And finally, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, revealed soon after Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to Akká, He thus apostrophizes the seat of Turkish imperial power: “O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas! The throne of tyranny hath, verily, been stablished upon thee, and the flame of hatred hath been kindled within thy bosom.... Thou art indeed filled with manifest pride. Hath thine outward splendor made thee vainglorious? By Him Who is the Lord of mankind! It shall soon perish, and thy daughters, and thy widows, and all the kindreds that dwell within thee shall lament. Thus informeth thee, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” Indeed, in a most remarkable passage in the Lawḥ-i-Fu’ád, wherein mention has been made of the death of Fu’ád Pá_sh_á, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, the fall of the Sulṭán himself is unmistakably foretold: “Soon will We dismiss the one who was like unto him, and will lay hold on their Chief who ruleth the land, and I, verily, am the Almighty, the All-Compelling.” The Sulṭán’s reaction to these words, bearing upon his person, his empire, his throne, his capital, and his ministers, can be gathered from the recital of the sufferings he inflicted on Bahá’u’lláh, and already referred to in the beginning of these pages. The extinction of the “outward splendor” surrounding that proud seat of Imperial power is the theme I now proceed to expose. THE DOOM OF IMPERIAL TURKEY A cataclysmic process, one of the most remarkable in modern history, was set in motion ever since Bahá’u’lláh, while a prisoner in Constantinople, delivered to a Turkish official His Tablet, addressed to Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz and his ministers, to be transmitted to ‘Alí Pá_sh_á, the Grand Vizir. It was this Tablet which, as attested by that officer and affirmed by Nabíl in his chronicle, affected the Vizir so profoundly that he paled while reading it. This process received fresh impetus after the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís was revealed on the morrow of its Author’s final banishment from Adrianople to Akká. Relentless, devastating, and with ever-increasing momentum, it ominously unfolded, damaging the prestige of the Empire, dismembering its territory, dethroning its sulṭáns, sweeping away their dynasty, degrading and deposing its Caliph, disestablishing its religion, and extinguishing its glory. The “sick man” of Europe, whose condition had been unerringly diagnosed by the Divine Physician, and whose doom was pronounced inevitable, fell a prey, during the reign of five successive sulṭáns, all degenerate, all deposed, to a series of convulsions which, in the end, proved fatal to his life. Imperial Turkey that had, under ‘Abdu’l-Majíd, been admitted into the European Concert, and had emerged victorious from the Crimean War, entered, under his successor, ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, upon a period of swift decline, culminating, soon after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing, in the doom which the judgment of God had pronounced against it.