This was not all, however. The disappearance of the Caliph, the spiritual head of above two hundred million Muḥammadans, brought in its wake, in the land that had dealt Islám such a heavy blow, the annulment of the _sh_arí’ah canonical Law, the disendowment of Sunní institutions, the promulgation of a civil Code, the suppression of religious orders, the abrogation of ceremonials and traditions inculcated by the religion of Muḥammad. The _Sh_ay_kh_u’l-Islám and his satellites, including muftís, qádís, hujáhs, _sh_ay_kh_s, súfís, ḥájís, mawlavís, dervishes, and others, vanished at a stroke more determined, more open, and drastic than the one dealt the _Sh_í’ihs by the _Sh_áh and his government. The mosques of the capital, the pride and glory of the Islamic world, were deserted, and the fairest and most famous of them all, the peerless St. Sophia, “the Second Firmament,” “the Vehicle of the Cherubim,” converted by the blatant creators of a secular regime into a museum. The Arabic tongue, the language of the Prophet of God, was banished from the land, its alphabet was superseded by Latin characters, and the Qur’án itself translated into Turkish for the few who still cared to read it. The constitution of the new Turkey not only proclaimed formally the disestablishment and disendowment of Islám, with all its attendant and, in the view of some, atheistic enactments, but also heralded various measures that aimed at its further humiliation and weakening. Even the city of Constantinople, “the Dome of Islám,” apostrophized in such condemnatory terms by Bahá’u’lláh, which, after the fall of Byzantium, had been hailed by the great Constantine as “the New Rome,” and exalted to the rank of the metropolis of both the Roman Empire and of Christendom, and subsequently revered as the seat of the Caliphs, was relegated to the position of a provincial city and stripped of all its pomp and glory, its soaring and slender minarets standing sentinel at the grave of so much vanished splendor and power. “O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas!” Bahá’u’lláh has thus apostrophized the Imperial City, in terms that call to mind the prophetic words addressed by Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, “The throne of tyranny hath, verily, been stablished upon thee, and the flame of hatred hath been kindled within thy bosom, in such wise that the Concourse on high, and they who circle around the Exalted Throne, have wailed and lamented. We behold in thee the foolish ruling over the wise, and darkness vaunting itself against the light. 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.”