, whereas every hostile Mutisárrif (governor) was speedily deposed by the Hand of Divine power, even as ‘Abdu’r-Rahmán Páshá and Muḥammad-Yúsúf Páshá who, on the morrow of the very night they had resolved to lay hands on the loved ones of Bahá’u’lláh, were telegraphically advised of their dismissal. Such was their fate that they were never again given a position.”
Shaykh Muḥammad-Báqir, surnamed the “Wolf,” who, in the strongly condemnatory Lawḥ-i-Burhán addressed to him by Bahá’u’lláh, had been compared to “the last trace of sunlight upon the mountain-top,” witnessed the steady decline of his prestige, and died in a miserable state of acute remorse. His accomplice, Mír Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, surnamed the “She-Serpent,” whom Bahá’u’lláh described as one “infinitely more wicked than the oppressor of Karbilá,” was, about that same time, expelled from Iṣfáhán, wandered from village to village, contracted a disease that engendered so foul an odor that even his wife and daughter could not bear to approach him, and died in such ill-favor with the local authorities that no one dared to attend his funeral, his corpse being ignominiously interred by a few porters.
Mention should, moreover, be made of the devastating famine which, about a year after the illustrious Badí had been tortured to death, ravaged Persia and reduced the population to such extremities that even the rich went hungry, and hundreds of mothers ghoulishly devoured their own children.
Nor can this subject be dismissed without special reference being made to the Arch-Breaker of the Covenant of the Báb, Mírzá Yaḥyá, who lived long enough to witness, while eking out a miserable existence in Cyprus, termed by the Turks “the Island of Satan,” every hope he had so maliciously conceived reduced to naught. A pensioner first of the Turkish and later of the British Government, he was subjected to the further humiliation of having his application for British citizenship refused. Eleven of the eighteen “Witnesses” he had appointed forsook him and turned in repentance to Bahá’u’lláh. He himself became involved in a scandal which besmirched his reputation and that of his eldest son, deprived that son and his descendants of the successorship with which he had previously invested him, and appointed, in his stead, the perfidious Mírzá Hádíy-i-Dawlat-Ábádí, a notorious Azalí, who, on the occasion of the martyrdom of the aforementioned Mírzá Ashraf, was seized with such fear that during four consecutive days he proclaimed from the pulpit-top, and in a most vituperative language, his complete repudiation of the Bábí Faith, as well as of Mírzá Yaḥyá, his benefactor, who had reposed in him such implicit confidence. It was this same eldest son who, through the workings of a strange destiny, sought years after, together with his nephew and niece, the presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the appointed Successor of Bahá’u’lláh and Center of His Covenant, expressed repentance, prayed for forgiveness, was graciously accepted by Him, and remained, till the hour of his death, a loyal follower of the Faith which his father had so foolishly, so shamelessly and so pitifully striven to extinguish.