An assassination attempt is instigated on the…

An assassination attempt is instigated on the King of Persia, Nasser-al-Din Shah, by a handful of angry Bábís as the result of the Báb's execution by a firing squad in Tabriz two years earlier.

The entire Bábí community is blamed, and a slaughter of several thousand Bábís follows, the assassins' claim that they had been working alone notwithstandin.

Many of the Bábís who escape death, including Mirza Husayn Ali, are imprisoned and tortured in the Síyáh-Chál (Black Pit), an underground dungeon of Tehran.

Mirza Husayn Ali himself is found to be innocent of complicity in the assassination plot, but remains in the Síyáh-Chál over four months.

According to Mirza Husayn Ali, it is during his imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál that he receives a vision of a Maiden from God, through whom he receives his mission as a Messenger of God and as the One whose coming the Báb had prophesied.

After four months in the Síyáh-Chál, owing to the insistent demands of the Ambassador of Russia, and after the person who tried to kill the Shah confessed and exonerated the Bábi leaders, the authorities release him from prison.

The authorities now banish Mirza Husayn Ali from Persia, and he chooses to go to Baghdad, a city in the Ottoman Empire.