The Fall of the Amír-Niẓám

*A retelling based on **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi (chapters 4 and 5), with details from Nabíl's **The Dawn-Breakers** (chapter 23). Words in quotation marks are quoted from these books.*

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Mírzá Taqí Khán, known as the Amír-Niẓám, was the Grand Vizier of the young Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh. Shoghi Effendi names him among the chief enemies of the Báb: "the arbitrary, bloodthirsty, reckless Amír-Nizám, Mírzá Taqí Khán," who "decreed His death in Tabríz."

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## The decision

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By 1850 the Báb had been a prisoner in the mountains of Ádhirbáyján for nearly three years, yet His followers had only grown more devoted. Shoghi Effendi writes that the Báb's isolation and captivity "had produced the opposite effect to that which the Amír-Nizám had confidently anticipated," and the minister became convinced that nothing short of the Báb's death would stop the movement.

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Nabíl relates that the Amír-Niẓám called his counsellors together and asked for their advice. Only one spoke: Mírzá Áqá Khán-i-Núrí, the Minister of War, who said it would be manifest cruelty to put to death a banished siyyid for the deeds of others. The Amír-Niẓám rejected his advice.

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Acting, Shoghi Effendi writes, without an explicit order from the Sháh and independently of his fellow-ministers, he sent orders to the governor of Ádhirbáyján, Prince Ḥamzih Mírzá, to have the Báb brought to Tabríz and executed. When the prince refused, the Amír-Niẓám gave the task to his own brother, Mírzá Ḥasan Khán, and the Báb was put to death on the 9th of July, 1850.

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## "Not so"

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When the news of the martyrdom reached Mírzá Áqá Khán-i-Núrí in Ṭihrán, he told Bahá'u'lláh, whom he knew well, and said he hoped the fire he had feared was at last put out. Nabíl records Bahá'u'lláh's reply: "Not so. If this be true, you can be certain that the flame that has been kindled will, by this very act, blaze forth more fiercely than ever, and will set up a conflagration such as the combined forces of the statesmen of this realm will be powerless to quench."

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## The fall

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The Amír-Niẓám's own end came quickly. Shoghi Effendi writes that he "forfeited, through the unrelenting jealousy of his sovereign and the vindictiveness of court intrigue, all the honors he had enjoyed, and was treacherously put to death by the royal order, his veins being opened in the bath of the Palace of Fín, near Káshán." His brother, Mírzá Ḥasan Khán, who had carried out the execution, also died within two years. Nabíl writes that the blood of the Amír-Niẓám "stains, to this very day, the wall of the bath of Fin."

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Shoghi Effendi places these deaths among the fates of those who persecuted the Báb and His followers, and speaks of "the rod of Divine chastisement" that overtook them. Nabíl adds that the regiment which had carried out the execution also met a terrible end, and that some people of Tabríz were heard to whisper to one another whether it could be "the vengeance of God."

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*This is a retelling. For the full account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, chapters 4 and 5, and **The Dawn-Breakers** by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam, chapter 23.*

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