Muhammad-'Alí, half-brother of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Arch-breaker of the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh, died. [CB355; GPB320; MA11]
During Bahá'u'lláh's ministry, Mírzá Muhammad-`Alí was known by the title
Ghusn-i-Akbar (the Greater Branch). After he broke the Covenant, believers referred
to him as the Naqid-i-Akbar (the Arch-Covenant-breaker).
"The Hand of Omnipotence has removed the archbreaker of Bahá'u'lláh's
Covenant, his hopes shattered, his plottings frustrated, the society of his
fellow-conspirators extinguished. God's triumphant Faith forges on, its unity
unimpaired, its purpose unsullied, its stability unshaken. Such a death calls
for neither exultation nor recrimination, but evokes overwhelming pity at so
tragic a downfall unparalleled in religious history." [Cablegram December 20, 1937 MA11)
This perfidious man, consumed by a "soul festering jealousy" toward Abdu'l-Baha, behaved in a way that "…agitated the minds and hearts of a vast proportion of the faithful throughout the East, eclipsed, for a time, the Orb of the Covenant, created an irreparable breach within the ranks of Bahá'u'lláh's own kindred, sealed ultimately the fate of the great majority of the members of His family, and gravely damaged the prestige, though it never succeeded in causing a permanent cleavage in the structure, of the Faith itself." [GPB246]
He had changed the text of at least one tablet of Bahá'u'lláh to make it appear that Bahá'u'lláh was condemning the wicked deeds of'Abdu'l-Bahá. He plotted to murder 'Abdu'l-Bahá. He made repeated false allegations about 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the Ottoman authorities so that the Master came perilously closed to being exiled to a remote part of the Libyan desert. In addition, from 1892 to 1929, Muhammad Ali and his relatives occupied the mansion of Bahji, where Bahá'u'lláh's tomb was located, and it was not until 1952 that the property surrounding the Shrine was finally owned, without hindrance, by the Bahá'í community. [CoB153; PP231-233]
He "was stricken with paralysis which crippled half his body; lay bedridden in pain for months before he died; and was buried according to Muslim rites, in the immediate vicinity of a local Muslim shrine, his grave remaining until the present day (1944) devoid of even a tombstone—a pitiful reminder of the hollowness of the claims he had advanced, of the depths of infamy to which he had sunk, and of the severity of the retribution his acts had so richly merited." [GPB319-320]
- For details of his death and funeral see DH117 and GPB320.
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