 |
| The barrack square in Tabriz, where the Báb was executed. |
The execution of the Báb in a Tabriz barracks square in July 1850 is the foundational "miracle" of the Baha'i Faith, a moment where divine intervention supposedly suspended the laws of physics. For a religious movement that explicitly benchmarks its identity against the harmony of science and reason, this narrative creates an insurmountable logical impasse. The Baha'i leadership, through the hagiographical accounts of Shoghi Effendi and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, insists upon a 750-man firing squad failing to strike its target at close range. However, this claim collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions when subjected to basic empirical scrutiny.
The Problem of "Cherry-Picking" Logic A religion cannot maintain a claim to rationalism while simultaneously demanding the suspension of logic to accommodate supernatural folklore. When the foundational history of a movement is contaminated by physical impossibilities, the believer is forced into a binary choice: apply empirical standards consistently or admit that their history is a collection of curated exaggerations. To "cherry-pick" when to be a scientist and when to be a fundamentalist is a failure of intellectual integrity.
With the physical impossibility of the miracle established by the laws of ballistics and geometry, the burden of proof shifts from the theological to the mechanical.
The Geometry of Impossibility: Why 750 Muskets is a Myth
The hagiographical text The Dawn-Breakers depicts 750 soldiers arranged in three files of 250 men each. To anyone applying "carpenter’s logic" - the pragmatic assessment of spatial reality - these numbers are a logistical fantasy. A modern-day empirical staging of a 750-man squad conducted in Bend, Oregon, confirmed that such a formation would require a span of 125 to 150 meters. Placing such a line in the Tabriz barracks square reveals the absurdity of the "miracle."
If a firing line is 150 meters long and the target is 15 meters away, the soldiers at the far ends are over 75 meters from the Báb. To even attempt a shot, these men would have to turn at an 80-degree angle, firing directly across the faces and front ranks of their own companions. This is not a military formation; it is a recipe for a fratricidal massacre.
Logistical Absurdities of the 750-Man Narrative:
- The Smoke-Screen Effect: In 1850, muskets utilized black powder. A simultaneous discharge of 250 rifles would generate a "mighty smoke" so dense that the subsequent ranks would be firing blind into a wall of gray soot, unable to see the target or the men in front of them.
- The Danger of Hot Wads: Firing in three ranks is a tactical impossibility with muzzle-loaders. The "glowing hot remains" of the wads from the third rank would fall directly onto the front ranks, causing immediate injury and panic.
- The "Mowing Down" of Ranks: Because of the required 80-degree firing angle from the flanks, the crossfire would have inevitably mowed down the front ranks in handfuls.
- Structural Backstop: There is no historical record of the catastrophic structural damage 750 lead balls would cause. Such a volley would have shattered the building, destroyed the shutters, and likely killed any occupants in the rooms behind the Báb.
With the physical reality debunked, the burden of proof shifts to the genealogy of the lie itself.
The Genealogy of an Exaggeration: From Platoon to Regiment
The inflation of this event follows a classic trajectory of oral transmission errors and linguistic drift. The shift from a standard "platoon" to a "regiment" of 750 men likely stems from the Persian preposition "Az", which can mean both "from" (a subdivision) and "consisting of" (the whole).
The chain of transmission is transparent: Source A reports a firing squad from (az) Sam Khan's regiment; Source B interprets this as a squad consisting of (az) the regiment; Source C asks how many men are in a regiment (750); and Source D invents the "three files" to make the 750 men fit a mental image of an execution.
Comparative Analysis of Execution Accounts
Source Name | Year | Description of Firing Squad Size / Role |
Anitchkov (Russian Consul) | 1850 | "The soldiers" (No unusual size; noted their lack of skill). |
Richard Stevens (British) | 1850 | "A volley of musketry" (No mention of a massive squad). |
Haji Mirza Jani | Pre-1852 | "Three bullets struck him" (Implies a standard squad size). |
Jakob Polak | 1865 | "A small party of soldiers." |
Mirza Kazem-Beg | 1865 | "A platoon from the Christian regiment." |
Quch-Ali Sultan | 1858 | The Captain who actually finished the execution with a sabre. |
Sam Khan | 1880s | Colonel of the Christian Regiment; early records cite 40 guards. |
Rev. L. Rosenberg | 1868 | 750 soldiers (The first recorded mention of this figure). |
Shoghi Effendi | 1944 | 750 rifles in three files of 250 men each. |
The "750" figure was first recorded by Reverend L. Rosenberg in 1868, based on oral reports from Baha'is in Adrianople nearly twenty years after the fact. It is a mid-19th-century invention designed to provide what British Consul Richard Stevens called "lustre" to a secular event.
The Grim Reality: Mutilation and the Town Ditch
The final proof of a non-miraculous event is found in the visceral descriptions of the remains. While hagiographies claim a "disappearance," contemporary diplomatic records describe a brutal, bungled execution. There was no "divine protection" over the bodies; instead, Baha'u'llah’s own writings admit to "mingled flesh and bones" and remains that were "enmeshed together" by the force of the bullets.
The Russian Consul, Anitchkov, provided the most devastating blow to the miracle narrative: he commissioned an artist to draw the mutilated remains as they lay in the dirt. This was not a celestial transition, but a point-blank execution often carried out in a guardroom (as noted by Gobineau) rather than in a grand display in the square.
The Fate of the Physical Remains:
- Mutilation: The bodies were riddled with bullets, so enmeshed that they were inseparable.
- The Ditch: The bodies were thrown into the town moat (the "town ditch") outside the city gates.
- Scavenging: Anitchkov recorded that the remains were "devoured by dogs," a detail that underscores the lack of any supernatural preservation.
- The Finishing Blow: Rather than a massed volley, the Báb was ultimately finished "at point-blank range" by Quch-Ali Sultan after the first attempt failed due to incompetence or the accidental severing of the ropes.
Conclusion: The Fabrication of a Sign
The "750 muskets" narrative is a manufactured myth, a product of religious imagination rather than historical documentation. By inflating the scale of the execution to a geometrically impossible size, the Baha'i community sought to transform a chaotic, poorly executed state killing into a "divine sign." However, the records of the Russian and British consuls, alongside the earliest internal accounts, consistently point to a standard platoon-sized squad.
So What? Reducing the execution to a "platoon" makes the story of the cut ropes and the initial miss plausible - soldiers miss targets and hit ropes in documented historical accidents. However, stripping the story of its 750-man exaggeration also strips it of its supernatural status. It transforms a "miracle" into a logistical mess and a clerical error. The cost of this historical accuracy is the loss of a divine icon; the Báb is returned to his role as an ordinary human figure, while the "750 muskets" remains a testament to the community's need to sanitize a grim reality with impossible lustre.
Sources:
https://senmcglinn.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/750-muskets/https://www.paintdrawer.co.uk/david/folders/spirituality/bahai/bab/Martyrdom%20of%20the%20Bab%20(Sources).doc
https://archive.org/details/russian-book-about-the-bab
