Transcript:Filmstrip/Land of Resplendent Glory Part 2

do not imagine that the Báb was forgotten for a single moment after his martyrdom know

that the thousands of other martyrdoms among his followers such as this public beheading

in a square in Tehran diminish the faith.

Each death to his cause, in fact attracted countless new believers to the faith.

As early as the spring of 1848, for example, this house had been built by Mullah Hussein

in Mashhad, near the northeast corner of Persia, it was the first center for the new faith,

it was named the house of Babi Yeh.

Its meeting room door opens upon a courtyard with fruit trees and tame turtle doves, and

it is still looked after today by an aged custodian, Gollam Hussein B. Dari, on the

left, who was amazoned by trade, and actually helped build the first Baha'i temple erected

anywhere which was in Eshabad, now part of Soviet Turkmenistan, about 1903.

Eshabad, the site of the house of worship, is at the top of the map.

Most immediately after the Babi Yeh was opened, Mullah Hussein set off westward at the request

of the Bab on a proclamation march at the head of 202 followers, aroused by Mullah's

a town attacked the marchers, later made peace with them, and then the believers were ambushed

in a forest.

They made their stand at an old Muslim shrine that came to be known as Fort Tabarci, Fort

Tabarci.

It is the long white building between the tall trees, which had been erected in the

13th century in honor of the Muslim saint Sheikh Tabarci.

But Mullah Hussein al-Oddus hastily fortified it against the approaching siege of the Shah's

armies.

Meanwhile, life went on its usual way around them, with farm folk coming and going, as

in this picture, taken less than a mile from the fort.

The most important crop in this very low area of Mazindan province is rice, for water and

fogs are in abundance, all along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea.

This is the gatehouse leading to the fort, which looks like this now, but at the time

of the siege, was heavily buttressed to fend off the caninating of the royal artillery.

The wall around the fort, part of which you see behind the children, was built by Mullah

Hussein's men, and made up the well as their main water supply.

Beyond the wall was a moat about ten feet deep and ten feet wide.

The fort is about 40 feet long by 20 feet wide, and tells in two square rooms in one of which

stands Sheikh Tabarci's tomb.

On his feet, one can gaze southward on a pastoral scene.

Trees are everywhere around the fort, many of strange, powdered shapes, and Mullah Hussein

was famed for having cut through with a single stroke of his sword, the trunk of the tree,

the barrel of the musket and the body of an enemy soldier hiding behind it.

Another and no doubt larger tree, shown here, partly hollowed out in back from age, contains

a clear hole said to have been made by one of the Charles Cannonballs.

Across the one this piece of cannonball came from before it was picked up nearby.

Even the fences around Tabarci are made of free branches and willowy switches.

The fighting was by no means all defensive, and many bold flies were made, including one

led by a wood deuce to this brick stronghold of the enemy several miles away, which resulted

in utter rout for the sharp, despite his forces outnumbering those of what deuce 100 to 1.

In the end, government forces were able to win only by calling a peace parley, then capturing

the men of Tabarci by treachery, after which, one by one, they were tortured and killed.

And this new, beautiful public park in nearby Babal, called Balferush in the last century,

is where both deuce was martyred, in what was then aid marketplace.

About a year later, in 1850, another siege of the Bab's followers was fought near this

lake in southern Persia, one hundred miles east of Shiraz.

It involved the people of the town of Neariz, which lies in country much like parts of Nevada

and southern California in America.

Here you see a herd of goats before Lake Neariz, which, with its all flats, stretches

for nearly 50 miles, among island-like mountains.

It looked this way to astronauts Cooper and Conrad as they orbited more than a hundred

miles overhead during the eight-day spaceflight of Gemini 5 in the summer of 1965.

The goat herd carries a sling of woven wool for slinging stones to control its goats at

a distance, and in his sash, such things as extra clothes, bread, cheese, and a pipe,

which he lights, either with matches or a magnifying glass.

The siege of Neariz was fought at this ancient mud fort of Hajj, just outside the town.

The commander of the besieged was an illustrious follower of the Bab named Bahid.

Bahid used to address his couple of dozen men under this big plain tree before the enemy

grew close enough to force them into the nearby fort.

Here's how the fort looks.

From a row of trees that line the bank of a passing stream of clear mountain water, in

which grow watercrares, glaze, and not grass.

The gate of the fort itself is about 15 feet high and opens into an enclosure of several

acres that includes a well and dozens of mud dwellings, in one of which, at the corner

nears the town, Bahid made his quarters.

Here you can see Bahid's little fireplace, and the typical niches for his lanterns and

supplies, while at the extreme left is the dark doorway leading to a ladder to the corner

lookout tower from where he tried to observe the enemy.

After the treachery that ended the siege at the fort of Hajj, about 400 more followers

of the Bab were besieged in ravines in these neighboring mountains, until they too became

martyrs, even as the still later martyrs whose grades you see in the foreground, and

whose descendants still grow up in the town in such numbers that the majority of the population

is now made up of the highest.

Still another siege, much larger in numbers of the Bab's followers, took place on this

spot in Zhenjiang, also in 1850.

For here is where Khojat lived, and rallied his 5,000 believers against a major portion

of the Shah's army.

It is 200 miles west of Tehran, but today almost nothing is left of Khojat's house,

or the extensive fortifications his men and their family so nobly defended.

Neighbouring by Zeen, however, is where the Baha'i poities and only woman ladder of

the living, Tahire, was born, in the house whose ruins have fallen into this state.

You can see the niches where many of the books were kept, that she read as she grew up, to

become renowned as a leader and liberator of women, but like all the other letters of

the living, Tahire was destined for martyrdom, and when residing in this house of the mayor

in Tehran in August 1852, she was taken off in the night by a paid assassin to be strangled

in a garden where tall pines grew, and which today is this public park, part of which is

now being further developed.

(upbeat music)