ing the equilibrium, and
sapping the strength, of that same order whose ramifications had extended
to every sphere, duty, and act of life in that country. The rock wall of
Islam, seemingly impregnable, was now shaken to its foundations, and was
tottering to its ruin, before the very eyes of the persecuted followers of
the Faith of Baha'u'llah. A sacerdotal hierarchy that had held in thrall
for so long the Faith of God, and seemed, at one time, to have mortally
struck it down, now found itself the prey of a superior civil authority
whose settled policy was to fasten, steadily and relentlessly, its coils
around it.

The vast system of that hierarchy, with all its elements and
appurtenances--its _sh_ay_kh_u'l-islams (high priests), its mujtahids
(doctors of the law), its mullas (priests), its fuqahas (jurists), its
imams (prayer-leaders), its mu'a_dhdh_ins (criers), its vu'azz
(preachers), its qadis (judges), its mutavallis (custodians), its
madrasihs (seminaries), its mudarrisins (professors), its tullabs
(pupils), its qurra's (intoners), its mu'abbirins (soothsayers), its
muhaddi_th_ins (narrators), its musa_khkh_irins (spirit-subduers), its
_dh_akirins (rememberers), its ummal-i-_dh_akat (almsgivers), its
muqaddasins (saints), its munzavis (recluses), its sufis, its dervishes,
and what not--was paralyzed and utterly discredited. Its mujtahids, those
firebrands, who wielded powers of life and death, and who for generations
had been accorded honors almost regal in character, were reduced to a
deplorably insignificant number. The beturbaned prelates of the Islamic
church who, in the words of Baha'u'llah, "decked their heads with green
and white, and committed what made the Faithful Spirit to groan," were
ruthlessly swept away, except for a handful who, in order to safeguard
themselves against the fury of an impious populace, are now compelled to
submit to the humiliation of producing, whenever the occasion demands it,
the license granted them by the civil authorities to wear this vanishing
emblem of a vanished authority. The rest of this turbaned class, whether
siyyids, mullas, or hajis, were forced not only to exchange their
venerable headdress for the kulah-i-farangi (European hat), which not long
ago they themselves had anathematized, but also to discard their flowing
robes and don the tight-fitting garments of European style, the
introduction of which into their country they had, a generation ago, so
violently disappro