It was during the month of December in 1852 that Baha’u’llah
was released from the Siyah-Chal (Black Pit) of Tehran. Here is how
Baha’u’llah’s daughter, Bahiyyih Khanum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, recalled the
circumstances involved many years later:
We listened eagerly to the accounts she [her mother, Asiyih
Khanum] gave to my uncle [Baha’u’llah’s faithful brother, Mirza Musa]. This
information came through the kindness of a sister of my grandfather, who was
married to Mirza Yusif, a Russian subject, and a friend of the Russian Consul
in Tihran. This gentleman, my great uncle by marriage, used to attend the
courts to find out some particulars as to the victims chosen for execution day
by day, and thus was able to relieve to some extent my mother's overwhelming
anxiety as these appalling days passed over us.
It was Mirza Yusif, who was able to help my mother about
getting food taken to my father, and who brought us to the two little rooms
near the prison, where we stayed in close hiding. He had to be very careful in
thus defying the authorities, although the danger in this case was mitigated by
the fact of his being under the protection of the Russian Consulate, as a
Russian subject.
Nobody at all, of all our friends and relations, dared to
come to see my mother during these days of death, but the wife of Mirza Yusif,
the aunt of my father.
One day the discovery was made by Mirza Yusif that our
untiring enemies, the most fanatical of the mullas, were plotting the death of
Mirza Husayn 'Ali Nuri [Baha’u’llah], my father. … Read more
- Lady Blomfield ('The Chosen Highway')
