Yet never had the martyrs of Zanján sought a holy war, nor contemplated disloyalty to their country and sovereign. Assailed by enemies who purposed only their destruction, they had courageously defended themselves. The spirit of their defence shines in these words of Ḥujjat in his last days:
The day whereon I found Thy beloved One, O my God, and recognised in Him the Manifestation of Thy eternal Spirit, I foresaw the woes that I should suffer for Thee.... Would that a myriad lives were mine, would that I possessed the riches of the whole earth and its glory, that I might resign them all freely and joyously in Thy path.[27]
On January 6th 1851 Sheil closed his reports on Zanján:
For the present, the doctrines of Bâb have received a check--In every part of Persia his disciples have been crushed or scattered--But though there is a cessation of the open promulgation of his tenets, it is believed that in secret they are not the less cherished....[28]
The Dawn-Breakers had paid dearly with their lives that the Faith of the Báb might live on. And it did live on, to attain its efflorescence in the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh.
_I am the Primal Point from which have been generated all created things.... I am the Countenance of God Whose splendour can never be obscured, the Light of God Whose radiance can never fade.... I am one of the sustaining pillars of the Primal Word of God. Whosoever hath recognised Me, hath known all that is true and right, and hath attained all that is good and seemly._ --The Báb
On the third day after the martyrdom of the Báb, His remains, inextricably united with those of His heroic, faithful disciple, were placed in a casket and taken to a locality which was safe and secure.
What happened, during the next fifty years, to the remains of the Báb cannot be better summarized than in the words of Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith:
Subsequently, according to Bahá'u'lláh's instructions, they were transported to Ṭihrán and placed in the shrine of Imám-Zádih Ḥasan. They were later removed to the residence of Ḥájí Sulaymán [_Kh_]án[FN] himself in the Sar-[_Ch_]a[_sh_]mih quarter of the city, and from his house were taken to the shrine of Imám-Zádih Ma`ṣúm, where they remained concealed until the year 1284 A.H. (1867-1868), when a Tablet, revealed by Bahá'u'lláh in Adrianople, directed Mullá `Alí-Akbar-i-[_Sh_]ahmírzádí[FO] and Jamál-i-Burújirdí to transfer them without delay to some other spot, an instruction which, in view of the subsequent reconstruction of that shrine, proved to have been providential.