unqualified affirmation of the claims and distinguishing features of the
new Revelation, in a series of seven conferences with the deputies of the
Grand Vizir commissioned to interrogate her, which she held while confined
in that same house, which finally precipitated the sentence of her death.
It was from her pen that odes had flowed attesting, in unmistakable
language, not only her faith in the Revelation of the Báb, but also her
recognition of the exalted and as yet undisclosed mission of Bahá’u’lláh.
And last but not least it was owing to her initiative, while participating
in the Conference of Bada_sh_t, that the most challenging implications of
a revolutionary and as yet but dimly grasped Dispensation were laid bare
before her fellow-disciples and the new Order permanently divorced from
the laws and institutions of Islám. Such marvelous achievements were now
to be crowned by, and attain their final consummation in, her martyrdom in
the midst of the storm that was raging throughout the capital.
One night, aware that the hour of her death was at hand, she put on the
attire of a bride, and annointed herself with perfume, and, sending for
the wife of the Kalantar, she communicated to her the secret of her
impending martyrdom, and confided to her her last wishes. Then, closeting
herself in her chambers, she awaited, in prayer and meditation, the hour
which was to witness her reunion with her Beloved. She was pacing the
floor of her room, chanting a litany expressive of both grief and triumph,
when the farrá_sh_es of Azíz _Kh_án-i-Sardár arrived, in the dead of
night, to conduct her to the Íl_kh_ání garden, which lay beyond the city
gates, and which was to be the site of her martyrdom. When she arrived the
Sardár was in the midst of a drunken debauch with his lieutenants, and was
roaring with laughter; he ordered offhand that she be strangled at once
and thrown into a pit. With that same silken kerchief which she had
intuitively reserved for that purpose, and delivered in her last moments
to the son of Kalantar who accompanied her, the death of this immortal
heroine was accomplished. Her body was lowered into a well, which was then
filled with earth and stones, in the manner she herself had desired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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