BAHA'I FAITH art

The Battle of Fort Tabarsi

“Early one morning, while the morning star was still shining brightly in the predawn sky, a sniper fired a shot from a tree fatally wounding Mulla Husayn just as he was mounting his horse.”

Unfurling the Black Standard

In 1848 Mulla Husayn hoisted the “Black Standard” and, accompanied by 200 of his companions, set out from Mashhad, on horseback, towards Karbila.

The companions invited the inhabitants of every village, they passed through, to join them as they headed towards the Conference of Badasht, but they were ambushed as they passed through a wooded area near the village of Barfarush.

Mulla Husayn and the Babi’s took refuge at the shrine of Shaykh Tabarsi and built a moat and a fortress in preparation for a long siege. A few days later they were joined by Quddus which brought the number to 313 the same number of believers who accompanied the Prophet Muhammad at the historical Battle of Badr, near Mecca.

When Nasiri’d-Din Shah heard about the uprising he dispatched 12,000 troops to restore the peace. The pursuing siege lasted several months through the cold and rigorous winter, leading some historians to observe that “The imagination of man cannot conceive the vehemence of the courage and valor of the Babi’s as they fearlessly exposed their bodies to the bullets and cannon balls as if the battlefield was a joyous banquet.”

The Tarikh-i-Jadid