Memorial of the Consort of the King of Martyrs

The chapter of *Memorials of the Faithful* devoted to *the Consort of the King of Martyrs* commemorates Fáṭimih Begum, the widow of the believer of Iṣfáhán remembered in Bahá'í history by the title Bahá'u'lláh Himself bestowed on him: *Sulṭánu'sh- Shuhadá,* the King of Martyrs.

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Her life, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes, was a life of sustained affliction. She was the daughter of one of the early believers who fell at the Conference of Badasht; she lost her father in childhood. She came of age in a household marked already by sacrifice.

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She married a man whose faith was not of the kind that could be hidden. The King of Martyrs of Iṣfáhán was an open and prominent Bahá’í; the city authorities pursued him with a particular and constant hostility. The Master writes of the years of their marriage in summary:

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> Every day there was a new incident, more turmoil, another > uproar.

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When at length the King of Martyrs and his brother were put to death by the order of the local clergy, the government — by the customary practice of the Persian state — moved at once upon the family’s possessions. Their house was sequestered. Their goods were seized. Fáṭimih Begum and her children were left destitute.

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She bore the loss, the Master writes, with a patience that amazed the friends. She wept by night for the husband she had lost; by day she gave thanks that the loss had been suffered in the path of Bahá’u’lláh. Her own faith deepened under the weight.

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Bahá’u’lláh, learning of the family’s condition, invited them to the Most Great Prison — to come to ‘Akká, where they would be under His protection. They came. The Master records that Fáṭimih Begum lived gratefully in ‘Akká, in the neighbourhood of the household, sustained by the proximity of her Lord.

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Affliction, however, did not desert her in the prison city. Her son fell ill and died. She bore that loss as she had borne the others — by weeping in the night and giving thanks in the morning.

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When at length, in 1892, Bahá’u’lláh Himself ascended, Fáṭimih Begum could not bear it. The Master writes the closing of her chapter in a single sentence:

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> She took leave of her children and she died.

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Upon the Consort of the King of Martyrs be salutations and praise. The patience that endured the public losses, the private losses, the losses of fortune and of family — the patience that endured all of these things and broke at last only at the loss of her Lord — is one of the great patiences of which the chapters of this book preserve the record.

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