The “sick man” of Europe, whose condition had been unerringly diagnosed by the Divine Physician, and whose doom was pronounced inevitable, fell a prey, during the reign of five successive sultáns, all degenerate, all deposed, to a series of convulsions which, in the end, proved fatal to his life. Imperial Turkey that had, under ‘Abdu’l-Majíd, been admitted into the European Concert, and had emerged victorious from the Crimean War, entered, under his successor, ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, upon a period of swift decline, culminating, soon after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing, in the doom which the judgment of God had pronounced against it.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)