Memorials of the Faithful
Táhirih
journeyed to Níyálá, having the intention of going on from there by night, making His way through the enemy encampment and entering the Fort. But Mírzá Taqí, the Governor of Ámul, got word of this, and with seven hundred riflemen arrived in Níyálá. Surrounding the village by night, he sent Bahá’u’lláh with eleven riders back to Ámul, and those calamities and tribulations, told of before, came to pass.
As for Táhirih, after the breakup at Badasht she was captured, and the oppressors sent her back under guard to Ṭihrán. There she was imprisoned in the house of Maḥmúd Khán, the Kalántar. But she was aflame, enamored, restless, and could not be still. The ladies of Ṭihrán, on one pretext or another, crowded to see and listen to her. It happened that there was a celebration at the Mayor’s house for the marriage of his son; a nuptial banquet was prepared, and the house adorned. The flower of Tihran’s ladies were invited, the princesses, the wives of vazírs and other great. A splendid wedding it was, with instrumental music and vocal melodies—by day and night the lute, the bells and songs. Then Táhirih began to speak; and so bewitched were the great ladies that they forsook the cithern and the drum and all the pleasures of the wedding feast, to crowd about Táhirih and listen to the sweet words of her mouth.
Thus she remained, a helpless captive. Then came the attempt on the life of the Sháh;1 a farmán was issued; she
1 On August 15, 1852, a half-crazed Bábí youth wounded the Sháh with shot from a pistol. The assailant was instantly killed, and the authorities carried out a wholesale massacre of the believers, its climax described by Renan as “a day perhaps unparalleled in the history of the world.” Cf. Lord Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, pp. 501–2, and God Passes By, p. 62 et seq.
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