Already in the lifetime of Bahá’u’lláh, and later during the ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the first blows of a slow yet steady and relentless retribution were falling alike upon the rulers of the Turkish House of Uthmán and of the Qájár dynasty in Persia—the archenemies of God’s infant Faith. Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz fell from power, and was murdered soon after Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment from Adrianople, while Násiri’d-Dín Sháh succumbed to an assassin’s pistol, during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s incarceration in the fortress-town of Akká. It was reserved, however, for the Formative Period of the Faith of God—the Age of the birth and rise of its Administrative Order—which, as stated in a previous communication, is through its unfoldment casting such a turmoil in the world, to witness not only the extinction of both of these dynasties, but also the abolition of the twin institutions of the Sultanate and the Caliphate.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)