Barbaric Genocide of the Bábís – Page 8

The genocide of the Bábís spreads throughout the land

The conflagration kindled in the capital now spread to the adjoining provinces, bringing in its wake devastation and misery to countless innocent people. During this period, exaggerated reports were received in the capital about activities of the Bábís in the other parts of the land. These alarmed the Sháh who ordered his Grand Vazír to have the Bábís throughout the land suppressed. The bigoted religious leaders who bitterly hated the Bábís and were terrified of the spread of that movement were thus given the excuse they needed. Together with power-hungry civil authorities they began the arrest of Bábís, confiscation of their properties, and their barbaric persecution. Countless Bábís were killed in a genocide that did not end in a month or two but continued for many months. It was spread through most of the land from Mázindarán to Yazd to Shíráz to Zanján to Nayríz and more. Those not killed were imprisoned and for them the atrocities continued in some places for up to two years. And this genocide encompassed Bábís that were young and old; not just men but also numberless women and children, who came from all walks of life and from all parts of the land. Nabíl writes:

My pen shrinks in horror in attempting to describe what befell those valiant men and women who were made to suffer so severely for their Faith. The wanton barbarity that characterised the treatment meted out to them reached the lowest depths of infamy in the concluding stages of that lamentable episode. …. A pen abler than mine … will, I trust, be found to place on record a tale which, however grim its features, must ever remain as one of the noblest evidences of the faith which the Cause of the Báb was able to inspire in His followers.

No accurate estimate exists of the number of Bábís martyred during this period. For the nine years from 1844 to 1853, the low-end estimate is more than ten thousand. ,

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