The Bábís would gladly have lived peacefully within the four walls they had erected around the shrine of Shaykh Ṭabarsí. But the continuous clamouring of the divines, led by Sa`ídu'l-`Ulamá of Bárfurúsh, and the despotic, obstinate and haughty nature of the Grand Vizier, combined to deny them peace and security. One army after another was sent to reduce them. In sorties from their fortress they inflicted heavy losses on the besieging forces, causing commanders to flee for their lives. Some of the commanders[FD] died on the battlefield, while Quddús, during one of the sorties, received a bullet wound in his mouth.
Bahá'u'lláh, accompanied by His brother Mírzá Yaḥyá, with Ḥájí Mírzá Jání of Káshán, and Mullá Báqir of Tabríz (one of the Letters of the Living), set out from Ṭihrán to join the defenders of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, but they were intercepted and taken to Ámul. Bahá'u'lláh offered to bear the punishment intended for the others, and was bastinadoed.
At dawn of February 2nd 1849, Mullá Ḥusayn led his last sortie. `Abbás-Qulí Khán, in joint command of the Government forces, had climbed a tree and, picking out the figure of Mullá Ḥusayn on horseback, shot him in the chest. He did not know whom he had mortally wounded, until a timorous siyyid from Qum[FE] turned traitor and informed him. Mullá Ḥusayn was carried by his companions to the fort, where he died and was buried inside the shrine. He was thirty-five years old. Bahá'u'lláh wrote of him in the Kitáb-i-Íqán—The Book of Certitude:—'But for him, God would not have been established upon the seat of His mercy, nor ascended the throne of eternal glory.'[10]
Now Mírzá Muḥammad-Báqir-i-Qá'iní replaced Mullá Ḥusayn in leading the companions. But the end could not be far off. Of the three hundred and thirteen defenders of the fortress, a number had died, many were wounded, and a few wavered in their resolve. The pressure of the forces arrayed against them increased. Cannon were levelled at them. Food became scarce and they ate grass, leaves of trees, the skin and ground bone of their slaughtered horses, the boiled leather of their saddles. `Abdu'l-Bahá speaks of their sufferings in the Memorials of the Faithful:
For eighteen days they remained without food. They lived on the leather of their shoes. This too was soon consumed, and they had nothing left but water. They drank a mouthful every morning, and lay famished and exhausted in their fort. When attacked, however, they would instantly spring to their feet, and manifest in the face of the enemy a magnificent courage and astonishing resistance.... Under such circumstances to maintain an unwavering faith and patience is extremely difficult, and to endure such dire afflictions a rare phenomenon.[11]
The end came not through abject surrender, but through the perfidy of the foe. Prince Mihdí-Qulí Mírzá, brother of Muḥammad Sháh, took a solemn oath on the Qur'án that their lives and property would be inviolate should they come out of the fortress and disperse in peace. A horse was sent for Quddús to take him to the camp of the Prince. But once the companions had been lured out of the fortress, the oath was conveniently forgotten. The Bábís were massacred, the fortress was pillaged and razed to the ground. Hideous outrages were committed upon the corpses of the slain, and a vast area of the forest was strewn with their remains: disembowelled, hacked to pieces, burned. Survivors were few. No more than three or four were kept to be heavily ransomed. A few who were left for dead recovered. Still a few others were sold into slavery and eventually found their way back to the company of their fellow-believers. All the dead were Persians except two Arabs of Baghdád who had come out with Ṭáhirih from `Iráq.[12]
Quddús was taken to Bárfurúsh, his native town, where Sa`ídu'l-`Ulamá, his pitiless foe, awaited him. Prince Mihdí-Qulí Mírzá, oblivious to his pledge, forsook Quddús and gave him into the hands of that bloodthirsty priest. Imprecations were heaped upon the head of the captive. He was made to suffer refined tortures and searing agonies which an insanely jealous adversary had devised for him. At the height of his torments he was heard to say:
Forgive, O my God, the trespasses of this people. Deal with them in Thy mercy, for they know not what we already have discovered and cherish.[13]
In the public square of Bárfurúsh (the Sabzih-Maydán), Sa`ídu'l-`Ulamá struck Quddús down with an axe, and any instrument which a frenzied mob could lay its hands on was used to tear his flesh and dismember him. Then they threw his shattered, mutilated body onto a blazing fire lit in the square. That night, when all were gone, Ḥájí Muḥammad-`Alíy-i-Ḥamzih, a divine, humane and compassionate, universally acclaimed for his integrity, collected from the dying embers what remained of the body of the martyr, and reverently buried it.
The martyrdom of Quddús took place in the month of May 1849, seven months after his fellow-Bábís had first taken refuge in the fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí.[14] It marked the end of an episode which had begun, eleven months before, with the raising of the Black Standard on the plain of Khurásán; during which deeds of incredible heroism by some three hundred Bábís had stunned and humiliated opposition forces vastly outnumbering them; which had witnessed the deaths of half the Letters of the Living, including the first, the Bábu'l-Báb, and Quddús, the last and greatest; and which closed with acts of treachery and atrocious cruelty. Words which Quddús spoke during their occupation of the fort are a fitting commentary upon the spirit of those who defended it: