Ṭáhirih Unveiled at Badasht

In the summer of 1848, in the hamlet of Badasht in northern Persia, the followers of the Báb held a conference at which they broke openly with the laws of Islám. Bahá'u'lláh had rented three gardens there. He assigned one to Quddús and another to Ṭáhirih, and kept the third for Himself. The eighty-one disciples who came from various provinces were His guests for the whole of their stay.

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On each of the twenty-two days He spent there He revealed a Tablet, which was chanted before the believers, and He gave each of them a new name. From that time He Himself was called Bahá; the Last Letter of the Living was called Quddús, and Qurratu'l-'Ayn was called Ṭáhirih.

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Shoghi Effendi writes in *God Passes By* that Bahá'u'lláh *unobtrusively yet effectually presided over that conference.* Quddús, regarded as the voice of the conservative element, pretended, by a plan made beforehand, to oppose Ṭáhirih's seemingly extremist views, so as to lessen the alarm such a conference was sure to arouse.

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The climax came one day in Bahá'u'lláh's presence, when illness had confined Him to bed. Ṭáhirih, *regarded as the fair and spotless emblem of chastity and the incarnation of the holy Fáṭimih,* appeared suddenly, *adorned yet unveiled,* before the assembled companions. She seated herself at the right hand of Quddús and, *tearing through her fiery words the veils guarding the sanctity of the ordinances of Islám,* proclaimed that a new Dispensation had begun.

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She was so revered that even to look at her shadow had been thought improper. *Fear, anger, bewilderment, swept their inmost souls.* 'Abdu'l-Kháliq-i-Iṣfahání cut his throat with his own hands and fled from her presence. A few renounced their Faith. Others stood mute and transfixed. Quddús, mute with rage, seemed to be waiting only for the moment when he could strike her down with the sword he happened to be holding.

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Ṭáhirih rose and, without any preparation and in language closely resembling that of the Qur'án, delivered what Shoghi Effendi calls *a fervid and eloquent appeal* to those who remained. She ended it with these words:

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> I am the Word which the Qá'im is to utter, the Word which shall put to > flight the chiefs and nobles of the earth!

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Then she invited them to embrace one another and celebrate the occasion.

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In the days that followed, Shoghi Effendi writes, the outlook, habits and manner of worship of these believers changed entirely. A few would not accept the setting aside of the laws of Islám and left, but the purpose of the conference had been accomplished. He calls that day the *trumpet-blast announcing the formal extinction of the old, and the inauguration of the new Dispensation.*

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Four years later, in 1852, Ṭáhirih was put to death in Ṭihrán.

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*A retelling based on **God Passes By** (Shoghi Effendi, Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1944), chapter 2; the words in italics and in the block quotation are from that book. For the fuller account, see the original.*

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