Among the women who came out of their homeland was the sorrowing Fátimih
1 Begum, widow of the
King of Martyrs. She was a holy leaf of the Tree of God. From her earliest youth she was beset with uncounted ordeals. First was the disaster which overtook her noble father in the environs of Bada
sht, when, after terrible suffering, he died in a desert caravanserai, died hard—helpless and far from home.
The child was left an orphan, and in distress, until, by God’s grace, she became the wife of the King of Martyrs. But since he was known everywhere as a Bahá’í, was an impassioned lover of
Bahá’u’lláh, a man distracted, carried away, and since Náṣiri’d-Dín
Sháh thirsted for blood—the hostile lurked in their ambush, and every day they informed against him and slandered him afresh, started a new outcry and set new mischief afoot. For this reason his family was never sure of his safety for a single day, but lived from moment to moment in anguish, foreseeing and dreading the hour of his martyrdom. Here was the family, everywhere known as Bahá’ís; their enemies, stony-hearted tyrants; their government inflexibly, permanently against them; their reigning Sovereign rabid for blood.