Speaker Prep

Opening

In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, Esslemont preserves Bahá'u'lláh's own brief description of the Síyáh-Chál — the underground prison in Tihrán in which He was held in chains for four months in 1852. The dungeon was *foul beyond comparison*, dark, and crowded with nearly one hundred and fifty fellow-prisoners.

Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era · J. E. Esslemont

Middle

The Báb spent four months in Iṣfáhán in 1846 as the guest, first of the Imám-Jum'ih and then of the Governor Manúchihr Khán. The Imám-Jum'ih had asked, as a test, for a commentary on a Súrih of the Qur'án; the Báb produced one in two hours of writing — a quantity of verse that the host afterwards estimated at a third of the Qur'án itself.

The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation · Nabíl-i-A'ẓam

Closing

Nabíl's chronicle records the Báb's removal from Iṣfáhán in 1847 to the remote frontier prisons of Máh-Kú and Chihríq, in the bleak mountains of north-western Persia. The intent of the authorities was to silence Him by isolation; the effect was the opposite — the journey itself became a teaching, the remote fortresses became places of pilgrimage, and from the cells the Persian Bayán was revealed.

The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation · Nabíl-i-A'ẓam