erasing Azal from history

Subsequent Bahā’ī theologian-historians began the process of erasing Azal from history, denying his popularity among the Bābīs 1854–1865, and finding it implausible that an old-time Bābī like Mukārī could have initially leaned toward Azal. By the time we get to Tāherzādeh in the 1970s, information to the contrary is being actively suppressed in English. Bahā’u’llāh in the view of these later partisans had to have not only won out that September, he had to have always possessed supremacy. That the magnitude of Bahā’u’llāh’s victory can only be diminished by rendering Azal a non-entity did not faze them.

(Juan R. I. Cole, THE AZĀLĪ-BAHĀ’Ī CRISIS OF SEPTEMBER, 1867)