Khan had also learned from a confidential source that during this visit Mirza Asadu’llah had been entrusted with a secret mission by ‘Abdu’l-Baha. This assigned task was to meet with certain Persian Baha’is and receive from them a box containing the holy remains of the Bab, carefully hidden ever since His body and that of His companion, crushed by the bullets into a single mass, had been cast out onto the edge of the moat at Tabriz on the day of the martyrdom (July 9, 1850) and removed by the faithful in the middle of the second night. To protect the sacred dust from the ever-watchful mullas of Shiah Islam, the remains had been concealed in one place after another: here in a private home, there in a shrine, finally in and near the capital, until 1899. Let alone the mullas, the believers themselves were also a danger to the holy remains, because they were irresistibly drawn in great crowds to whatever spot was rumored to be the hiding place.
When Mirza Asadu’llah, together with his son Aminu’llah, later known as Dr Farid, was on his way back from Persia and, still obligated to exercise the greatest precaution, had stopped in Beirut, he called in six other believers, so that there would be eight with himself and his son, and had a group photograph taken, together with the sacred box. Beneath the group he wrote this verse from the Qur’an: ‘... on that day eight shall bear up the throne of thy Lord.’ This photograph Mírzá Asadu’lláh showed about everywhere, and the believers rewarded him with funds.
(Summon Up Remembrance by Marzieh Gail, Oxford: George Ronald, 1987)
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