or a couple of hours before they thawed out."

Traveling through rain and storm, at times even making night marches, the
weary travelers, after brief halts at Ku_ch_ik-_Ch_akma_ch_ih,
Buyuk-_Ch_akma_ch_ih, Salvari, Birkas, and Baba-Iski, arrived at their
destination, on the first of Rajab 1280 A.H. (December 12, 1863), and were
lodged in the _Kh_an-i-'Arab, a two-story caravanserai, near the house of
'Izzat-Aqa. Three days later, Baha'u'llah and His family were consigned to
a house suitable only for summer habitation, in the Muradiyyih quarter,
near the Takyiy-i-Mawlavi, and were moved again, after a week, to another
house, in the vicinity of a mosque in that same neighborhood. About six
months later they transferred to more commodious quarters, known as the
house of Amru'llah (House of God's command) situated on the northern side
of the mosque of Sultan Salim.

Thus closes the opening scene of one of the most dramatic episodes in the
ministry of Baha'u'llah. The curtain now rises on what is admittedly the
most turbulent and critical period of the first Baha'i century--a period
that was destined to precede the most glorious phase of that ministry, the
proclamation of His Message to the world and its rulers.

Chapter X: The Rebellion of Mirza Yahya and the Proclamation of
Baha'u'llah's Mission in Adrianople

A twenty-year-old Faith had just begun to recover from a series of
successive blows when a crisis of the first magnitude overtook it and
shook it to its roots. Neither the tragic martyrdom of the Bab nor the
ignominious attempt on the life of the sovereign, nor its bloody
aftermath, nor Baha'u'llah's humiliating banishment from His native land,
nor even His two-year withdrawal to Kurdistan, devastating though they
were in their consequences, could compare in gravity with this first major
internal convulsion which seized a newly rearisen community, and which
threatened to cause an irreparable breach in the ranks of its members.
More odious than the unrelenting hostility which Abu-Jahl, the uncle of
Muhammad, had exhibited, more shameful than the betrayal of Jesus Christ
by His disciple, Judas Iscariot, more perfidious than the conduct of the
sons of Jacob towards Joseph their brother, more abhorrent than the deed
committed by one of the sons of Noah, more infamous than even the criminal
act perpetrated by Cain against Abel, the monstrous behavior of Mirza
Yahya, one of the half-brothers of Baha'u'llah, the n