At Qazvín, Ṭáhirih refused to be reunited with her husband and went to her father's house. Her impetuous uncle, Ḥájí Mullá Taqí, felt greatly insulted and his wrath knew no bounds. His denunciation of those whom he considered to be responsible for his daughter-in-law's waywardness became fiercer than ever before. Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim were the particular targets of his vilification. Then, one morning at dawn, he was found in the mosque, fatally stabbed. Immediately the Bábís were accused of his murder, and even Ṭáhirih was considered guilty, was kept under close watch, and her life was in danger. Although a Shírází[3] confessed that he had slain Ḥájí Mullá Taqí because of his rabid animosity towards Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim, three Bábís, totally innocent of the crime, were put to death—Shaykh Ṣáliḥ-al-Karímí in Ṭihrán, and Mullá Ibráhím-i-Maḥallatí and Mullá Ṭáhir in Qazvín. These three were the first martyrs of the Bábí Faith in Persia itself, and their deaths constituted the first public execution of Bábís.[EV] Ḥájí Asadu'lláh, a well-known merchant of the Farhádí family, was also martyred, while in prison, by partisans of Ṭáhirih's husband, the Imám-Jum`ih of Qazvín, and a report was circulated that he had died from natural causes.
Ṭáhirih was now totally isolated. Bahá'u'lláh gave the task of rescuing her to Mírzá Hádí, the nephew of the martyred Ḥájí Asadu'lláh. This young man, who had left Qazvín at the outset of agitation against the Bábís, returned at the risk of his life and successfully carried out his mission. Ṭáhirih reached Ṭihrán in safety. Thus it was that she could be at the conference of Badasht, where she rendered her most signal service to the Faith of the Báb.
The Conference of Badasht
The gathering of the Bábís at Badasht coincided with the removal of the Báb, from the castle of Chihríq to Tabríz, for His public examination. Contrary to certain allegations, the Bábís did not congregate in Badasht to concert plans to rescue Him. They came there, guided by Bahá'u'lláh, to settle a vital and cardinal issue: was this persuasion of theirs just an offshoot of Islám, or was it an independent Faith? Until then no public claim had been made that the Báb, as the Qá'im of the House of Muḥammad, was an Inaugurator of a new theophany. Strange it seems, in perspective, that about the time when a decision was being reached in a tiny hamlet on the edge of Khurásán, hundreds of miles away in the city of Tabríz, the Báb was announcing His station before a tribunal summoned to question Him.[EW]
`Abdu'l-Bahá states that Bahá'u'lláh and Quddús had agreed that the time had come to declare the advent of a new Dispensation.[4] However, there were faint hearts in the Bábí ranks, as events were to prove. Ṭáhirih had met opposition from fellow-Bábís because she had always been bold enough to assert that this was indeed a new day. Any announcement at Badasht would have to be emphatic and unhedged, to make a persuasive impact. And this it was, in a most dramatic way.
Bahá'u'lláh had rented three gardens in Badasht: Quddús lived in one, Ṭáhirih in the second, and Bahá'u'lláh had a tent pitched in the third. Other Bábís, among whom were a number of the Letters of the Living such as Mírzá Muḥammad-`Alí, the brother-in-law of Ṭáhirih, and Mullá Báqir-i-Tabrízí, lived under tents in the grounds facing the three gardens.[EX]
During the three weeks of the conference, argument and counter-argument were put forward, and differences of view and approach arose between Quddús and Ṭáhirih. At last it was Ṭáhirih's unheard-of gesture, courageous beyond belief and description, followed by Bahá'u'lláh's decisive intervention, which made clear to all that a new Dispensation had begun. Ṭáhirih's brave act was to cast aside her veil. Men were shaken to the depths of their being to see her thus. Some fled with horror from the scene. One, in desperation, tried to cut his throat. When the uproar subsided, Bahá'u'lláh called for a copy of the Qur'án and directed a reciter to read the fifty-sixth súrih, 'al-Wáqi`a':[EY]
When the inevitable day of judgment shall suddenly come, no soul shall charge the prediction of its coming with falsehood: it will abase some, and exalt others. When the earth shall be shaken with a violent shock; and the mountains shall be dashed in pieces, and shall become as dust scattered abroad; and ye shall be separated into three distinct classes: the companions of the right hand (how happy shall the companions of the right hand be!), and the companions of the left hand (how miserable shall the companions of the left hand be!), and those who have preceded others in the faith shall precede them to paradise. These are they who shall approach near unto God: they shall dwell in gardens of delight.
At Badasht the faint-hearted fell away. And when those who had remained steadfast left the hamlet it was to go out into a world, for them, greatly changed. That change was in a sense a reflection of the transformation they had experienced. They were determined to assert their freedom from the fetters of the past. In a country tightly wedded to blind, rigid orthodoxy, the deportment of the Bábís would arouse bitter hostility. There were Bábís, undoubtedly, who in their newly-found consciousness of emancipation, committed repellent excesses, and they deserved rejection by their fellow-countrymen. But for the majority, the animosity now directed against them created a situation which was new, and in turn required counter-measures to ensure their very existence. The opposition they had met in the past was sporadic, and not nation-wide, depending on the character, influence and power of the leaders, directors and instigators of such opposition, in any particular locality. The open welcome which the Bab had received when He reached Iṣfahán, following the barbaric treatment He had suffered at the hands of the Governor-General and the divines of Fárs; the enthusiasm and eagerness with which the people had, at first, greeted Him both in Tabríz and Urúmíyyih; the friendly reception which Quddús had found in Kirmán, after being humiliated in Shíráz; the reverence shown conspicuously to Ṭáhirih in Kirand and Kirmánsháh; the respect and kindly attention accorded to the Bábu'l-Báb by Ḥamzih Mírzá, the Governor-General of Khurásán[EZ]—all were to become only memories, sadly lacking counterparts in the era whose opening was marked by the Báb's public declaration of His station as the promised Qá'im during His examination at Tabríz, the echoing affirmation of the dawning of a new and independent religious Dispensation at the conference of Badasht, and by the death of Muḥammad Sháh.
Hardly had the conference of Badasht ended when the people of the village of Níyálá attacked the Bábís. Nabíl-i-A`ẓam heard the story from Bahá'u'lláh Himself: